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D.C. is making childcare more expensive without tangibly helping kids
"Just one more degree, bro. I swear, bro. It will work this time."
 • 
Connor O'Brien
1

April 2024

How Asia Works author Joe Studwell on industrial policy lessons for the U.S., state capacity, and corporate culture
Revisiting an industrial policy classic a decade later.
 • 
Connor O'Brien
1

January 2024

Avoiding AI-induced "energy gentrification"
As in housing, the path to stability is through abundance.
 • 
Connor O'Brien
1
What is industrial policy for, anyway?
Learning all the wrong lessons from the epic fall of U.S. Steel.
 • 
Connor O'Brien
Talent is your city's best insurance policy
Economic resilience is ultimately about people and the skills they possess.
 • 
Connor O'Brien
2

December 2023

How is Washington D.C. doing?
A look at demographics, crime, transit, schools, and housing.
 • 
Connor O'Brien
2

November 2023

One weird trick to attract startups to your city
Why haven't you set up a Global Entrepreneur-in-Residence program yet?
Banning self-driving cars will not atone for urban planning’s sins
Activists for safer streets might instead make them more dangerous.
A paradox at the heart of American bureaucracy
Making something an urgent public priority creates new roadblocks to its execution.

October 2023

Industrial policy needs immigration reform
History shows us we cannot get industrial policy right (or out-compete China) without skilled immigration.
1
How does a society hedge its bets?
What this year’s Nobel Prize winner in medicine and Chinese imperial examinations can teach us about the value of institutional pluralism
1
Today's backwater, tomorrow's superstar
Superstar cities come and go. Shouldn't that matter?
2
© 2024 Connor O’Brien
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