Nonrival

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

GLP-1 Drugs Cut Long-Term Sick Leave but Don't Boost Employment, New Research Finds

nber

• A rigorous study using Danish administrative data finds that GLP-1 drugs like Semaglutide reduce long-term sickness leave by 17%, generating modest but real fiscal benefits worth about 1.3–1.5% of annual labor income per employed user.
• Despite cutting sick days, the drugs show no statistically meaningful effect on employment, labor force participation, or income over four years — tempering hopes that weight-loss drugs would dramatically reshape workforce participation.
• The findings offer the first credible causal evidence on GLP-1s and labor markets, using a clever research design that compares early adopters to later ones to isolate the drug's effect.

Rising Oil Prices Don't Just Cause More Conflict — They Redraw Where Violence Happens

voxeu

• A new study using three decades of georeferenced data finds that oil price spikes don't increase overall conflict levels — they relocate violence, pulling armed fighting toward petroleum fields while sparking protests and infrastructure attacks near refineries and pipelines.
• This spatial reshuffling explains why past research has been so contradictory: country-level conflict statistics look stable during oil booms because gains in some places cancel out losses in others, masking sharp local changes.
• The researchers apply their findings to the 2026 Middle East oil shock, warning that policymakers relying on national conflict indicators will be looking in the wrong place — effective prevention requires knowing which type of violence is likely, and exactly where.

AI Uses Surprisingly Little of the World's Electricity — But Local Grids Are a Different Story

ourworldindata

• AI-focused data centers consumed about 0.5% of global electricity in 2025, less than most people assume, and a single chatbot query uses roughly the same energy as running a microwave for a second.
• The real problem isn't global scale but geographic concentration: data centers account for over 20% of electricity in Ireland and more than a quarter in Virginia, putting intense pressure on local grids.
• Future demand is highly uncertain, but the carbon impact of AI will depend less on how much energy it uses and more on whether that energy comes from clean sources.

In the News

Trump Is Using a Secret Executive Memo — Not Any Law Congress Passed — to Build a Counterterrorism Apparatus Targeting the Political Left

the_conversation

• A largely classified presidential directive called NSPM-7, issued in September 2025, has become the legal foundation for prosecuting left-wing activists as terrorists — not for violence, but for ideological beliefs like being 'anti-capitalist' or 'anti-Christian.'
• The directive bypassed Congress entirely, and because domestic terrorism isn't actually a chargeable offense under U.S. law, prosecutors are repurposing older statutes like material support for terrorism and conspiracy laws — sending some activists to prison for decades.
• The campaign has now gone international, with Secretary of State Rubio hosting 65 countries for an 'Antifa summit,' even as empirical data shows left-wing violence remains far below right-wing or jihadist violence in the U.S.

Analysis

The Opioid Epidemic Didn't Just Kill People — It Drove Away the College-Educated and Raised Birth Rates Among Those Who Stayed

promarket

• New research finds that communities hardest hit by OxyContin lost college-educated residents at more than twice the rate of less-educated neighbors, shrank 40% faster than average, and saw home values fall nearly 8% — not primarily because of deaths, but because the epidemic made these places worse to live in.
• The researchers use a clever natural experiment: Purdue Pharma first targeted areas with high cancer rates, so pre-epidemic cancer mortality predicts opioid exposure, allowing them to separate the epidemic's effects from other forces like trade shocks and automation.
• Unusually, the opioid crisis — unlike manufacturing decline — actually moved people, because it degraded everyday quality of life through rising crime and overwhelmed public services; among those who stayed, fertility rates rose about 5.5%, partly cushioning the population decline.

Also Worth a Look

• Basel III Made Banks Safer by Making the Rest of the Financial System More Fragile (ny_fed)
• Joint Custody After Divorce Boosts Fathers' Earnings and Mental Health — and Improves Kids' School Performance (nber)
• Losing the Dollar's Reserve Currency Status Would Cost America Far More in Higher Borrowing Costs Than It Would Gain in Manufacturing Competitiveness (voxeu)
• Soviet factories built in 1950s China boomed then busted — and the lesson is about the dangers of over-specialization (voxeu)
• Satellite Images Show China Has Built Exact Replicas of US Warships and Bases in the Desert to Practice Attacking Them (hoover)
• When AI Helps Crunch Data, It Also Quietly Distorts the Results — Here's a Fix (nber)
• Teaching Couples to Plan Together Boosts the Impact of Cash Aid — But Raises Domestic Violence Risk for the Most Vulnerable (nber)