Information and Communication Technologies 2025-07-21

We develop a model of strategic information provision where politicians choose how to allocate limited disclosure across multiple policy dimensions. Citizens are heterogeneous statistical learners who interpret data differently, following Liang (2021). Our key insight: spreading information thinly across many dimensions (“flooding the zone”) maximizes disagreement among citizens, preventing the coordination needed for collective accountability. We characterize equilibrium disclosure strategies and show that politicians with unfavorable private information flood to prevent investigation, while those with favorable information choose intermediate disclosure levels that balance reputation building with enabling scrutiny. The model yields both pooling equilibria that create “transparency theater”—where all politicians provide vast but shallow information—and separating equilibria where disclosure strategies reveal type. We derive threshold conditions showing that flooding dominates when investigation stakes are asymmetric, communication technology enables high dimensionality, and citizen populations are heterogeneous in their information processing. Extensions examine strategic interactions between competing politicians and the mediating role of information platforms in either amplifying or constraining flooding strategies. Joshua S. Gans 2025-06 Using newly-collected data on the near-population of U.S. STEM PhD graduates since 1950, we examine who funds PhD training, how many graduates are trained in areas of strategic national importance, and the effects of public investment in PhD training on the scientific workforce. The U.S. federal government is by far the largest source of financial and in-kind support for STEM PhD training in America. We identify universities and fields where PhD training has a higher or lower intensity of government, industry, or philanthropic support, and the organizations and universities that fund and train the most PhDs in critical technology areas such as AI, quantum information technology, and biotechnology. Leveraging variation in government support across agencies and over time, we provide evidence suggesting that increasing government-funded PhD trainees increases PhD production roughly one-for-one. To support further research, we provide public datasets at multiple levels of aggregation, reporting PhD graduates by (i) critical technology area and (ii) source of support. Dror Shvadron Hansen Zhang Lee Fleming Daniel P. Gross 2025-06 Digital technology is seeping into every corner of society. As the pace of technological change accelerates over the next decade, digitalization is poised to impose profound changes on the international political economy. A new digital regime is evolving to govern these effects, although it is uncertain how this regime will develop amid tectonic shifts in governing establishments, world geopolitics, and the scope of economic globalization. A broad array of interests are contesting how digital governance will play out across the globe, from digital businesses big and small to politicians balancing security and economic growth objectives. Uncertainty predominates, but looking at previous historical instances where new technology demanded cross-border governance can reveal clues as to how a digital regime can take shape in a more sovereignty-oriented world. This report explores the digital order that underlies transnational tensions over regulating digital technologies, finding that the contours of the emerging digital regime will depend on how policymakers thread the needle between national security and fostering innovation, a balancing act for which the outcome is currently unclear. Cowhey, Peter Social and Behavioral Sciences 2025-06-02