Research programs
Programs
Five programs organize research around the economic decisions facing the United States and its international partners. They connect growth and public finance with productive capability, access to work, cross-border institutions, and the quality of policy design. The programs give sustained questions a clear place in the research agenda and bring evidence from several countries and publication formats into the same inquiry.
U.S. Economic Growth and Fiscal Policy Initiative
This agenda examines the sources and durability of American expansion, the financing of public commitments, and their effects on household resources and private capital. It connects national accounts with tax design, federal borrowing, housing, and the delivery of public investment. The central question is how changes in demand and fiscal institutions translate into productive activity and sustainable income.
A reading route moves from the composition of growth to the investment incentives, financing conditions, and implementation records that explain it. The program brings the federal perspective into contact with state and local responsibilities, where many investment and service decisions are carried out.
National Competitiveness and Productivity Initiative
Competitiveness depends on the ability to deliver valuable goods and services with reliable inputs, capable workers, and effective use of capital. Research follows the transition from investment to operation, the adoption of technology, and the constraints that keep productive practices from spreading. International comparisons help distinguish differences in industrial structure from differences within comparable activities.
The agenda gives particular attention to energy reliability, specialized manufacturing knowledge, and the organization of production. These determine whether a favorable financial commitment becomes dependable capacity and whether a technical improvement produces an economic return.
Employment, Economic Opportunity and Human Capital Initiative
The employment agenda connects economic expansion with the opportunities people can actually use. It examines participation, earnings, skills, working hours, job characteristics, and the local conditions affecting access to productive work. Demographic change supplies part of the setting; care, housing, mobility, and employer demand shape the response.
Research considers both entry into employment and progress within it. Training participation, a new credential, and a durable improvement in earnings provide different evidence about economic opportunity. The program follows their connections through household and workplace conditions.
International Economic Cooperation and Global Governance Initiative
International economic relationships depend on production networks, financial arrangements, market-access rules, and the institutions that make transactions intelligible across borders. This agenda examines where a common standard improves comparison or coordination and where differences in national institutions remain economically consequential.
Research connects trade geography with value creation, services with digital delivery, and international capital with the risks borne by savers and businesses. The emphasis is on workable economic relationships and transparent assessment of the interests, responsibilities, and adjustment costs involved.
Evidence-Based Policy and Institutional Innovation Program
This program examines the design of decisions: how objectives become eligibility rules, funding conditions, delivery arrangements, and evidence of results. It studies institutional changes that can reduce a specific friction, improve accountability, or make a public intervention more effective. Evaluation follows both the supported activity and the alternative that would otherwise have occurred.
Investment realization, digital payments, infrastructure decisions, and budget reporting provide concrete settings. The program connects methods to those decisions so that improved measurement serves a substantive policy purpose.
An independent economic agenda
The programs advance the research mission of an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization. They support a clearer understanding of economic performance and the choices available to enterprises and public institutions. Analysis examines the mechanism through which a policy operates, the distribution of its benefits and costs, and the evidence that could change the assessment.
Programs define substantive priorities. The eight topics identify economic subjects, the twenty country and economy collections provide geographic settings, and the six publication types indicate the form of analysis. A program can draw on several of these dimensions. A study retains its original publication and address when it contributes to more than one agenda.
Follow a question through the collection
Choose a program for its economic objective, then use the linked publications to examine the argument and its supporting evidence. Research reports develop a question across several mechanisms; economy studies and policy briefs supply institutional detail; comparative studies, data notes, and explainers resolve the relevant comparison or measurement.
Each program offers a selected reading sequence connected to the full research library. Follow the topic and economy links when the question requires a wider view. Research and editorial methods explains the standards for source correspondence, quantitative work, inference, and corrections across all five programs.