Is the Constitution an outdated relic, as its critics claim? Or is it the key to repairing our fractious politics? In his newly released book, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again (2024), AEI’s Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies Director Yuval Levin, who has studied this topic for decades, uses a unique combination of history, political theory, and political science to recover the true genius and continuing potential of our country’s founding document.

The 18th-century Enlightenment, which inspired the Constitution, also inspired the market economy that has generated unprecedented prosperity for millions in America and around the world. But those intellectual breakthroughs of private property and free exchange are similarly threatened. In their book, Ending ESG and Restoring the Economic Enlightenment (2024), AEI scholar and former Sen. Phil Gramm and his coauthor Terrence Keeley document the foundational threat to this achievement posed by environmental, social, and governance investing.

Homeownership is another pillar of the American dream—one similarly threatened by government interference with market forces. AEI Housing Center’s new 2023 “Best and Worst Metro Areas to Be a First-Time Homebuyer” comprehensively reveals this affordability crisis by analyzing over 5 million first-time homebuyer sales from 2013 to 2023 for the largest 60 metros.

Challenges to America’s institutions and economic system also undermine the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency. In an interview with James Pethokoukis, AEI economist Steven B. Kamin, who previously worked as the director of international finance at the Federal Reserve, analyzes the costs, benefits, and future of the dollar’s preeminence.

In Asia, South Korea is one of our most important allies, and North Korea is one of our most intractable adversaries. What should the future of the Korean Peninsula look like? In a new working paper, Nicholas Eberstadt argues that reunification remains economically plausible and desirable.