Reports & Papers

Over the last several decades, the U.S.’s domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity has declined. The CHIPS Act aims to reverse this trend by investing over $50 billion in direct funding and loan subsidies to expand semiconductor research and development and manufacturing in the U.S. This primer focuses on the workforce challenges that will be spurred by this microelectronics industry expansion and proposes how community colleges can play a critical role in addressing these challenges. 

Smart wearables are quickly becoming the next wave of ubiquitous technologies due to their vast market penetration and broad utility. In the healthcare setting, smart wearables may be used to advance preventative health measures, emergency medicine, and primary care. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that healthcare is done, but major technical and nontechnical limitations exist and the regulation of these technologies is still underdeveloped.

Digital evidence–primarily from device searches–has made it easier for law enforcement to identify, harass, and prosecute LGBTQ people on the basis of their identity. This new report by Technology and Public Purpose fellow and Berkman Klein Center affiliate Afsaneh Rigot draws on years of in-depth research, including reviews of individual court case files and interviews with defense attorneys in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia, to demonstrate the painful and unjust impacts of these developments, as well as the communities’ resilience. 

Afsaneh Rigot has deep experience with both the needs and views of queer people in MENA as well as engaging tech companies to make meaningful change. She advocates for a methodology she terms Design from the Margins. Rigot calls on companies to use the findings of this report to build from the essential needs of those most impacted by their tools, creating better tech for all users in the process.

In late 2017, Mexico made headlines as Italian company Enel bid what was then a world-record low price for renewable energy in the country’s third such energy auction. This development was possible due to the historical and sweeping energy reforms passed with broad support in Mexico in 2013. Then-President Enrique Peña Nieto had succeeded where previous Mexican presidents had failed, reversing decades of resource nationalism and overhauling the energy sector through constitutional reforms that gave the private sector a larger role and advantaged renewable energy in Mexico’s economy. The 2017 auction seemed to indicate Mexico’s bright future not only as a conventional oil producer, but also as a clean energy power.

Platforms can bring challenging and divisive policy issues to a new kind of democratic process, enabling a ‘people’s mandate’ for their policies and helping mitigate corporate and partisan power.

This discussion paper explores key areas of disagreement on Article 6 and explores possible outcomes from the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-26) in November 2021 in Glasgow.

There are potential roles for sub-national climate policies in addressing climate change. Theory and experience of nesting sub-national climate policies within a broader, national climate policy indicate that the interactions between the two levels of governance can be problematic, benign, or positive, depending upon the nature, design, and stringency of the policies. When the national system is a tradable performance standard, as with China’s national system, the consequences are similar to those with cap-and-trade, but more complex.

How can United States policymakers better understand the next generation of emerging technologies and their societal implications? How can we make more educated decisions on the basic and applied research needed to solve the next generation of emerging threats? 

The 117th Congress and the Biden Administration must urgently address these questions to protect the lives and livelihoods of those living in the United States.
 

Donald Trump’s 2016 election and his nomination of climate skeptic Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency drastically downshifted expectations on U.S. policy toward climate change. Joseph Biden’s 2020 election shifted them dramatically upward. The authors study firms’ stock-price movements in reaction. As expected, the 2016 election boosted carbon-intensive firms. Surprisingly, firms with climate-responsible strategies also gained, especially those firms held by long-run investors. Such investors appear to have bet on a ‘‘boomerang’’ in climate policy. Harbingers of a boomerang already appeared during Trump’s term. The 2020 election marked its arrival.

This paper considers the treatment of co-benefits in benefit-cost analysis of federal air quality regulations. Using a comprehensive data set on all major Clean Air Act rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency over the period 1997–2019, the authors show that (1) co-benefits make up a significant share of the monetized benefits; (2) among the categories of co-benefits, those associated with reductions in fine particulate matter are the most significant; and (3) co-benefits have been pivotal to the quantified net benefit calculation in nearly half of cases.