Research Roundup
Date: March 31, 2009


Tools for the future:
  • “Taking Improbable Events Seriously”: The McKinsey Quarterly presents an interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Taleb usually focuses on economic and technological phenomena, but his advice applies to anyone who has to think about the future: “think of the unknown and of the potency of the unknown, particularly a certain class of events that you can’t imagine but can cost you a lot: rare but high-impact events.” Taleb’s blog is also worth a look.

The near future (and the unsettled present):
  • Good news and bad news on consumer trends in the United States. According to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, “U.S. consumers continued the increased spending pattern that began in January 2009 into February 2009. Consumers spent slightly more in February than they did in January even as personal income and disposable personal income levels took small dips.” (The summary is from Retailer Daily; the full report is available here.) However, a new Harris Poll (March 31) indicates that Americans are still decreasing their spending on entertainment and eating out.
  • The March 2009 edition of Arts Insights (from the Arts Consulting Group) is devoted to “Economic Stimulus: The Arts and Culture Take the Lead.” The focus is “a new report from the National Governors Association's Center for Best Practices [which] provides an overview of the steps states are taking to maximize the impact of creative industries on local economies.”

Social trends, etc.:
  • Latino children are now a majority (or near-majority) of the first grade students in none of the country’s ten largest cities, according to a new report from the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California. For a quick summary of this demographic transformation, click here.
  • Residential construction in the United States is swinging away from the urban fringe and back towards urban core areas, according to a new report from the Environmental Protection Agency. “Residential Construction Trends in America’s Metropolitan Regions” examines building trends in the 50 largest metropolitan areas from 1990 to 2007. The researchers at the Brookings Institution must have been looking at similar evidence when they concluded that “America’s long-term prosperity stands or falls on the more local prosperity of its 363 distinct, varied, clustered, and interlinked metropolitan economies, dominated by the 100 largest metros.” See “Miracle Mets: How U.S. Metros Propel America's Economy and Might Drive Its Recovery.”
  • Are there limits to Twittering? Consider the attention (and ridicule) that Birmingham City University in the UK received when it announced a new master’s degree in social media.
Other articles, essays and recent items of interest:
  • Because the past is also the future, many Americans have turned their attention in recent months to the Great Depression. In 1934: A New Deal for Artists, the Smithsonian American Art Museum has mounted an exhibit on the short-lived Public Works of Art, “the first federal government program to support the arts nationally … [and a reflection that] officials in the Roosevelt administration understood how essential art was to sustaining America’s spirit” in a period of economic distress. An older analysis of American Public Libraries in the Great Depression also provides historical context for museums and other cultural institutions.

Refresh and Reflect:
  • April may be “the cruelest month” but it’s also National Poetry Month. Visit the American Academy of Poets for suggestions about how to celebrate this annual event. Every month, the Tate Museum publishes new poetry by leading poets who respond to works from the collection; read the latest.  
  • Who knew there was a “Cost of Laughing Index”? Or that the Index—a composite of 16 “leading humor indicators,” from attendance at comedy clubs to the wholesale price of rubber chickens—was trending downwards? For more details, click here and here.

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