Reports & Briefings

The Federal Data Strategy suffers from a lack of leadership and fails to link its well-defined principles and practices to government-wide and agency-level missions. The Biden administration must revive and reimagine it in order to succeed in transforming the federal government into a 21st century organization.

The FTC has granted itself the power to bring antitrust enforcement actions based on amorphous and politically motivated ideas of “fairness.” There should instead be a uniform standard for what constitutes fairness in both consumer protection and competition policy.

The FY 2024 budget request, if met, could maintain bipartisan momentum for clean energy innovation. Congress should support that innovation to foster domestic clean energy industries that can compete globally, minimize foreign dependencies, and address climate change.

With its provocative claim that America now has less economic competition than the EU, Thomas Philippon’s book The Great Reversal has become a bible for neo-Brandeisians. But reports of the death of competition in America are highly exaggerated: While U.S. antitrust remains effective, EU competition policy has failed to stimulate innovation, productivity, or growth.

Digital technologies have transformed global commerce and raised living standards. By better aligning global trade rules to foster growth in digital technologies, economic and social benefits can be widely distributed.

Unlike the digital divide, many ignore the data divide or argue that the way to close it is to collect vastly less data. But without substantial efforts to increase data representation and access, certain individuals and communities will be left behind in an increasingly data-driven world.

Antitrust authorities want to revise merger guidelines based on dubious theories of potential harm that fail to recognize how many mergers foster innovation, productivity, and U.S. global competitiveness. New merger guidelines should better account for these considerations.

Achieving digital inclusion requires a comprehensive understanding of the digital divide and standardized methods for addressing related topics such as reasons for nonadoption and digital illiteracy—but in getting people online, individualized approaches are the way to go.

Exaggerated and misleading concerns about generative artificial intelligence have crowded out reasonable discussion about the technology, generating a familiar, yet unfortunate, “tech panic.”

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, offer unique policy challenges. While the United States has taken some important steps to address the potential risks and benefits of the technology, there is more policymakers can do to protect consumers while encouraging innovation.