The importance of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in combating poverty in our country by alleviating hunger was driven home anew during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the subsequent tepid economic recovery. The program is credited with preventing a dramatic increase in hunger...

In this research brief, Heidi Garrett-Peltier estimates the employment impacts of President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative: a set of tax code changes, lending programs, and a competitive grant program, designed to incentivize private investment in energy-efficiency upgrades to commercial...

The authors look at the level of job losses that would be sustained if substantial cuts were made in federal spending on defense contracting in Massachusetts. They compares those impacts with potential cuts at a similar scale to education, healthcare, construction or clean-energy spending,...

The war in Iraq is a strategic and moral disaster. But one issue relating to the war that hasn’t been addressed in depth is its impact on the U.S. economy. In the first of a series of research papers that will consider this issue, Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier consider the impact of...

This study focuses on the employment effects of military spending versus channeling some significant part of the military budget into alternative purposes.  We begin by introducing the basic input-output modeling technique for considering issues such as these in a systematic way. We then...

In this study, produced in collaboration with the Institute for Policy Studies, Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier update their earlier analysis of the relative employment impacts of public investment in military versus other priorities, expanding their analysis to include clean energy...

The Heritage Foundation recently released a response to “The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy" by Robert Pollin, James Heintz & Heidi Garrett-Peltier, which, surprisingly, finds consensus on the central point of that study: that investments in clean energy will generate roughly...

The U.S. system of public infrastructure has deteriorated badly over the past generation. The breaching of New Orleans’ water levees in 2005 and the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis in 2007 offered tragic testimony to this long-acknowledged reality. The project of rebuilding our...

This study, co-commissioned by Natural Resources Defense Council and Green For All, considers the employment and other policy effects of a $150 billion annual investment in clean-energy specifically in terms of its ability to raise living standards for lower-income workers and families. This...

September 2008As the nation debates its energy future, this report shows that the U.S. can create two million jobs by investing in a rapid green economic recovery program, which will strengthen the economy, increase energy independence, and fight global warming.Green Recovery – A Program to...