Skip to main content

Politics and Policy

A Cheap Way to Change Lives‌‌

Yale SOM’s Dr. Howard Forman explains how the state of Connecticut is buying back the medical debt of thousands of low-income residents at cents on the dollar.

A hospital bill
  • What has happened to the labor market in the Great Recession?

    With 14 million people out of work in the U.S., labor markets are receiving a lot of attention. Yale SOM's Lisa Kahn did groundbreaking work on the impact of graduating into a bad economy. She offers her take on what's happening now and what to expect.

  • Are our institutions up to the job?

    The massive problems associated with sustainability, from climate change to resource preservation, require coordinated, society-wide responses. Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom argues for the importance of giving local institutions enough power to better manage common resources—though it’s not easy.

  • Do you need a nudge?

    Richard Thaler outlines how principles from behavioral economics can help policymakers and managers achieve better outcomes.

  • How do we manage disasters?

    Healthcare is a field known for its complexity and fragmentation. Managing a massive cross-sectoral healthcare project is always a challenge. Coordinating the healthcare response to a disaster puts a strained system under even more pressure. John Piescik ’81 looked into the way the healthcare system responds to disaster for MITRE a not-for-profit company that operates three federally funded research and development centers. His findings may have implications well beyond healthcare, providing a means to manage solutions to some of the complex problems facing society.