Nonrival

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

Data Centers Boost Jobs and Wages — But Mainly in Cities That Are Already Doing Well

the_conversation

• A new study finds that counties hosting data centers see real economic gains over time — employment up ~3.5%, wages up ~5%, business establishments up ~4.7% — but these benefits are concentrated in metropolitan areas with existing labor and capital clusters, while rural counties see negligible spillovers.
• Electricity prices rose about 5% in affected utility territories after a data center opened, a meaningful but smaller figure than some alarming estimates circulating in public debates.
• With over 1,200 community pushback actions logged since 2024 and multiple states weighing moratoriums, the research suggests local subsidy design and economic context matter far more than the headline investment figure when deciding whether to welcome a data center.

Climate change is more likely to trap poor people in place than turn them into refugees

voxeu

• A new study using monthly migration data from 127 developing countries finds that temperature shocks actually reduce international emigration by about 5.7% — the opposite of the "climate refugee" narrative.
• The mechanism is straightforward: moving across borders is expensive, and climate stress cuts household incomes, making the move unaffordable for those most affected.
• This means standard forecasts of mass climate-driven migration are likely wrong in direction, not just magnitude — and the people most harmed by warming are also the least able to escape it.

Guaranteeing Tuition at a Top University Boosted Low-Income Students' Earnings by Up to 25 Percent

nber

• A randomized experiment offered high-achieving, low-income Michigan high schoolers a guaranteed four-year tuition scholarship to the University of Michigan — and 21 percentage points more of them enrolled at UM as a result.
• The program mostly shifted students from less-selective four-year colleges to a more selective one, rather than getting new people into college altogether, but it significantly raised degree quality and four-year completion rates.
• Attending a more selective university is projected to raise lifetime earnings by 18–25%, suggesting that where low-income students go to college — not just whether they go — matters enormously for economic mobility.

In the News

Venezuela's Earthquakes Hit a Country Already in Economic Freefall — and Could Set Back Recovery by Decades

atlantic_council

• A devastating earthquake doublet struck Venezuela on June 24, killing nearly 4,000 people and destroying tens of thousands of buildings in a country whose infrastructure had already been gutted by two decades of economic mismanagement under Chávez and Maduro.
• The disaster compounds what was already one of the worst economic collapses in modern history: Venezuela's capital stock in 2023 was worth roughly the same as in 1999, and rebuilding its oil sector alone — the cornerstone of any recovery plan — was estimated to require $80–100 billion even before the quake.
• The article argues that reconstruction financing, US sanctions policy, and the risk of another mass emigration wave will all shape whether Venezuela can recover, pointing to Colombia's decentralized post-earthquake reconstruction fund as a potential model.

Analysis

Farmers Save More and Earn More Just by Being Asked to Think Through Their Upcoming Expenses

nber

• Zambian farmers dramatically underestimate their future spending — by about 50% — which causes them to save too little and suffer sharp consumption declines in the months before the next harvest.
• A simple intervention that prompted farmers to mentally walk through upcoming expenses by category (no money, no advice given) boosted recalled expenses by up to 60%, cut immediate spending, and left households with 15% higher savings six weeks later.
• Those extra savings helped families eat more steadily through the 'hungry season' and self-finance more farm investment, producing a 9% increase in crop revenue the following year — and the same memory-prompting trick worked on low-income Americans too.

Also Worth a Look

• European firms underestimate how much their rivals are investing in AI — and that's slowing the whole continent down (voxeu)
• China Is Winning the AI Soft Power Race by Giving Its Models Away for Free (noema)
• Expanding Overtime Rules Raises Workers' Pay Without Killing Jobs, New Research Finds (nber)
• America's coastal cities stopped reclaiming land from the sea in the 1970s — and it's entirely a legal problem (works_in_progress)
• China Is Using AI — Including American AI — to Spread Its Propaganda Around the World (hoover)
• When France Gives a Business Leader the Légion d'honneur, Stock Markets See It as a Signal of Political Access (voxeu)
• Venezuela's $240 Billion Debt Restructuring Is Shaping Up as a Three-Way Struggle Between the US, China, and Bond Investors (atlantic_council)