Introduction

President Obama has proposed expanding the Peace Corps and building a global network of volunteers, “so that Americans work side-by-side with volunteers from other countries.” Achieving this goal will require building on the success of the Peace Corps with a new combination of public and private initiatives designed to expand opportunities for volunteers to address critical global problems such as poverty, contagious diseases, climate change, and conflict.

We examine alternative service models, both domestic and foreign, and offer recommendations to the Obama Administration for harnessing the energy and skills of Americans eager to engage in volunteer work in foreign countries as part of a multilateral mobilization effort and smart power diplomacy.

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President Barack Obama’s visit to the George Herbert Walker Bush Library in College Station, Texas this week highlights the crucial role of America’s volunteer traditions in addressing critical issues at home and abroad. The two presidents will commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the Points of Light movement, championed by the 41^st president, and advance the United We Serve initiative of President Obama.

Michelle Nunn, CEO of Points of Light Institute and daughter of former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn noted in Huffington Post that “demand, idealism and presidential impact are leading American volunteerism to its…most important stage – the movement of service to a central role in our nation’s priorities.”

The bipartisan nature of America’s vibrant service movement is also reflected in the landmark Kennedy-Hatch Serve America Act signed into law by President Obama earlier this year and pending Global Service Fellowship legislation introduced by Senators Feingold and Voinovich.

In a recent Brookings Global Views policy brief, “International Volunteer Service: A Smart Way to Build Bridges,” Lex Rieffel, Kevin Quigley and I articulate policy options for the new administration to advance President Obama’s call for engaging service on the global level. President Obama’s speech in Cairo on June 4 called for turning “dialogue into interfaith service, so bridges between peoples lead to action – whether it is combating Malaria in Africa, or providing relief for a natural disaster.”

Following the president’s Cairo speech, the administration assembled a laudable Global Engagement Initiative across the administration to implement and track results in scaling up initiatives of service and interfaith action. The potency of coupling American service with foreign assistance was documented in Indonesia and Bangladesh through successive Terror Free Tomorrow polls showing increased favorable ratings for our nation and decreased support for terrorism.

The Building Bridges Coalition has organized an impressive array of over 210 organizations dedicated to expanding American volunteerism internationally, as part of a new “Service World” policy coalition gearing up for the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps. This new “international service 2.0” incorporates NGOs and faith-based groups, universities and corporations as new development actors advocating multilateral service and achieving impacts on issues ranging from Malaria to peacebuilding and climate change.

A Foundation Strategy Group report commissioned by Brookings and Pfizer, “Volunteering for Impact” assessed best practices in the increasing array of international corporations engaging volunteers such as IBM’s Corporate Service Corps, GE Volunteers and Pfizer’s Global Health Fellows.

Around the globe, initiatives such as Cross Cultural Solutions and an emerging global service and peacebuilding alliance in hot spots from Kenya to Mindanao are giving substance to the president’s call in Cairo. The collaboration of Presidents Clinton and G.H.W. Bush on humanitarian assistance after the tsunami, and this week’s service dedication with the Obama administration and former President Bush, bode well for the bipartisan extension of our nation’s noble voluntary service traditions in the international context where they are urgently needed.

Executive Summary

If the main purpose of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is to give banks confidence in each other, then enabling Treasury directly to bolster the capital positions of banks that need more capital may be an even more effective way to restoring confidence to the inter-bank market than the purchased of troubled assets. Whatever Congress may have intended about the pricing of the distressed assets, it also authorized a much more direct way to recapitalize the financial system and weak banks in particular: direct purchases by Treasury of securities that individual institutions may wish to issue to bolster their capital. At this writing, Treasury reportedly is considering ways do this. In this essay, we outline a specific bank recapitalization plan for Treasury to consider.

In particular, Treasury could announce its willingness to entertain applications for capital injections, using a set pricing formula. For publicly traded banks, Treasury could buy at the price as of a given date, such as the price one or more days before its plan was announced. For privately-owned banks, Treasury could use a price based on the average price-to-book value for publicly traded banks as of that date. To prevent government intrusion into the affairs of the banks, the stock should be non-voting. Treasury would make clear that it only would take minority positions. There should be no takeovers of more companies—AIG, Fannie and Freddie are quite enough. Treasury also should announce that it will dispose (or sell back to the bank) any stock acquired through these actions as soon as the financial system has stabilized and the bank is in sound financial condition (perhaps a time limit, such as three years, should be a working presumption).

We believe Treasury can accommodate a systematic recapitalization plan within the funding it has been given – initially $350 billion and another $350 billion later upon request to Congress (unless it disapproves) – by using the required disclosures about its asset purchases as a way of jump starting private sector pricing and trading of these securities. This should conserve Treasury’s resources it might otherwise use for asset purchases, and thus free up funds to recapitalize weak banks directly, but in an orderly fashion.

Treasury will have to be careful when it buys distressed assets to guard against the possibility that banks will just dump their worst stuff on taxpayers. The Department will also have to be careful when buying equity in banks. There cannot be an open invitation for bank owners to move assets out of the bank and then, in effect, say: “We don’t want this bank, you buy it.” To avoid this problem, Treasury should work closely with the FDIC and other regulators to determine whether or not a particular bank is eligible for an equity injection. The Department also may need to limit the scope of the recapitalization program to larger national banks, if it becomes infeasible to allow smaller banks to participate.

Making the Rescue Package Work: Asset and Equity Purchases [1]

The unprecedented financial rescue plan – technically the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (“EESA,” the “Act”, or the “plan”) -- has now been enacted by the Congress. One of the goals of the plan is to end the immediate panic in inter-bank lending markets, and on this basis several omens are not encouraging.

The Dow Jones stock index has been dropping daily, by large amounts, since EESA was enacted. The TED spread measures the difference between the interest rate on short term Treasury bills and the interest rate banks pay to borrow from each other (the LIBOR) and is a widely accepted measure of perceived risk in the financial sector. For several years this spread had hovered around 50 basis points or half a percentage point, reflecting the fact that lending to other financial institutions was considered almost as safe as buying Treasury bills. However, the spread shot up to 2.4 percentage points in July 2007 as the financial crisis hit, and it fluctuated widely in subsequent months. Following passage of the plan it remains even more elevated than it was last July—it was 3.8 percentage points as of October 7 and broke 4 percent on October 8. Financial institutions simply do not trust each other’s credit worthiness. Some of the market worries, of course, reflect the fragile state of the U.S. and global economies, but clearly the passage of the rescue plan itself has not calmed markets.

A second and related goal for the plan, according to media accounts, is to facilitate the recapitalization of the financial system, but the language of the bill is surprisingly coy about this. While the Act aims to “restore liquidity and stability to the financial system” it also directs the Treasury Secretary to prevent “unjust enrichment of financial institutions participating” in the asset purchase program. It is not yet clear whether Treasury will choose to recapitalize banks through its asset purchases – by buying them at prices above the values to which banks and other sellers have already written them down – or whether Treasury will simply use its purchases to stabilize prices for these securities and thus provide liquidity to the market, even if it may result in additional write-downs of their values (and thus additional reductions in capital).

Whatever Congress may have intended about the pricing of the distressed assets, it also authorized a much more direct way to recapitalize the financial system and weak banks in particular: direct purchases by Treasury of securities that individual institutions may wish to issue to bolster their capital. Of course, in normal times, such authority would be unnecessary because financial institutions would seek to tap private sources of capital first. But these are not normal times, to say the least.

If the main purpose of the plan is to give banks confidence in each other, then enabling Treasury directly to bolster the capital positions of banks that need more capital may be an even more effective way to restoring confidence to the inter-bank market. Accordingly, we outline here a possible supplementary bank recapitalization plan that we believe Treasury should pursue, at the same time it purchases distressed assets. As this paper is being completed on October 9, 2008, The New York Times reports that the Treasury is now considering such a move. We are encouraged by this and in this essay we provide both a rationale for doing so and some concrete suggestions for how such a direct recapitalization program might work. We do not support further nationalization of the banking system beyond what has already been done but we believe that the crisis has become so severe that the asset purchase plan on its own will not be enough to turn the current situation around. Additional capital is urgently needed and could be supplied by Treasury purchases of minority, non-voting equity stakes, or by warrants.

We believe Treasury can accommodate a systematic recapitalization plan within the funding it has been given – initially $350 billion and another $350 billion later upon request to Congress (unless it disapproves) – by using the required disclosures about its asset purchases as a way of jump starting private sector pricing and trading of these securities. This should conserve Treasury’s resources it might otherwise use for asset purchases, and thus free up funds to recapitalize weak banks directly, but in an orderly fashion, as we describe below.

Why Do Banks Need More Capital?

Financial institutions make money by borrowing money on favorable terms, that is, at low interest rates, and then lending it out at higher rates or by buying assets that yield higher returns. They may make money in other ways too, but the state of their balance sheets of assets and liabilities is crucial. In order to create a viable financial institution that can accommodate requests by depositors to take money out, someone has to put up capital and typically this comes from the equity in the company. The owners of the company have an incentive to keep this equity capital low and to build a large volume of borrowing and lending off a small base of capital—to increase leverage. This is because the profits earned are divided among the equity owners and the less capital there is, the higher the return on equity.

Governments for many years and in almost all countries have regulations in place setting capital requirements for banks in particular to stop them from taking too much risk in the pursuit of high returns and also protect any fund that insures their deposits against loss (the FDIC in this country). But some of our larger banks in recent years found a way around these rules by establishing “off-balance sheet” entities – Structured Investment Vehicles (“SIVs”) – to purchase mortgage-related and other asset-backed securities that the banks were issuing. In addition, large investment banks significantly increased their leverage in the years running up to the recent crisis, and were able to do so without mandated capital requirements. As a result, when the mortgage crisis hit, our financial system was weaker than was widely believed, and in the case of large banks in particular, than was officially reported.[2]

The mortgage crisis, which first surfaced in 2006 and has escalated rapidly since then, has hit bank balance sheets severely. As banks were forced to recognize losses on the mortgages they held in their portfolio, and especially to write down the values of their mortgage securities to their “market values” (even though the prices in those “markets” reflected relatively few “fire-sale” trades), they suffered reductions of their capital. Furthermore, the large banks that had created SIVs to escape such events found they could not hide from them when the SIVs could no longer roll over the commercial paper they had issued to finance their holdings of mortgage securities. To avoid dumping these securities on the market to satisfy their creditors, the banks took the SIVs back on their balance sheets, only to suffer further losses to their capital.

As we have seen, some of our largest banks – Washington Mutual and Wachovia, to name two – have not been able to survive all of this, and have been forced or are or being forced into the hands of stronger survivors. Other banks have been doing their best to shore up their capital bases by issuing new equity to replace the losses they have absorbed on delinquent loans and declining prices of their asset-backed securities. According to media reports, financial institutions (largely banks) worldwide have suffered over $700 billion in such losses to date, of which they replaced approximately $500 billion by issuing new equity.

But more losses are sure to come; indeed Secretary Paulson has said to expect further bank failures. Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund projected that losses due to the credit crisis worldwide could hit $1 trillion. The IMF has recently upped that forecast to $1.4 trillion. If anything close to this latest forecast is realized, then many banks – here and abroad – will need to raise even more equity, but in a capital market that is now highly more risk averse than only a few months ago.

It is in this environment that banks have grown much less comfortable dealing with each other, even though they must to keep the financial system running. Every day, some banks have more cash on hand, or reserves, than they need to meet reserve requirements and ordinary demands for liquidity, while others are short of such funds. In the United States, banks thus trade with each other in the Federal Funds market while global banks borrow and lend to each other through the London Interbank market using the LIBOR rate of interest. The Federal Reserve’s main objective of monetary policy is to stabilize the “Fed funds” rate around a target, now just lowered to 1.5%, down from 2% where it has been for some months (and down from 5.25% before subprime mortgage crisis). To do so, the Fed has added a huge amount of liquidity to the financial system, even going so far this week as to buy up commercial paper issued by corporations, an unprecedented step. But the Fed does not and probably cannot control the longer term inter-bank market, in which banks lend to each other typically over a 3-month period.

The steep jump in the 3-month inter-bank lending rate – well over 4 percent – reflects two fundamental facts that EESA is designed to address. One is that banks don’t trust each others’ valuations of the mortgage and possibly other asset-backed securities they are all holding, precisely because the “markets” in those securities are so thin and thus not generating reliable prices. The second problem is that banks either are short of capital themselves, or fear that their counterparties are. No wonder that banks are so unwilling to lend to each other for a period even as short as three months – which in this environment, can seem like an eternity.

The capital shortage in the banking system, in particular, has severe implications for the rest of the economy. An institution that is short of capital is forced to cut back on its lending and this shows up in denials of lines of credit to companies and reductions in credit limits for consumers. Households cut back on spending; it is difficult to get a mortgage or a car loan; and companies reduce investment and curtail operations. And as we learn in any college course on banking, the impact of a loss of capital on bank lending can be multiplied. Each dollar of bank capital supports roughly ten dollars of overall lending in the economy. Each dollar of lost capital thus can result in ten dollars of lending contraction. The impact of an economy-wide bank contraction can be devastating for Main Street. The Great Depression was greatly exacerbated by the collapse of banks. The long stagnation in Japan was in large part the result of a failure to recapitalize the banks.

How bad is the current problem? We do not know how many banks, insurance companies or other financial institutions are in a weakened state, or perhaps even more important, may become weakened as the overall economy deteriorates. The official data published so far don’t really help on this score. The FDIC compiles information on the number and collective assets held by “problem banks,” or those in danger in failing. As of the second quarter of 2008, there were 117 such banks with assets of $78 billion up from 90 in the second quarter with assets of $28 billion., These figures did not include Washington Mutual, which would have failed had it not been bought by J.P. Morgan, or Wachovia, which at this writing, looks like it will be acquired by Wells Fargo (but also was in danger of failing without being acquired by someone). Together these banks hold more than $500 billion in customer deposits. Furthermore, according to recent media reports, even some large insurance companies (beyond AIG) may be having capital problems, having suffered large losses on the securities they hold in reserve to meet future claims.

Can the Asset Purchase Plan Succeed in Recapitalizing the Banks?

In principle, there are two ways in which the original Treasury asset purchase plan would recapitalize the banks. The first method is premised on the view that private markets are unwilling to supply capital to the banks because investors do not know how much their assets are worth. The Treasury, it is argued, would use its asset purchase plan as a way of revealing the prices of the assets and once that information is known, the banks will be able to raise new capital again from private markets. But better pricing will only attract capital if there are investors out there who are willing to supply it. Given the dramatic downturn in equities markets, finding such willing investors will be difficult, to say the least. Those investors that provided capital to banks early on in the crisis have been hit hard by the subsequent decline in equity prices and are reluctant to get burned again. When Bank of America said it would raise $10 billion from the markets, for example, its stock price fell sharply, suggesting there is a lot of market resistance to be overcome before private investors are willing to recapitalize the banking system.

Second, in principle, Treasury could recapitalize the banks by buying distressed assets at prices above those at which the securities are currently carried on the books of the institutions that sell them (original book or purchase value minus any write-offs).[3] In this case, the bank would be able to report a capital gain from its sale to the Treasury, a gain that would reverse, at least in part, the capital losses it had taken in the past and thereby add to its capital.

Treasury has said it will use reverse auctions[4] when it buys assets, and it is possible that the Department will be able to construct some auctions that will enable some holders of troubled assets to sell them to the Treasury at prices that earn a capital gain. But we are somewhat skeptical how many securities will fall into this category. For one thing, asset-backed securities are not homogenous, like traditional equity or bonds. In addition, it would be surprising in the current environment if reverse auctions would reveal prices that are above the written-down values of many of these securities. After all, an auction does not necessarily produce valuations that reflect the “hold to maturity” price rather than the “liquidation” price for the securities, as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke suggested the purchase plan would accomplish.

Accordingly, we strongly suspect that Treasury will have to purchase many securities in one-on-one deals rather than through auctions. But in doing this, it may be both legally and politically difficult for the Treasury to pay prices in negotiations that are above the valuations banks or other sellers already have given them. Section 101 (e) of EESA specifically requires the Treasury Secretary “to take such steps as may be necessary to prevent unjust enrichment” of participating financial institutions, and Congress could construe such language to preclude such sales.[5] Furthermore, even if there were not a specific prohibition in the EESA, Treasury may wish to avoid the public criticism it would face if it purchased assets at prices that would allow participating institutions to book gains. And, in the case of sales at prices below the explicit or implicit price of the securities carried on an institution’s books, the sales will trigger further accounting losses and thus additional deductions from reported capital.

In short, we are not at all confident that the Treasury’s planned purchases of troubled securities, by themselves, will do much to recapitalize the banking system. This does not mean that the planned asset purchases will not deliver some needed help. Although at this writing the inter-bank lending market remains frozen even though EESA has been enacted and signed into law, one reason why banks and others may not yet have confidence that it will lead to a thaw in credit markets is that the guidelines for the asset purchases have not yet been issued. Once these guidelines are announced and the purchases begin, and the markets start to see real results, it is possible that some of the missing trust in the banking system will come back.[6]

However, Treasury may not need to spend, and for reasons elaborated below we do not believe it should spend, anywhere near the full $700 billion, or perhaps even most of the initial $350 billion tranche in borrowing authority, to liquefy the markets for mortgage and other asset-backed securities. EESA requires Treasury to publish (within two days) information about each of these purchases. We urge the Department to include in such publications (presumably on its website) regular data on the defaults and delinquencies to date of the loans underlying each batch of securities it purchases. Such information should enable financial institutions that are still holding similar securities not only to price them more accurately, but also to give market participants enough confidence to begin trading these securities without further Treasury purchases.

Husbanding its resources should be a prime objective for Treasury. In conducting its purchases of troubled assets, it should target first those asset categories that are the most illiquid. The main objective always should be jump-starting private sector activity or at least bringing greater clarity to the pricing of particular classes of securities. There is no need for Treasury, therefore, to make repeat purchases of similar securities (such as collateralized debt obligations issued within several months of each other, structured in roughly a similar way). Rather, the aim should be to make a market in as many different asset categories as are reasonably necessary to provide guidance to market participants, no more, no less.

Yet no one can be confident at this point that asset purchases alone will give banks sufficient confidence to begin dealing with each other at much lower interest rates. If the asset purchases do the trick, fine. But if they don’t, Treasury should make sure it has enough financial ammunition to pursue a second, more direct, strategy for restoring banks’ confidence – the direct bank recapitalization strategy to which we now turn.

Recapitalizing the Financial System Directly

Having the government put capital into financial institutions directly is not a new idea. It is the approach followed in this crisis for Fannie and Freddie and has been used in other countries. Sweden recapitalized its banks by adding capital to them during its crisis in the 1980s. Most recently, the British government has announced a sweeping bank recapitalization amidst the current crisis. And of more relevance to the U.S. situation, Congress specifically added authority in EESA for Treasury to make direct capital injections into banks.

In recent days, Treasury Secretary Paulson has acknowledged that the Department may take advantage of this authority and thus use some of its funds to buy equity in troubled banks. This is a welcome development. Even if Treasury’s asset purchase program restores confidence in the pricing of troubled securities, many banks still believe that many other banks lack sufficient capital, and thus can still be reluctant to lend to them. The fact that the FDIC stands ready (especially with its new unlimited line of credit at the Treasury) to assist acquiring banks in taking over failing banks is probably not sufficient, even with a successful Treasury asset purchase program, to provide this confidence. Bank lenders to failed banks can still lose money in such transactions, or at the very least may have difficulty accessing their funds for some period, at times when all banks seem to want or need as much liquidity as they can get.

How might such a capital injection program work? Treasury could announce its willingness to entertain applications for capital injections, using a set pricing formula. For publicly traded banks, Treasury could buy at the price as of a given date, such as the price one or more days before its plan was announced, as has been suggested by former St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President William Poole.[7] For privately-owned banks, Treasury could use a price based on the average price-to-book value for publicly traded banks as of that date. To prevent government intrusion into the affairs of the banks, the stock should be non-voting. Treasury would make clear that it only would take minority positions. There should be no takeovers of more companies—AIG, Fannie and Freddie are quite enough. Treasury also should announce that it will dispose (or sell back to the bank) any stock acquired through these actions as soon as the financial system has stabilized and the bank is in sound financial condition (perhaps a time limit, such as three years, should be a working presumption).

The Treasury will have to be careful when it buys distressed assets to guard against the possibility that banks will just dump their worst stuff on the taxpayers. The Department also will have to be careful when buying equity in banks, especially if it decides to go for a broad, nationwide program. There cannot be an open invitation for owners to move assets out of the bank and then, in effect, say: “We don’t want this bank, you buy it.” This problem suggests that Treasury would need to work closely with the FDIC and other regulators to determine whether or not a particular bank is eligible for an equity injection. Treasury also may need to limit the scope of the program to larger banks, if it becomes infeasible to allow smaller banks to participate.

We presume that Treasury did not initially embrace the idea of a more systematic recapitalization of the banking system out of concern not to have any further government involvement in the banking system, especially on the heels of the Fannie/Freddie conservatorship and the Fed’s rescue of AIG. That Treasury is now considering direct capital injections indicates that this may no longer be a concern. In our view, limiting Treasury’s purchases to non-voting stock in any event would address this concern directly.

Conclusion

Ben Bernanke has compared the current financial crisis to a heart attack in the economy. For some heart attacks, it is enough to administer drugs and change diet and exercise habits. But in acute cases, major surgery is needed and the current crisis is in the acute phase. Direct surgery in the form of capital injected into financial institutions, along with direct asset purchases, should help calm the inter-banking lending market.

Based on recent monthly data it appears that GDP started to fall in mid-year and the economy is moving into recession so the proposals made here will not change that. Nor can the proposals compel banks to make loans to their traditional customers – consumers and businesses – in the current climate of fear. But Treasury can do something to mitigate that fear and thus, along with the recent further easing of monetary policy, likely additional fiscal stimulus and further homeowner relief, the Department will help reduce the severity of the current recession if it uses all the tools in its financial arsenal.

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"Happiness." "Contentment." "Subjective well-being." Can we measure how happy people are and if so, what can we do with this information? In this podcast, Carol Graham, the Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow and author of The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being, explains how happiness/well-being research works and why it matters for public policy in the U.S. and globally.

In the podcast, Graham explains two dimensions of understanding well-being, the "Benthamite/hedonic" and the "Aristotelian/eudemonic." She explained them in this earlier publication:

Those of us involved focus on two distinct dimensions: hedonic well-being, a daily experience component; and evaluative well-being, the way in which people think about their lives as a whole, including purpose or meaning. Jeremy Bentham focused on the former and proposed increasing the happiness and contentment of the greatest number of individuals possible in a society as the goal of public policy. Aristotle, meanwhile, thought of happiness as eudemonia, a concept that combined two Greek words: "eu" meaning abundance and "daimon" meaning the power controlling an individual’s destiny.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ON ITUNES »

Show notes:

• "Why Aging and Working Makes us Happy in 4 Charts," Carol Graham
• Happiness Around the World, Carol Graham
• "The Decade of Public Protest and Frustration with Lack of Social Mobility," Carol Graham
• "Evidence for a midlife crisis in great apes consistent with the U-shape in human well-being," Andrew Oswald and others
• "You Can’t Be Happier than Your Wife: Happiness Gaps and Divorce," Cahit Guven and others
• Aristotle's definition of happiness
• The life of philosopher Jeremy Bentham
• Gallup World Poll

See more charts like this in Carol Graham's newest post on the relationship among work, age and happiness.

Editor’s Note: Admission rates this year are at an all-time low, while anxiety about the college admission process remains high. Carol Graham and Michael O’Hanlon write that an Ivy League degree does not necessarily determine happiness or success.

This year's college admission process in the United States was by most measures tougher than ever. Only about 5 percent of applicants were accepted at Stanford and many admission rates at other schools were comparably daunting. Meanwhile, our nation's teenagers are exposed to a background of noise about America's supposed economic decline, which would seem only to increase the pressure to get a head start on that declining pool of available high-paying and highly satisfying careers. In the Washington, D.C. area, this sense of malaise was compounded this year by a spate of suicides at a prestigious local high school, with the common thread reportedly being a sense of anxiety about the future among the teenagers.

Of course, some of this story is timeless, and reflects the inevitable challenges of growing up in a competitive society. But much of it is over-hyped or simply wrong. We need to help our college-bound teenagers maintain a sense of perspective and calm as they face what is among life's most exciting but also most stressful periods. As two proud Princeton grads, we recognize the value of a high-quality education and the social and professional networks that come with an Ivy League degree. But we also know from intuition and experience that a similar kind of experience is achievable in many, many other places in our country, fielding as it does the best ecosystem of higher education institutions in the history of the planet. And increasingly, there is a strong body of research to back this claim up.

Higher Education Is Important

First, though, it is worth noting one incontrovertible fact: higher education is important. Sure, there can be exceptions, and some people may not have the opportunity at a given point in life to pursue either a two-year or four-year college degree or graduate education. But it is a reality in America's modern economy, due to trends with globalization and automation. Those with college degrees continue to do better than previous generations in this country; those without have seen their incomes stagnate or even decline on average for a generation now, as our colleague Belle Sawhill has shown. Another Brookings colleague, Richard Reeves, cites evidence that college graduates have higher marriage rates, higher wages, better health, greater job security, more interesting work and greater personal autonomy.

However, where you go to college matters less than if you go, by any number of measures. This is not to say it is unimportant. But whether you are interested in happiness while in college, satisfaction later in life or even raw monetary income, the correlation between gaining a Harvard degree and achieving nirvana is less than many 18-year-olds may be led to believe.

Begin with the question of happiness--a new and scientifically measurable arena of social science. It turns out you can learn a lot about how happy people are by asking them, and then applying common-sense statistical methods to a pool of data. For one of us, this has been the focus of research for over a decade. While money matters to happiness, after a certain point more money does not increase many dimensions of well-being (such as how people experience their daily lives), and in general, it is less important than good health or fulfillment at the workplace, on the home-front and in the community. Happier people, meanwhile, tend to care less about income but are more likely to value learning and creativity. And they are also likely to have more positive outlooks about their own futures, outlooks which in turn lead to better labor market and health outcomes on average.

An Atmosphere For Success

Yale or Amherst graduates are no more likely to find happiness than those who attended less prestigious schools. A new Gallup poll, inspired largely by Purdue president Mitch Daniels, finds that the most important enduring effects of the college experience on human happiness relate to personal bonds with professors and a sense of ongoing intellectual curiosity, not to GPA or GRE scores.

America can provide this kind of stimulation and this kind of experience at thousands of its institutions of higher learning. To be sure, elite universities, with their higher percentage of dedicated and outstanding students, create an atmosphere that can be more motivating. Yet it can also be much more stressful. Students at somewhat less notable institutions may need a bit more self-motivation to excel in certain cases, but they may also find professors who are every bit as committed to their education as any Ivy Leaguer and perhaps more available on average.

It is true that networks of fellow alums from the nation's great universities are often hugely helpful to one's career prospects. But a surprising number of institutions in our country have such networks of committed graduates, professors and other patrons. And while Harvard grads may be a dime a dozen in a place like D.C., those hailing from somewhat less known or prestigious places arguably watch out for each other even more, compensating to a large extent for their smaller numbers.

Even on the narrower subject of financial success, the issue is not cut and dried. Sure, the big and prestigious universities tend to be richer, and their graduates on average make more money. But much of that is because the more motivated and gifted students tend to choose the elite schools in the first place, driving up the average regardless of the quality of education. For the 18-year-old who was just turned down by his or her top couple of college choices and having to settle for a "safety" school, it is not clear that this turn of fate really matters for long-term financial prospects. Assuming comparable degrees of drive and motivation, students appear to do just as well elsewhere. In 2004, Mathematica economist Stacy Dale compared students who willfully went to less prestigious schools with their cohorts at the most prestigious universities and showed little discernible income differential.

America is blessed by a wonderful new generation of young people; as parents of five of them, we see this every day. Maybe those of us who have been through some of life's ups and downs need to work harder to help them take down the collective stress level a notch or two. No graduating child should be unhappy because they are going to their second or third choice of college next fall. With the right attitude and encouragement, they will likely do well—and be happy—wherever they go.

In a new essay, “The New Challenge to Market Democracies,” Senior Fellow William Galston argues that “the centrality of economic well-being in our politics reflects long-held assumptions about the purposes of our politics. If economic growth and well-being are in jeopardy, so are our political arrangements.”

Galston, the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies, makes the case that economic growth and well-being are indeed in jeopardy for a variety of reasons, including: wage growth that has just kept up with inflation; family and household incomes that remain below their pre-Great Recession peak; the share of national income going to wages and salaries is as low as it’s been in nearly 50 years; and a difficult jobs situation in which workers are getting paid less, the number of people working part-time who want full-time work remains high, and few new jobs offer middle range incomes. “These trends,” Galston writes, “bode ill for the future of the middle class; many parents now doubt that their children will enjoy the same opportunities that they did.”

Galston offers three broad policy prescriptions related to employment and tax reform:

1. “We should adopt full employment as a high-priority goal of economic policy and welcome the wage increases that it would generate.”
2. “We should use the tax code to restore the relationship between wage increases and productivity gains.”
3. “We should adopt a strong presumption against provisions of the tax code that treat some sources of income more favorably than wages and salaries,” which includes scrapping tax expenditures that “disproportionately benefit upper-income investors.”

Calling economic growth a “moral enterprise” as well as a material goal, Galston—acknowledging economist Benjamin Friedman—concludes that:

the central question the United States now faces is whether the next generation will again achieve broadly shared prosperity or rather experience the stagnation of living standards. Broad prosperity is both the oil that lubricates the machinery of government and the glue that binds our society together. Economic stagnation means a continuation of gridlocked, zero-sum politics and a turn away from the spirit of generosity that only a people confident of its future can sustain.

Read “The New Challenge to Market Democracies.”

If the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is that Mother Earth is heading for trouble and we must collectively solve global problems, then the underfunding of global public goods (GPGs) must be addressed. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, the need for global public goods increases: from action on climate change, financial stability, limiting the spread of diseases, management of conflicts, responding to natural disasters, terrorism, and cyber-warfare. At some level even the eradication of extreme poverty and more inclusive and sustainable development could be considered a global public good because more poverty and unequal development breeds conflict, increases environmental stress, state failure, terrorism, and piracy, thereby increasing the need for the global public goods required to address these issues.

Missing in the recently agreed Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) and in the Paris Conference of Parties (COP21) are steps that should be taken at a global level that will positively impact many countries, such as:

• A global set of standards on migration to curb exploitation and human rights standards for the migrant population;
• Better coordination of monetary and fiscal policies so as to avoid huge volatility in financial markets, which have large costs on vulnerable countries;
• Strengthened global disaster response mechanisms to handle increasing climate volatility and natural disasters;
• No agreement on a global tax institution demanded by many developing countries and civil society groups; and,
• No progress on carbon taxation.

There is considerable underfinancing of GPGs as it is difficult to get countries to pay for activities outside their borders. Official Development Assistance (ODA) has fallen well short of the agreed target of 0.7 percent of GDP—and in fact is closer to just 0.2 percent. GPG funding from ODA is estimated at only about 10 percent of the total. This problem even afflicts other sources of financing. Multilateral development bank (MDB) financing also underfunds regional, multi-country projects for addressing regional public goods as countries are unwilling to use their country allocations for multi-country projects even if the return on them is higher than the marginal country project.

Global thematic funds to support specific development challenges—Global Alliance for Vaccination and Inoculation (GAVI), Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), Global Environmental Fund (GEF) and earlier funds like the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)—have been successful in addressing specific development challenges through projects in specific countries, especially for agriculture, the environment, and health. They have also drawn in private philanthropic financing in addition to public resources. But global funding for global public goods has not had the same success, and systematic and sustained financing for disasters, biodiversity, desertification, and even for Ebola outbreaks has been difficult.

The Green Climate Fund, which will begin its work this year and will devote 50:50 share of funding for adaptation and mitigation has very limited funding so far – despite the commitment to provide $ 100 billion per year over and above ODA. But neither the AAAA, nor the SDG’s address many of the trade-offs involved between climate change and poverty eradication. COP 21 also did not provide greater guidance on these matters – despite high expectations that it would. Given the need for rapid economic growth to eradicate poverty for the LDC’s  as well as their need to deal with huge adaptation costs, it probably makes sense not to focus excessively on mitigation in these countries. These countries would increase their global carbon footprint by at best 2-3 percent of the total carbon emissions. The big tradeoffs will arise in the need for rapid growth in middle-income countries to address poverty and their increased emissions, which will accompany faster growth.

Protection of biodiversity is given specific mention in the AAAA, and the Global Strategic Plan for Biodiversity for 2011-20 is endorsed along with its 20 Aichi biodiversity targets. But progress in meeting these targets is slow and at current trends unlikely to be achieved. The AAAA does not address this slow progress or suggest ways to accelerate it. It does endorse the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification and the African Union Green Wall Initiative; but again with no specificity on how progress on these commitments will be accelerated. The same is true of the attention on oceans and marine resources, where the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea is mentioned but with no concrete steps on how to finance, enforce, and protect vulnerable areas, especially the small island developing states (SIDS).

Private philanthropic foundations have played important catalytic roles, such as efforts by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to help jump-start the Green Revolution in the 1960’s, and the eventual creation of the CGIAR. A somewhat similar role has been played by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for global public health. But no such foundations exist for many underfunded issues, such as disaster relief, peacebuilding, and desertification. These types of activities can be much better funded by more globalized revenue sources. The AAAA does not even mention the need for any such revenue sources.

A key GPG is peacekeeping, international security, and the prevention of conflict. Surprisingly, military spending is also not touched upon in the AAAA but has increased sharply. It dropped in the late 1990s following the end of the Cold War, from $1.5 trillion to around $1 trillion globally, but has increased again to almost $ 2 trillion today. Cutting military expenditure—especially in many developing countries where it exceeds 4 percent of GDP—would be an important step and shifting some of those resources to peacekeeping and conflict prevention would improve public spending.

With the AAAA pushing for new modes of financing, its surprising that for GPG financing more global sources of finance are not considered. At least four such options exist and could go a long way towards financing the SDGs. The first is a carbon tax or auctioning of carbon emissions permits. This is an idea with huge appeal as it will also help dissuade use of fossil fuels and could lower emissions globally, but is opposed by all the major emitters. Carbon taxes have been used in several countries to reduce fossil fuel use without any damage to long-term growth. Emission permits have also been used in some countries to reduce emissions of some harmful chemicals. But they have not been used internationally.

The second is a so-called “Tobin tax,” a tax on all foreign exchange transactions, which might also discourage destabilizing short-term volatile capital movements. The third is to add a pollution tax on all shipping and air travel – whose pollutions costs are not fully captured by existing taxes and fees imposed on them. The fourth is to allow issuance of SDRs to finance GPG’s.

Unfortunately, all these proposals are currently opposed by the major G-20 countries for various reasons. While several European countries—and even some developing ones—have introduced carbon taxes, still more remain opposed to carbon taxation. The Tobin tax idea has been around now for several decades and is considered an anti-globalization proposal even if its revenues were to be used to finance GPGs.  At times in the past, some countries have imposed a tax on foreign exchange transactions, with the explicit purpose of slowing down volatility in capital markets.

Global taxation has the connotation of supra-nationality, which many rich country legislatures—especially in the U.S.—would oppose. One way around this might be to specify how these resources would be used or to use them through MDBs where the richer countries have a controlling vote. To some extent the Global programs—GAVI, GFATM, CGIAR, and now the Green Climate Fund—have done that, but their financing remains much too dependent on national budgets and not on automatic revenue-raising mechanisms. National lotteries have been used in some countries to raise resources for specific causes; global lotteries could be an option for financing some specific global goods. But the world must move to some global means of revenue-raising if it wants to address GPGs seriously. Private financing, innovative financing, and public-private partnerships touted in the AAAA and COP21 can be crowded in, but without more international public financing to address market failure, financing the SDG’s will be difficult.

The world needs to heed Ben Franklin advice in another context “We must hang together or surely we will hang separately.”

Louisville/Jefferson County is the principal city of America’s 42nd largest metropolitan area, a 13-county, bi-state region with a 2006 population estimated at 1.2 million. It is the largest city by far in Kentucky, but it is neither Kentucky’s capital nor its center of political power.

The consolidated city, authorized by voter referendum in 2000 and implemented in 2003, is home to 701,500 residents within its 399 square miles, with a population density of 4,124.8 per square mile.² It is either the nation’s 16th or its 26th largest incorporated place, depending on whether the residents of smaller municipalities within its borders, who are eligible to vote in its elections, are counted (as local officials desire and U.S. Census Bureau officials resist). The remainder of the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) population is split between four Indiana counties (241,193) and eight Kentucky counties (279,523). Although several of those counties are growing rapidly, the new Louisville metro area remains the MSA's central hub, with 57 percent of the population and almost 70 percent of the job base.

Centrally located on the southern banks of the Ohio River, amid an agriculturally productive, mineral rich, and energy producing region, Louisville is commonly described as the northernmost city of the American South. Closer to Toronto than to New Orleans, and even slightly closer to Chicago than to Atlanta, it remains within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the American population living east of the Rocky Mountains.

This location has been the dominant influence on Louisville’s history as a regional center of trade, commerce and manufacture. The city, now the all-points international hub of United Parcel Service (UPS), consistently ranks among the nation’s top logistics centers. Its manufacturing sector, though much diminished, still ranks among the strongest in the Southeast. The many cultural assets developed during the city’s reign as a regional economic center rank it highly in various measures of quality of life and “best places.”

Despite these strengths, Louisville’s competitiveness and regional prominence declined during much of the last half of the 20th Century, and precipitously so during the economic upheavals of the 1970s and ‘80s. Not only did it lose tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs and many of its historic businesses to deindustrialization and corporate consolidation, it also confronted significant barriers to entry into the growing knowledge-based economy because of its poorly-educated workforce, lack of R&D capacity, and risk-averse business culture.

In response, Louisville began a turbulent, two-decade process of civic and economic renewal, during which it succeeded both in restoring growth in its traditional areas of strength, most notably from the large impact of the UPS hub, and in laying groundwork for 21st century competitiveness, most notably by substantially ramping up university-based research and entrepreneurship supports. Doing so required it to overhaul nearly every aspect of its outmoded economic development strategies, civic relationships, and habits of mind, creating a new culture of collaboration.

Each of the three major partners in economic development radically transformed themselves and their relationships with one another. The often-paralyzing city-suburban divide of local governance yielded to consolidation. The business community reconstituted itself as a credible champion of broad-based regional progress, and it joined with the public sector to create a new chamber of commerce that is the region’s full-service, public-private economic development agency recognized as among the best in the nation. The Commonwealth of Kentucky embraced sweeping education reforms, including major support for expanded research at the University of Louisville, and a “New Economy” agenda emphasizing the commercialization of research-generated knowledge. Creative public-private partnerships have become the norm, propelling, for instance, the dramatic resurgence of downtown.

The initial successes of all these efforts have been encouraging, but not yet sufficient for the transformation to innovation-based prosperity that is the goal. This report details those successes, and the leadership, partnerships, and strategies that helped create them. It begins by describing Louisville’s history and development and the factors that made its economy grow and thrive. It then explains why the city faltered during the latter part of the 20th century and how it has begun to reverse course. In doing so, the study offers important lessons for other cities that are striving to compete in a very new economic era. 

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Editor’s Note: The following chapter is part of the report, "After the Drug Wars," published in February 2016 by the London School of Economics and Political Science's Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy.

Even as the administration of Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto has scored important reform successes in the economic sphere, its security and law enforcement policy toward organized crime remains incomplete and ill-defined. Despite the early commitments of his administration to focus on reducing drug violence, combating corruption, and redesigning counternarcotics policies, little significant progress has been achieved. Major human rights violations related to the drug violence, whether perpetrated by organized crime groups or military and police forces, persist – such as at Iguala, Guerrero, where 43 students were abducted by a cabal of local government officials, police forces and organized crime groups. This has also been seen in Tatlaya and Tanhuato, Michoacán, where military forces have likely been engaged in extrajudicial killings of tens of people. Meanwhile, although drug violence has abated in the north of the country, such as in Ciudad Juárez, Monterrey and Tijuana, government policies have played only a minor role. Much of the violence reduction is the result of the vulnerable and unsatisfactory narcopeace – the victory of the Sinaloa or Gulf Cartels. 

The July 2015 spectacular escape of the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and the world’s most notorious drug trafficker – Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo – from a Mexican high-security prison was a massive embarrassment for the Peña Nieto government. Yet it serves as another reminder of the deep structural deficiencies of Mexico’s law enforcement and rule-of law system which persists more than a decade after Mexico declared its war on the drug cartels.

The Peña Nieto administration often pointed to the February 2014 capture of El Chapo as the symbol of its effectiveness in fighting drug cartels and violent criminal groups in Mexico. The Peña Nieto administration’s highlighting of Chapo’s capture was both ironic and revealing: ironic, because the new government came into office criticizing the anti-crime policy of the previous administration of Felipe Calderón of killing or capturing top capos to decapitate their cartels; and revealing, because despite the limitations and outright counterproductive effects of this high-value-targeting policy and despite promises of a very different strategy, the Peña Nieto administration fell back into relying on the pre-existing approach. In fact, such high-value-targeting has been at the core of Pena Nieto’s anti-crime policy. Moreover, Chapo’s escape from Mexico’s most secure prison through a sophisticated tunnel (a method he had also pioneered for smuggling drugs and previously used for escapes) showed the laxity and perhaps complicity at the prison, and again spotlighted the continuing inadequate state of Mexico’s corrections system.

Read the full chapter here.

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• Cuidado: The inescapable necessity of better law enforcement in Mexico

The growth of suburban poverty over the past two decades raises questions about the ability of nonprofit organizations to adapt to this relatively new geography of metropolitan poverty. These organizations play multiple roles, including providing basic safety net services, connecting residents to new opportunities, and serving as advocates (and sometimes as organizers) for low-income communities.

Although federal, state, and local governments are often the primary funders of nonprofits, governments do not often take the lead in creating new organizational capacities or in coordinating capacity across political jurisdictions. In many regions, the local philanthropic community has become aware of these gaps in services for the poor and has sought to assist the nonprofit community in building capacity and expanding activities. Local foundations are experimenting with various strategies to address the growing dispersion of poverty.

This analysis combines an original data set of foundation grants for social services with in-depth interviews to assess the role of foundations in supporting the suburban social safety net in the Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, and Detroit regions. It finds that:

Suburban community foundations in the four regions studied are newer and smaller than those in core cities, despite faster growth of suburban poor populations. In the regions studied, most suburban community foundations began operating in the 1990s, and have not accumulated significant asset bases. Some larger city-based foundations have taken a regional approach, but face restrictions on the extent to which they can address growing need in poor suburban communities.

The share of foundation dollars targeted to organizations serving low-income residents varies widely across regions, but relatively few of those dollars are devoted to building organizational capacity in the suburbs. Chicago saw the largest share of foundation grant dollars go to organizations serving low-income people (60 percent), while Atlanta posted the lowest share (19 percent). Detroit was the only region where total grants to suburban-based human service providers were relatively comparable to their city-based counterparts.

Suburbs with high rates of poverty have substantially fewer grantees and grant dollars per poor person than either central cities or lower-poverty suburbs. Though metropolitan Atlanta has the highest rate of suburban poverty among the regions studied, it has the lowest rate of suburban grant-making per poor person. Denver’s results are a mirror image of Atlanta’s, with the lowest poverty rate and highest suburban grant-making per poor person.

Four types of strategies to build and strengthen the capacity of the suburban safety net are showing promise in these regions. Each region is engaging in four types of capacity building strategies: supporting existing regional organizations, creating new regional organizations, supporting regional networks, and establishing new suburban community foundations.

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Some quick thoughts on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's trip to China thus far, following the release of the Joint Statement, and Modi’s remarks at the Great Hall of the People, at Tsinghua University, and at a bilateral forum of state and provincial leaders:  

1. Candid Modi. In his statement to the media, Modi noted that the bilateral discussions had been “candid, constructive and friendly.” He was definitely more candid in his remarks about Indian concerns than is normal for Indian leaders during China-India summits. While senior Indian policymakers often downplay the bilateral differences during visits (incoming and outgoing) and focus more on cooperative elements, in two speeches and in the joint statement released, Modi mentioned them repeatedly. He talked about the relationship being “complex,” as well as about issues that “trouble smooth development of our relations” and held back the relationship. He urged China to think strategically (and long-term) and “reconsider its approach” on various issues. First and foremost: its approach toward the border, but also visas and trans-border rivers, as well as the region (read China’s relations with Pakistan among others). China’s approach on economic questions was also put on the table, with Modi stating that, in the long-term, the partnership was not sustainable if Indian industry didn’t get better access to the Chinese market. The joint statement acknowledged that the level of the trade imbalance (in China’s favor) was not sustainable either. Modi also made clear that India wants China’s support for a greater role in international institutions. He specifically highlighted that China’s support for a permanent seat for India at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) and Indian membership of export control regimes would be helpful to the relationship (interestingly, he explained India’s desire for UNSC permanent membership as stemming from the same logic as the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—part of Asia “seeking a bigger voice in global affairs.” In the joint statement, however, China continued just to recognize India’s aspirations for a greater UNSC role. It did though include mention of India’s Nuclear Suppliers Group aspiration.

There was also an overall message from Modi that these issues couldn't be set aside and that progress was necessary: “…if we have to realise the extraordinary potential of our partnership, we must also address the issues that lead to hesitation and doubts, even distrust, in our relationship.”

2. The Border. Modi put the border at the top of the list of such issues, stating “we must try to settle the boundary question quickly.” Seeming to add a parameter to any potential solution, he stated that the two countries should settle this question “in a manner that transforms our relationship and [will] not cause new disruptions.” In the meantime, he noted that the mechanisms managing the border were working fine, but asserted that it was important to clarify the Line of Actual Control since otherwise there was a persisting “shadow of uncertainty.” He noted that he’d proposed a resumption of “the process of clarifying it.” The joint statement stated a desire for enhanced exchanges between the militaries to better communication on the border and an exploration of whether/how to increase trade at the border.

As is wont for Indian leaders in China, Modi didn’t explicitly assert India’s claim to the state of Arunachal Pradesh, but for those of us who read between the lines, he mentioned the number of states India had, referring to “30 pillars comprising the Central Government and all our States”—those 29 states include Arunachal Pradesh.

3. Economics. Modi’s day in Shanghai on May 16 will feature the economic relationship more. He did note the “high level of ambition” the two sides had for the relationship and his hope to see increased Chinese investment in infrastructure and manufacturing in India. China and India agreed that bilateral trade was “skewed” and likely unsustainable if that didn’t change.

At his speech at Tsinghua he linked both Mumbai’s rise to trade with China and the evolution of silk tanchoi sarees to skills learnt by Indians from Chinese weavers—thus both pointing out that the trade relationship is an interrupted one and (to his domestic critics) that India stands to gain from this engagement.

4. Building Trust & (People-to-People) Ties. There was a major emphasis in Modi’s remarks on building trust, and improving communication and connectivity, with a special emphasis on enhancing people-to-people ties. On the latter, he stated frankly, “Indians and Chinese don't know each other well, much less understand each other.” Various polls and surveys also show that, what they do know, they often don’t like.

This lack of trust, knowledge, and even interest could limit policymakers’ options (including in settling the border question) down the line. Thus, Modi asserted that China and India “must build more bridges of familiarity and comfort between our people.” To increase travel to India (and bring in tourism revenue), he announced that India’s e-visa facility will be made available to Chinese nationals. The two countries also agreed to establish consulates in Chennai and Chengdu. For greater learning about each other, there were decisions to set up an annual bilateral Think Tank Forum, to institutionalize the High-Level Medium Forum, and establish a Centre for Gandhian and Indian Studies at Fudan University.

Modi also noted that, at the end of the day, improving opportunities for interaction wasn’t sufficient. China would also have to do its bit to shape perceptions of itself in India—since even “small steps can have a deep impact on how our people see each other.”

There was also an emphasis on moving beyond Delhi, including through the establishment of the State and Provincial Leaders' Forum, with a desire to increase and facilitate engagement at the state and city levels.

On the central level, there were decisions announced to enhance or institutionalize engagement at the leaders level, as well as between the foreign policy and planning bureaucracies, as well as the defense establishments. Modi also especially highlighted “Our decision to enhance strategic communication and coordination on our region…”

5. Regional and Global Issues. While there was mention of continuing cooperation towards the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, if Beijing was looking for an endorsement of its One Belt, One Road initiatives, it wasn’t forthcoming. Modi noted that both China and India were “trying to strengthen regional connectivity and seeking ‘to connect a fragmented Asia.’” But he distinguished between two types of projects: “There are projects we will pursue individually. There are few such as the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Corridor that we are doing jointly.”

There was special mention of shared interests in West Asia and Afghanistan, as well as counterterrorism and climate change—the latter even got a separate joint statement. The main joint statement had an interesting reference to the two countries broadening cooperation in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation—China is not a member, but many believe that it would like to be (India’s traditionally been hesitant for China to go beyond its observer role).

Modi also highlighted a “resurgent Asia” that offers “great promise, but also many uncertainties” and “an unpredictable and complex environment of shifting equations.”

Modi acknowledged China and India’s “shared neighbourhood,” where they were both increasing engagement. He also seemed to admit that this could cause concern and thus “deeper strategic communication to build mutual trust and confidence” was essential. Perhaps pointing to China’s relations with Pakistan and others in India’s neighborhood, Modi stressed, “We must ensure that our relationships with other countries do not become a source of concern for each other.” However, this also acknowledged Chinese anxieties about India’s evolving relationships.

For those in China concerned about India’s relations with the United States and if it was designed to contain China, Modi had a message: “If the last century was the age of alliances, this is an era of inter-dependence. So, talks of alliances against one another have no foundation. In any case, we are both ancient civilizations, large and independent nations. Neither of us can be contained or become part of anyone's plans.”

6. The Image of a Confident India. Modi’s remarks seemed intended to exude confidence about India and its role in the world. He stated that in an age of many transformations, “the most significant change of this era is the re-emergence of China and India.” Laying out why India, in his perspective, is the next big thing, he seemed to suggest that it was in China’s interest to get on board the India train. He noted the political mandate he had, the steps his government had taken, and that “no other economy in the world offers such opportunities for the future as India's.” The Indian prime minister asserted, “We are at a moment when we have the opportunity to make our choices.” He seemed to want to make clear that enhancing engagement with India would be the right one for China.

Bonus Takeaways

Winner: Social media—it's been ubiquitous, from Modi joining China's Weibo to the Modi selfie with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to the continuation of the Modi-looking-at-things meme.

Loser: Panchsheel. It'd been a bit odd that India had continued to choose to mention Panchsheel and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence—principles that are remembered by many in India as being honored by China in the breach than in the observance in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There was even a shout-out to it in the Modi-Xi joint statement in September 2014. But it's missing in action in the 2015 joint statement and seems to have been replaced by this:

The leaders agreed that the process of the two countries pursuing their respective national developmental goals and security interests must unfold in a mutually supportive manner with both sides showing mutual respect and sensitivity to each other’s concerns, interests and aspirations. This constructive model of relationship between the two largest developing countries, the biggest emerging economies and two major poles in the global architecture provides a new basis for pursuing state-to-state relations to strengthen the international system.

In this paper, we outline the manner in which design can help promote the Indian economy. We look at the status of design in India, review the country’s development challenges, discuss the opportunities of a design economy, and make recommendations to enhance design in India.

Highlights of Main Findings

• India’s design capacity in the number of patents granted is approximately 3 percent of China and less than 2 percent of the U.S.A.
• India’s industrial design capacity is approximately 1 percent of China and 6 percent of the U.S.A.
• Historically, non-resident entities have been granted the most number of patents within India.
• Since 2012, more patents have been granted to Indian entities abroad than the number of patents granted by the Indian government to either resident or non-residents entities within India.
• While in India and the U.S.A. the most number of patents are annually granted to non-resident entities, in China the most number of patents have been granted to resident Chinese entities since 2008.
• Among the broad economic factors that affect design economy in India, the role of higher education, FDI, digital connectivity, infrastructure and trade have been identified as the most important.

Some specific policy recommendations to boost design economy in India are:

• Curricular reform for research and development in higher education
• Workforce development for R&D sector
• Establishing design labs and special economic zones to focus on R&D
• Developing and enforcing domestic legislation for intellectual property protection<.li>
• Promoting greater collaboration between business, government, and academia

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The GOP presidential candidate said he would ban immigrants from sending money home to Mexico.

Donald Trump’s proposal to force Mexico to pay for a Wall guarding against the flux of immigrants into the U.S. made news this week, and rightfully so. Trump’s idea would be to curtail the ability of banks, credit unions, and wire transmission companies to send money abroad — a sharp departure from policy and law whose bipartisan aim has been to bring remittances to all countries into the financial mainstream and out from the shadowy illegal word of people moving cash in suitcases.

Encouraging remittances to go through the financial system benefits everyone: it enhances the ability to combat terrorist finance and money-laundering, it reduces crime in both the U.S. and abroad, it increases economic growth in the U.S. and overseas, and it provides for greater competition and market incentives to allow people to keep more of their hard-earned money to use as they see fit. Moving in the opposite direction would be a major mistake.

This is a big issue that affects a lot more people than one might think – more than just sending money to Mexico. In America today, more than 40 million people were born in other countries, a record number. This translates into just more than 1 in 8 Americans, a sharp increase from 1970 when fewer than 1 in 25 Americans were foreign born. Thus, it is not surprising that many people perceive America to have more foreign-born people than any time in their lifetime. However, that is not the case for the lifetime of America. Between the Civil War and the 1920s, America had as high — or higher — share of foreign born as we do today.

Remittances are not a new phenomenon. Most American families likely sent remittances at some point whenever their family first immigrated. My great-grand father sent money back to what is today the Czech Republic so that his wife and their children (including my grandmother) could come and join him and escape what became the Second World War. Today, remittance flows go toward the new generation of American immigrants and the children of those immigrants. More than $120 billion was sent abroad in 2012 according to the Pew Center and while it is true that Mexico received the largest amount at just under $23 billion, the rest of the top 5 countries may surprise you: China ($13 billion), India ($12 billion), Philippines ($10.5 billion), and Nigeria ($6 billion). And old habits remain as Germany ($2.5 billion) and France ($2 billion) are still among the top 15 countries that receive remittances from the United States.

This money comes in lots of small chunks, which can make sending it expensive. The typical new migrant worker sends money home around 14 times a year, which corresponds to once a month plus Mother’s Day and Christmas. These are usually small sums (less than $300) and represent an extraordinary level of savings given the worker’s income. The money goes through both the formal banking system including banks, credit unions, and wire transmitters who eventually use banks like Western Union and MoneyGram. Some goes through informal means, including “viajeros” who are people that literally carry cash in suitcases on planes that are often breaking the law and outside of the standard anti-money laundering and terrorist finance enforcement system. Why would anyone want to encourage that?

The idea of using this flow of funds to try to implement other policy objectives, such as border control, would be a sharp departure from current practice. The Patriot Act and subsequent federal law governing remittances in financial laws like the Dodd-Frank Act were never intended to be used to threaten to cut off the flow of migrant worker remittances. These laws were intended to track and crack down on the flow of money laundering or support for illegal and terrorist organizations while at the same time providing consumer protections to workers who are sending hard-earned cash back home to their parents, grandparents, and children. In fact, the bipartisan goal of policy concerning remittances has been to encourage the flow of money to come into the official system and to discourage the flow of funds through the underground network.

In 2004, then Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke made clear that, “The Federal Reserve is attempting to support banks’ efforts to better serve immigrant populations, with remittances and other money transfers being a key area of interest.” House Financial Services Chairman Mike Oxley (R-OH) told President Bush’s then-Treasury Secretary John Snow, “Remittances between established and emerging economies foster growth in both types of economies simultaneously. I will be interested in hearing your views on how unnecessary costs can be eliminated in this area.” When Senator Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD) introduced legislation that became the basis for today’s law that covers remittances, he had the simple goal to “increase transparency, competition and efficiency in the remittance market, while helping to bring more Americans into the financial mainstream.”

The longstanding bipartisan support for bringing remittances into the financial mainstream is based on the fact that most immigrants, regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens, legal residents, or undocumented, send remittances. A system that tried to assert proof of citizenship or legal status upon wiring money overseas would be burdensome, costly, and ineffective at best and if effective, it would simply drive more money into illegal transmission schemes while increasing crime here in the U.S. and abroad. Imagine if an entire community knew that someone would be walking through their immigrant neighborhood with a suitcase full of tens of thousands of dollars in cash.

Thought of another way, if I went to the bank to send money to my mother who lives in France part of the year, how would I prove that I’m a citizen? My driver’s license alone is not proof of legal status. Would I need to bring my passport? What if, like the majority of Americans, (62% according to the State Department) I don’t have a valid passport? Would I have to bring my birth certificate to the local Western Union? I guess the one positive thing from such a system is that it would help stop the email scams asking for money from a Nigerian Prince….

Aaron Klein is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury Department from 2009 to 2012. He also serves as an unpaid member of the Clinton campaign’s Infrastructure Finance Working Group; he has not served as an advisor on any banking or finance issues.

Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared on Fortune.

From gourmet coffee to online shopping and software, the Seattle region has a long history of bringing innovations to market. And with its environmental consciousness, Seattle consistently ranks among the greenest cities in the United States.

So it makes sense that the region is capitalizing on its sustainability ethos to sharpen its next competitive advantage: smart building technology.

The region’s desire to cement a new market capability was partly about jobs, given the Great Recession and its aftermath. But leaders were concerned about a more basic dilemma: How can Seattle get beyond the “two Bills”-- Bill Boeing and Bill Gates—to build the next generation of innovation and a platform for broad-based economic growth?

Given their existing strengths, firms and leaders in the Puget Sound region made a play to apply their expertise in cloud computing, big data, and information technology to increasing energy efficiency in the built environment. And this would be an export opportunity, too. Rapid urbanization worldwide is prompting global demand for new sustainable solutions and technologies, a market that Seattle entrepreneurs and workers could meet.

To effectively enter and lead in the clean technology market, the region needed to address some market failures, including providing proof of return on investment of new technology for hesitant adopters and investors and building a skilled labor force to staff the increasingly sophisticated industry.

After developing a business plan, the Puget Sound region is now in the midst of a three-pronged, collaborative Smart Buildings effort driven by public, private, and non-profit partners including Innovate Washington, Microsoft, the city of Seattle, South Seattle Community College, and the Puget Sound Regional Council.

First, a high-performance buildings pilot launched last year is demonstrating the efficacy and return-on-investment of energy efficient technology in a mix of buildings—the Seattle Sheraton hotel, a University of Washington medical lab, a Boeing industrial facility, and a city of Seattle office building. The buildings are providing on-site building operators access to a constant digital building performance dashboard. The dashboard helps raise alarms if a key part might break down during an upcoming major event and identifies whether a large ballroom’s temperature needs to be readjusted following a large convening.

“We’re not having to babysit the system as much,” explained Rodney Schauf, the Seattle Sheraton’s director of engineering.

In the first six months of participation in the program, the University of Washington building reduced its energy use by 9 percent and the Sheraton reduced its usage by 5.5 percent, according to Brian Geller, the executive director of the Seattle 2030 District, the city’s larger high performance building district.

Second, the Smart Buildings Center opened as hub for business collaborations, technology demonstrations, and evaluation for energy efficiency technology solutions. The center is also currently developing an initiative to harness K-12 school and public building energy data for greater efficiencies. The effort is aided by the Cleantech Open, which identifies, connects, and mentors companies participating in the center.

Finally, South Seattle College will launch a new Sustainable Building Science Technology Bachelor’s of Applied Science Program, with the inaugural class starting this fall. The program, which combines technical systems understanding with internship opportunities and management skills, has already received strong interest from prospective students.

With this coordinated and comprehensive effort—which has been aided by funds from a federal i6 Green Challenge grant, state matching funds, and other private support—the region is on its way to demonstrating that its sustainable image can also produce real economic gains.

The initiative featured here emerged from work supported by the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence, and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment and the analysis and recommendations are solely determined by the scholar.

Summary: Why digital skills matter

As the influence of digital technologies in the global economy expands, metropolitan areas throughout the United States face the task of preparing residents for an increasingly technology-powered world. Most jobs now require basic computer literacy to operate email and other software, while jobs specific to information technology (IT) require advanced skills such as coding. At home, residents need access to the Internet and consumer technologies to do homework, shop at online retailers, communicate with one another, or check real-time traffic and transit conditions.

Digital technologies hold out the promise of more widely shared prosperity, but achieving that vision will require every person to have basic digital skills—the ability to use digital hardware and software to manage information, communicate, navigate the web, solve problems, and create content.¹

While some metro areas have made important advances on digital skills acquisition, the effects are not ubiquitous. The Census Bureau found that only 73 percent of U.S. households subscribed to in-home broadband service in 2013, leaving 31 million households without a high-speed in-home connection.² Pew Research Center finds that over one-third of U.S. adults doesn’t own a smartphone, while 7 percent of smartphone owners lack high-speed Internet access at home and have few ways to get online beyond their smartphone.³ Another survey finds that 29 percent of Americans have low levels of digital skills, and many of these persons tend to be older, less educated, and lower-income.⁴

In an advanced economy, all residents deserve an opportunity to obtain digital skills. It is up to leaders in each U.S. metropolitan area to determine how best to meet this need. As with any social challenge of this scale, meeting it will require pragmatic problem-solving and deep collaboration across the public, private, and civic sectors.

This brief summarizes the results of a workshop held in Seattle to explore these issues. While the findings from the workshop discussions are unique to the Seattle region—making its leaders and residents the primary audience for this brief—the workshop approach can be replicated in any metropolitan area interested in addressing digital skills shortfalls and developing solutions tailored to residents’ needs.

Introduction: Digital skills and the Seattle metropolitan economy

Metropolitan Seattle is well positioned to prosper in the information era. Advanced industries—including global leaders in aerospace and IT—power the regional economy and have created an impressive network of patent-producing firms that employ over 295,000 people.⁵ The region’s households actively participate in the digital economy as well, as evidenced by a broadband adoption rate of 82 percent.⁶ Collaborations bringing together firms, public utilities, and government institutions make Seattle a national leader in the use of data monitoring to reduce energy usage.

However, for the region to maintain its position in the years ahead, it will need to cultivate a more inclusive economy that gives every resident the opportunity to acquire the skills needed to succeed in the digital era.

Like most U.S. metro areas, metropolitan Seattle continues to struggle with digital inclusivity. Strong broadband adoption across the region masks lagging adoption rates in many low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.⁷ A skills mismatch between job openings requiring digital skills and the education and skills training of area residents contributes to income inequality.⁸ This inequality, though less marked than in other cities with similar high-tech economies, continues to increase, with the highest-earning households experiencing rising incomes while lower-income households’ earnings stay relatively flat.⁹ Meanwhile, more than 45 percent of jobs in the region are more than 10 miles from downtown Seattle and Bellevue, and over two-thirds of poor households now live in the suburbs.¹⁰ This kind of job sprawl and suburban poverty limit many residents’ physical access to economic opportunity.

But the Seattle area has the assets to address these challenges. The region has a legacy of direct private-sector support for professional skills development and a huge network of IT firms that can expand such efforts. Government agencies and civic institutions already manage programs to promote digital skills acquisition. In addition, there is a regional ethic of supporting equitable economic growth, seen most recently in Seattle’s landmark living wage policy and Sound Transit’s discounted fee system for lower-income riders.¹¹

In an effort to address Seattle’s digital skills gap, the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program convened a group of leaders from the public, private, and civic sectors to discuss how to continue building a regionally inclusive digital skills infrastructure. The workshop consisted of brief presentations from Brookings experts and local leaders, group discussions of current efforts and challenges, and break-out groups to identify specific barriers and discuss strategies and next steps to improve future outcomes.

The following is a distillation of the key themes and lessons from the workshop.

1. Commit to ongoing collaboration

There is a clear consensus among Seattle-area leaders that basic digital skills are essential for everyone. The tough part is ensuring that all residents in the region have the opportunity to acquire these skills.

This challenge implicates a wide range of stakeholders, from municipal and county government, public libraries, and universities to area businesses, education and training providers, philanthropies, and nonprofits.

Many of these actors already manage their own initiatives, to great effect. Programs like the Seattle Goodwill’s Digital Literacy Initiative are working to increase the number of people with 21st-century digital skills, particularly among traditionally underserved populations. The private sector is advancing a similar agenda with major initiatives, such as Microsoft IT Academy and Google’s Made With Code, that promote computational thinking through computer science. Meanwhile, nonprofit training programs like the Ada Developers Academy as well as for-profit training providers such as Code Fellows and General Assembly are getting more people on pathways into tech-intensive careers that pay well.

However, despite this demonstrated willingness to act, coordination of activities across the region remains a challenge. Most initiatives operate independently from one another, often resulting in duplicative efforts and missed opportunities for greater impact. Furthermore, current efforts often concentrate activities in either the central cities or specific portions of the three-county region, thereby excluding those who live in other parts of the metro area. For example, the city of Seattle’s excellent digital equity programs extend only to the city limits and are not available in South King County. Without more collaboration, the region will not be able to take full advantage of its creativity, resources, and capacity for pragmatic problem-solving.

By committing to ongoing collaborative action, leaders in the Seattle region will be well positioned to design, launch, and maintain smart solutions to the digital skills challenge today and in the future.

2. Identify a convener and organize for action

Once stakeholders commit to collaborative problem-solving, they must then determine how best to organize for action. Identifying a neutral convener organization can help expedite this process. Designating a convener ensures that there is a single organization tasked with driving the group’s agenda forward and fostering greater collaboration among stakeholders.

The role of convener involves a handful of specific tasks that help keep the group on track and in regular contact. Organizing regular group meetings, delegating critical tasks like research into best practices, and managing communication within the group are all critical functions for the convening organization. To take just one example, the Community Center for Education Results (CCER) fills the convener role for the many stakeholders involved in the Road Map Project, which is working to improve student outcomes in South Seattle and South King County.¹²

The Seattle area is fortunate to have a number of organizations that could act as convener. Potential candidates include the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County (WDC), the Seattle Public Library, the University of Washington, or one of the many large philanthropies in the region.

Regardless of which organization ultimately takes on this role, selecting a convener marks a crucial first step toward an actionable, collaboratively developed digital skills agenda for the Seattle region.

3. Develop a shared vision for digital skills acquisition

Crafting a shared vision for digital skills acquisition will strengthen the group’s work by ensuring that all involved are on the same page. That vision can support the creation of a coordinated regional plan, which will help stakeholders take advantage of economies of scale and ensure the greatest return on resources invested. This plan should take particular care to address challenges faced by traditionally underrepresented groups, including women and people of color as well as those in lower-income communities.¹³ Ending the persistent lack of diversity in tech-oriented careers will require a concerted effort on the part of all stakeholders involved.¹⁴

To start, the convener’s first task should be organizing a time for stakeholders to sit down, develop a shared vision, and determine the next steps necessary to achieve that vision. Conducting an audit of existing programs in the region that support digital skills acquisition can be a good place to begin. This inventory will highlight any overlapping initiatives while also providing information on gaps in the digital skills infrastructure that will need to be addressed.

In addition, the group should work with the private sector to identify the digital skills needed in various industries and begin to map out pathways into tech-oriented careers. This information will ensure that the solutions developed are informed by current and projected industry demand.

The industry-sector panels convened by WDC offer one possible approach. Under this model, WDC serves as convener, bringing together key stakeholders from industry, education, workforce development, labor, nonprofits, and other relevant areas to identify shared challenges and engage in collaborative problem-solving. The outcomes and activities of the sector panel are determined by the group, with WDC facilitating the process throughout. WDC has a demonstrated record of success in organizing sector panels for the maritime and health care industries, and it could apply the same techniques to industries requiring digital skills.

Preliminary research will provide the data and analyses necessary for truly evidence-based solutions that respond directly to specific challenges in the region. Once this baseline research is completed, the group can begin problem-solving in earnest. To start, the group should identify a punch list of action items that can be easily accomplished in order to start building a record of successful collaborations.

As the group designs these solutions, it should also take care to establish performance management systems that track progress over time. Monitoring the performance of each solution implemented will also support efforts to refine and course-correct programming over time.

4. Adopt new roles to accomplish regional goals

With a new, shared vision of the community’s digital skills infrastructure in hand, stakeholders will need to align their individual initiatives to that goal and, in some cases, redefine their roles in order to support the broader vision.

These new roles should leverage each organization’s core strengths rather than require them to develop new ones. For example, metropolitan Seattle’s public libraries are already community-meeting spots that specialize in information exchange, offer free access to the Internet, and host a variety of classes for the public. This current work positions the libraries to serve as an information clearinghouse for digital skills programs offered in the region, ranging from job-skills training to classes on smartphone use. Likewise, academic experts at the University of Washington and other postsecondary institutions could help create a new curriculum for teaching applied digital skills to diverse populations.

At the same time, organizations should be open to adapting their core projects in order to fill gaps in the region’s digital skills infrastructure. For example, technology firms like Microsoft and Google could draw on their extensive civic philanthropic efforts and employee skills-training programs to provide basic, applied digital skills and computer science training that enhances the regional workforce. Such efforts could build on Microsoft’s IT Academy model and Google’s support for programs at the Boys and Girls Clubs, which could be repurposed to address adult needs rather than those of children and teens.

As individual organizations adopt new roles, they will need to ensure that services are available to residents across the entire metropolitan area. Anchored by its Department of Information Technology and its Digital Equity Initiative, the city of Seattle has an impressive record of boosting digital skills within the city proper. But the vast majority of area residents live outside Seattle. Furthermore, over 60 percent of the region’s poor households now live in the suburbs. As a result, regional actors like Puget Sound Regional Council, Sound Cities, and county governments face enormous pressure to serve residents across the three-county metro area.

To start, organizations should work together to conduct metrowide surveys of digital equity issues, perhaps following the model employed by Seattle’s Digital Equity Initiative. This quantitative and qualitative data will set the baseline for the entire region and will help organizations set achievable benchmark goals for the years ahead.

5. Create a regional digital skills brand and marketing strategy to galvanize action

In order to communicate the shared vision to area residents, stakeholders should develop and publicize a new regional brand that positions the Seattle region as a leader in digital skills adoption and more equitable economic outcomes.

The associated marketing campaign can counter misconceptions about digital skills and the tech industry, maximize awareness of individual stakeholders’ projects, and minimize costs for each organization. Working together, stakeholders can reach the broadest possible pool of local residents with a cohesive message that encourages digital skills and computer science skills acquisition. Furthermore, by directing residents to centralized

information centers like local public libraries, the campaign will connect individuals with experts who can help them find the best programs for their needs.

In crafting this branding effort, the Seattle area should look to similar campaigns for inspiration. One example is Portland, Ore.’s We Build Green Cities campaign, a trade-based effort to leverage Portland’s international reputation for environmental sustainability and design in order to increase the region’s exports. Baltimore’s Opportunity Collaborative offers a more equity-focused model that brings together local and state public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and universities to solve common workforce, housing, and transportation challenges. A digital skills marketing campaign patterned after existing efforts will allow the region to capitalize on proven models when positioning itself as a leader in digital skills adoption that supports more widely shared prosperity.

Conclusion

The Seattle region stands at a crossroads. It has the industrial assets for continued growth that fosters ongoing innovation and provides jobs that pay well. It also has a commitment to shared prosperity, best represented by the public, private, and civic actors that support better wages, affordable transportation options, and education and training focused on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations. The region should build on these efforts by advancing a shared vision for digital skills and undertaking the sustained collaboration necessary to make that vision a reality.

Additional resources

The Boston Consulting Group, “Opportunity for All: Investing in Washington State’s STEM Education Pipeline” (2014).

The Boston Consulting Group and the Washington Roundtable, “Great Jobs Within Our Reach: Solving the Problem of Washington State’s Growing Job Skills Gap” (2013).

Capital One and Burning Glass, “Crunched by the Numbers: The Digital Skills Gap in the Workforce” (2015).

City of Austin, “Digital Inclusion Strategy 2014” (2014).

City of Seattle Department of Information Technology, Community Technology Program, “Information Technology Access and Adoption in Seattle: Progress Towards Digital Opportunity and Equity” (2014).

Communities Connect Network, “Defining Digital Inclusion for Broadband Deployment & Adoption” (2014).

Maureen Majury, “Building an IT Career-Ready Washington: 2015 and Beyond” (Seattle: Center of Excellence for Information & Computing Technology, 2014).

Seth McKinney, “Economic Development Planning in Seattle: A Review and Analysis of Current Plans and Strategies” (Seattle: University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy, 2013).

Seattle Goodwill, “Digital Literacy Initiative: Overview” (2014).

Seattle Goodwill, “Digital Literacy: Theoretical Framework” (2014).

Angela Siefer, “Trail-Blazing Digital Inclusion Communities” (OCLC and Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2013).

Tricia Vander Leest and Joe Sullivan, “ICT Training and the ABCs of Employability: YearUp’s Jobs Program for Urban Youth” (Seattle: University of Washington Center for Information & Society, 2008).

Authors

• Jessica A. Lee
• Adie Tomer