Nonrival

Expert analysis from think tanks and academia, on public policy, economics, and technology.
Human experts. AI summaries.

The AI Economy Is Growing So Fast That Standard Economic Statistics Can't Track It

peterson

• Researchers at PIIE attempted to measure the total size of the U.S. AI economy and found staggering growth: quality-adjusted AI output grew over 2,000% per year in both 2024 and 2025, driven by more data centers, better chips, and faster algorithms.
• Because AI activity is scattered across standard industry categories, existing GDP statistics obscure how much is actually happening — so the authors propose a new "AI GDP" framework to track the sector as a coherent whole.
• The research is a first attempt to build the measurement infrastructure economists will need to understand AI's true role in the economy, akin to how satellite accounts track healthcare or environmental activity.

Pennsylvania coroners are illegally blocking access to autopsy reports — and coordinating to keep them hidden

the_conversation

• Pennsylvania law requires coroners to make autopsy reports publicly available, either through direct payment or by depositing records with county clerks, but coroners across the state routinely ignore these rules, charge fees up to $700 per case, and fail to respond to legal requests.
• A postdoctoral researcher and his colleague discovered that coroners were secretly coordinating through the state coroners' association to block their research into jail deaths, with one county attorney explicitly seeking a 'united front effort to prevent these records from being released.'
• Despite multiple court rulings affirming the public's right to these records, coroners continue to stonewall — leaving researchers unable to systematically study deaths in custody and raising serious questions about accountability for people who die in prisons, jails, and immigration detention.

Farmers Are Using Less Fertilizer Because of the War — and That Might Actually Help the Environment

the_conversation

• The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted a third of global fertilizer trade, pushing up prices and forcing farmers to cut back on application.
• But decades of over-fertilizing have left large nutrient reserves in many U.S. soils, meaning crop yields may hold up better than feared even with less fertilizer.
• The silver lining: less fertilizer runoff could mean cleaner rivers and lakes, offering an unexpected environmental benefit from an otherwise damaging supply shock.

In the News

Three in Four Americans Think the Founding Fathers Would Be Disappointed in the Country Today

gallup

• A new Gallup poll finds 77% of Americans believe the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed with how the U.S. has turned out — up sharply from 42% in 2001 — with pessimism spread evenly across party, age, race, and income groups.
• Yet Americans are more charitable about the long arc of history: 69% say the country has succeeded at least a fair amount in achieving its founding ideals, a figure that has held up better over time.
• The gap between the two views suggests Americans distinguish between historical progress and present-day reality — crediting 250 years of development while feeling broadly discontented with where things stand right now.

Analysis

A New History of Global Finance Argues Today's Instability Isn't a Crisis — It's a Return to the Norm

hoover

• Historian Paul Schmelzing has traced the international financial system across seven centuries using thousands of archival sources, arguing that today's negative rates, debt pressures, and geopolitical tensions are not aberrations but echoes of deeper historical cycles.
• The modern system was built on governments — starting with the Habsburg Empire — becoming the world's most trusted borrowers, with the U.S. eventually anchoring the global order.
• That order is now eroding, and Schmelzing suggests the world may be reverting to the kind of fragmented, unstable financial landscape that existed before 1550.

Also Worth a Look

• Climate Uncertainty Is Actually a Strong Argument for Investing in Clean Energy, Not Against It (promarket)
• With Federal EV Support Gutted, a Few States Are Picking Up the Slack — and Most Aren't (brookings)
• Young Adults Are Closer to Priced Out of Homeownership Than at Any Point Since the 2006 Housing Bubble (pew)
• The World's Two Superpowers Keep Trying to Throw Their Weight Around — and Keep Failing (hoover)
• There's No Good Answer to the AI Export Control Dilemma — But One Option Is Clearly Better (csis)
• The Fed Kept Rates Low During the 1990s Tech Boom — and Built America's AI Dominance. Will It Make the Same Bet Now? (csis)
• The Supreme Court's New Voting Rights Ruling Is Already Being Used to Gut Employment Discrimination Law (scotusblog)