I often catch myself in the ‘what’s next’ mindset: finish a project, ok, on to the next; reach 1000 ELO in chess, ok, how fast can I get to 1500; skim an article online, then confront the other 22 open browser tabs. You get what I mean.

But the end of the year is a natural time to pause and reflect on what’s gone well in the past year, and at Mercatus, our thinkers, intellectuals, and scholars accomplished a lot of incredible work. I’m going to give five things I think were awesome. This list barely scratches the surface, but let’s hit it.

The Fight for Worker Choice: Liya Palagashvili has been focused on demonstrating how the gig economy gives workers more opportunities and flexibility to fit a variety of circumstances. This is a good thing, but efforts to regulate such work abound. Thankfully, Liya has solutions . Her expertise on labor issues was highlighted on "Stossel," where she discussed how automation in ports isn’t killing jobs—it’s transforming them!
Conversations that Challenge and Inspire: It’s difficult to pick a favorite "Conversations with Tyler" episode, so listen to Tyler’s retrospective on the year with producer Jeff Holmes to get a flavor. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d point to Tyler’s conversation (and occasionally debate) with Jonathan Haidt about anxiety in our kids or Kyla Scanlon, who talks about communicating economics on social media.
Mercatus and DOGE, Better Together: The Department of Government Efficiency has been singing to the Mercatus Center’s tune in recent days. Deregulation, efficiency, and spending cuts are staples of Mercatus research, and many of our scholars’ ideas can be found here. Or you can watch Veronique de Rugy talk about bringing these ideas into reality on C-SPAN.
Housing Successes Continue Across the US: Our team has been engaging with communities and policymakers at all levels, championing housing affordability and regulatory reform to increase housing supply and lower costs. We’ve seen successes across the country, and the team has more policy ideas for 2025.
Combatting the Politicization of Financial Services: Brian Knight and George Moscary authored an Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court for the case NRA v. Vullo, which was widely cited by the parties involved, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the NRA. Listen to Brian on the importance of the case. In short, if you care about a political, religious, or really any advocacy group having the freedom to do business, this is worth paying attention to.

Bonus: The "Ideas of India" podcast features three of my brilliant colleagues, Shruti Rajagopalan, Shreyas Narla, and Kadambari Shah. In this episode, they discussed the kinds of policy change they would like to see in the coalition government led by Prime Minister Modi in his third term. They also covered their research in the areas of competition policy, regulating India’s digital marketplace, labor law reforms, scaling India’s manufacturing, and much more. Give it a listen!