AI Research Trials Are Booming, But the Old Playbook Won’t Work
Economists are randomizing AI faster than they can finish the trials meant to test it, and most tools will not survive to see their own results published.
Economy
Research on jobs, prices, markets, and money. Coverage runs from household budgets to labor markets, industries, and macroeconomic policy.
Can Fusion Power Be Profitable? A New Test Says What It Would Take
An MIT plasma physicist and a financial economist have built a ten-parameter test, modeled on fusion’s famous Lawson criterion, that asks the question the industry tends to dodge: can a fusion power plant bring in more money than it consumes?
States Bet on Gambling Taxes. The Money Barely Shows Up
A Manhattan Institute report totals up the tax revenue from legal sports betting across US states and finds it small, roughly 0.2% of state receipts, often shifted from lotteries, and plausibly outweighed by the public costs of gambling harm.
For Black Workers, the AI Risk Runs Through Education, Not Race
A new Urban Institute brief finds Black workers concentrated in the jobs AI is least likely to touch, and shows that once education is accounted for, the exposure gap tracks schooling far more than race.
Better AI Market Forecasts Do Not Make Better Investment Choices
Pusan National University researchers built a portfolio model that trains on the investment decision instead of the price forecast. A companion review of 164 finance papers found five evaluation biases that quietly inflate reported results.
SpaceX Now Controls Orbit the Way the East India Company Once Controlled the Seas, Cambridge Economists Warn
Cambridge economists tracking 4,405 launches liken SpaceX’s grip to the East India Company’s, warning a near-monopoly has every reason to charge what the market bears even as underlying costs collapse.
This Proposal Doesn’t Ban Tax Deferral for the Ultrarich. It Just Makes Waiting Worthless
The top 0.1 percent hold $1 of every $6 in US private wealth, much of it never taxed because they borrow against assets instead of selling. UC Berkeley’s Brian Galle, writing for the progressive Roosevelt Institute, proposes charging interest on deferred tax at the asset’s own rate of return — so holding forever no longer shrinks the bill.
Nearly a Third of Single-Source Drug Prescriptions Are Rejected at the US Pharmacy Counter
Rejections rose 67 percent over six years. After a denial, almost half of patients received no drug in the same therapeutic class within 90 days.
The Half-Trillion-Dollar Cost of Turning Away Foreign Students
Graduate school is America’s main pipeline for recruiting foreign scientists, but that door is narrowing. A Peterson Institute brief warns the economic cost could reach $481 billion a year.
Millennials Out-Earn Gen X. The Real Slump Began Decades Ago
Sixty years of income data complicate the usual generational story. The bigger shift came when the two-earner household stopped delivering the same boost.
The State’s Fire Insurance Backstop Is Becoming Californians’ Only Option
California’s FAIR Plan now covers many low-risk homes, as a Stanford study warns wildfire losses, not just premiums, drive the insurance crisis.
System Is Shutting the Door on Condo Ownership
Condominiums are often the most affordable path to homeownership, yet the condo market is stalling. An Urban Institute report says broken approval rules and rising insurance costs are choking financing.