AEI's weekly digest of top commentary and scholarship on the issues that matter most
AEI This Week
AEI's weekly digest of top commentary and scholarship on the issues that matter most
UNTRUSTWORTHY "CLIMATE ECONOMICS"
Politically Motivated Science
May 2, 2026
Over the past decade, extreme projections of climate change’s cost from the field of “climate economics” have informed a wide array of regulations, international agreements, and business decisions. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Roger Pielke Jr. exposes ([link removed] ) how fundamentally unsound these statistical models are.
carbon_farming_climate_change ([link removed] )
Despite the United States’ unprecedented prosperity, both ordinary Americans and academic experts express growing concern about the health of the American Dream. In a new policy handbook, Land of Opportunity, AEI’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility responds ([link removed] ) to this challenge with a comprehensive set of recommendations to address the social and economic challenges that have eroded our country’s confidence in the future.
President Trump’s protectionist agenda has only increased the affordability challenges Americans face. In a new Wall Street Journal op-ed, Phil Gramm and Michael Solon document ([link removed] ) how the costs of tariffs have swamped the beneficial effects of last year’s tax cuts.
Over the past 25 years, the number of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants has more than doubled to 42 million, while inflation-adjusted total benefit costs have tripled. Welfare expert Angela Rachidi reveals ([link removed] ) in a new AEI report that this growth has been driven by dramatic changes in the types of households receiving benefits.
Modern warfare, from Ukraine to the Middle East, has exposed the overlooked importance of strategic mobilization readiness: the ability to rapidly increase defense spending, personnel, and weapons production. Contributing to AEI’s Project on Science, Industry, and the State, Todd Harrison explores ([link removed] ) how nations can better understand and address this challenge.
How Have Universities Survived for Nearly a Millenium
How have universities managed to survive and evolve over almost 1,000 years to become wildly heterogeneous, unusually fractious, multiproduct, nonprofit entities? In a new National Bureau of Economic Review working paper, Edward L. Glaeser and David Cutler present ([link removed] ) a model of university organization and assess its development over the past 900 years. Universities began as teachers’ guilds, and they still give faculty a remarkable degree of autonomy. This autonomy has generated acrimonious conflict within these institutions and with legal authorities, but it has also consistently produced remarkable social value by attracting and empowering intellectuals selected in part on their taste for knowledge.
More from AEI
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Here’s Why Europe Produces Nobel Laureates but Not Elon Musks ([link removed] )
James Pethokoukis | Faster, Please!
Day Care Fever Costs Taxpayers Millions ([link removed] )
Timothy P. Carney | Washington Examiner
Lessons from State Tuition Recovery Funds for Consumer Protection in Higher Education ([link removed] )
Preston Cooper and Christopher Robinson | American Enterprise Institute
The Humanities Aren't Obsolete. We Stopped Teaching Them. ([link removed] )
Samuel J. Abrams | AEIdeas
Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda, Fifth Edition ([link removed] )
Daniel Buck and Anna Low | American Enterprise Institute
PODCASTS AND VIDEOS
Is the Iran War Depleting Key Munitions? ([link removed] )
Danielle Pletka et al. | What the Hell Is Going On?
Trust and Safety in a Fragmented Digital World ([link removed] )
Shane Tews et al. | Explain to Shane
Thomas Derangement Syndrome ([link removed] )
John Yoo et al. | 3 Whisky Happy Hour
Health Care's AI Disruption, Ready or Not ([link removed] )
Charles N. Kahn III and Eric Larsen | KFF's The Business of Health with Chip Kahn
Quantum 201: US vs. China Quantum Industrial Base ([link removed] )
Chris Miller et al. | ChinaTalk
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Democrats are looking at the wrong maps. They’re winning the gerrymander battle while losing the larger war for America’s future. Their state machines produce Democratic victories, but from a shrinking base. Their populations are fleeing high taxes and housing shortages for Republican strongholds.
—Matthew Continetti ([link removed] )
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