As economic advisers in the Biden and Obama Administrations, we contributed to decision memos and evening briefing books for our principals—the cabinet members charged with the task of setting national economic policy. Our jobs were to help busy people understand what really matters when weighing the implications of different policy options, using the most reliable analysis and existing research available.
We started Briefing Book two years ago with Kevin Rinz and Jeffery Zhang to bring this type of analysis to the public. In the two years since, we’ve been lucky to amass a network of 47 terrific contributors, listed here. Together, we’ve published 67 posts on topics like child care, tax cuts, gas prices, tariffs, infrastructure, Social Security, cryptocurrency, and health care, to name a few. Our audience has grown from 823 when our first post was published, to nearly 11,000 today.
Some of our most viewed posts over the last 12 months were:
The effect of online interviews on the University of Michigan Survey of Consumer Sentiment, by Ryan Cummings and Ernie Tedeschi
Post-election partisan shifts in consumer sentiment, by Leo Feler, Kevin Rinz, and Jack Chylak
The Long-term Dangers of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, by Wesley Yin
Brave New World, on financial regulations in an AI and blockchain world, by Hilary Allen
And as we enter our third year, we look forward to publishing more content on major economic challenges and opportunities on the horizon—climate adaptation, labor market disruptions, economic resilience, and our ever-evolving political economy. And with increasing information congestion created by fake news, and threats to data integrity and reporting independence, accessible and reliable analysis of important economic issues has become as important as ever.
We’ve also greatly appreciated feedback from contributors and subscribers. We continue to welcome your input as we grow in our third year. If you would like to pitch an idea for a piece, you can email us or send us a message through Substack.
To our engaged subscribers, our expert contributors, and our colleagues who have found something useful to share with their audiences by linking to our posts: thank you for your readership. We are excited to bring you more great analysis in year three.