Maxwell School News and Commentary

"Even with the enormous emphasis President Trump places on restarting U.S. agricultural exports to China, details about the pace of expected Chinese purchases of $40 billion to $50 billion of American farm products are murky," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

"Citizenship" (Polity Books, 2019), co-authored by Elizabeth Cohen, professor of political science, takes the reader through the authors' approaches to the concept of citizenship and begins by highlighting how it is not always or often consistently applied and understood.

Leonard Burman, Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics, says raising significantly more tax revenue to fund Medicare for All "is plausible in the sense that it is theoretically possible. But the revolution that would come along with it would get in the way." 

"We have to remember that every other country in the world will be doing business with China. That puts our companies at a severe disadvantage in doing business," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

Maria Zhu, assistant professor of economics, says that the University of California’s decision could be "a sign that the tides are shifting" on universities’ economic views of investing in fossil fuels. “If it has a positive impact, I do believe more schools will eventually divest for financial reasons, given that most of them tend to think social implications of divesting are positive or neutral at worst."

"What's happening, at least in my research, is that young people have been organizing for a great deal of time. And what they've been saying is that, you know, enough is enough," says Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science.

The degree to which religion is decoupled from prosocial goals and spirituality in contemporary young adults is one of many research questions to be addressed in the project “Spirituality and Prosocial Values in the Absence of Religion Among Millennials and Their Families.” This study will be led by Merril Silverstein, the Marjorie Cantor Endowed Professor of Aging Studies in the Falk College and the Maxwell School.

"This is bigger than a partisan fight," says Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science. "This is really about the nature of what is the presidency and what can it be used for."

“The Chinese meanwhile are incredibly pragmatic, and they’ll certainly consider the possibility that the impeachment inquiry is having an effect. They’ll see the president as weakened. That will matter," says Professor of Economics Mary Lovely.