Research
Scholars at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy produce research that is grounded in evidence and solution-oriented.
Research Spotlights
The Brooks School Tech Policy Institute, with support from the Jain Family Institute (JFI), has released a new report that offers a a high-level framework to analyze regulation of AI technologies.
National Institutes of Health (NIH): School-Based Health Centers – An approach to address health disparities among rural youth (Sharon Tennyson and colleagues)
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF): Developing rapidly responsive community-engaged research on media-messaging and narrative-change strategies to promote health and racial equity (Jeff Niederdeppe and colleagues)
Brooks School Working Groups
The Brooks School has an open call to support faculty with small grants broadly aimed at building stronger research connections within our areas of policy expertise. Our first five awards will support Democracy and Public Policy, Education Policy and Big Data, Health Policy, Junior Faculty, Law, Economics, and Policy, Migration Policy, and Tech Policy Working Groups.
The Democracy and Public Policy Working Group brings together faculty and scholars working on topics related to democracy worldwide, including inclusion and equality, building political institutions, justice, current struggles against autocratic government, and democratic resilience. It aims to build community and foster research across fields of study within the Center on Global Democracy.
- Faculty Organizers: Rachel Beatty Riedl and Paul Eastburg Friesen
The Education Policy and Big Data Interdisciplinary Working Group focuses on major empirical questions in K12 and Higher Education policy, providing a meeting space to learn about education-related research on campus, discuss data and methods for education policy analysis, and identify policy issues of highest priority for future research.
- Faculty Organizers: Maria Fitzpatrick, Mike Lovenheim, and Peter Rich
The Health Policy Working Group hosts seminars in health policy with internal and external experts in the field, and it provides training opportunities for graduate students, including a series of professional development activities and a program for visiting PhD students in health policy.
- Faculty Organizers: Nico Bottan, Colleen Carey, and John Cawley
The Junior Faculty Working Group creates a space for junior faculty to share feedback on work in progress and discuss ideas and topics of common interest. Monthly meetings are devoted to a mix of research and professional development, and some include senior colleagues invited to share their experiences with the research process.
- Faculty Organizers: Nico Bottan, Max Kapustin, and Peter Rich
The Law, Economics, and Policy (LEAP) seminar features current work by scholars conducting research at the intersection of law, economics, and public policy. Presented work will span a range of topics in these areas including, but not limited to, criminal justice, tax policy, regulation, finance, and education. The LEAP seminar is generously supported by the Brooks School of Public Policy, the Department of Economics, and the Law School, with additional external support from Arnold Ventures.
- Faculty Organizers: Amanda Agan, Max Kapustin, and Eleanor Wilking
- LEAP Fall Seminar Series
The MigLab is an interdisciplinary working group for researchers, including students, postdocs, visiting scholars, and faculty, who are interested in the social scientific study of migration.
- Faculty Organizers: Matt Hall and Shannon Gleeson
- Co-sponsored by the Cornell Population Center
The Tech Policy Working Group brings in tech policy and national security experts from across industry, policy, and academia to discuss, debate and inform on the latest issues faced by disruptive and emerging technologies. The working group is a multidisciplinary environment, engaging with scholars from across campus, but also nationally and internationally, to provide a center of gravity at Cornell for addressing policy-related issues.
- Faculty Organizers: Sarah Kreps and James Patton Rogers
- Tech Policy Working Group Events
Research Support
The Brooks School is strongly positioned in its resources, scope, and focus to be a leader in policy research. Our research infrastructure aims to foster cutting-edge research in public policy, support policy scholars from diverse demographic and disciplinary backgrounds, nurture synergies across policy faculty and research areas, and grow collective resources for faculty and graduate students.
JFI-Brooks Fellowship Program
With the support and collaboration of the Jain Family Institute, we launched the JFI-Brooks Fellowship Program in 2022 to advance research and public engagement on policy questions related to climate change, education, social policy, and digital ethics. Our inaugural award recipients research teams are: Sarah Kreps and Adi Rao, and Pauline Leung, Zhuan Pei, and Lexin Cai.
Research on X (Twitter)
; 📌 New Brooks School Faculty Member 📌
Fikri Pitsuwan, Lecturer
Fikri Pitsuwan’s research focuses on applied microeconomic theory, with a particular emphasis on game theory and its applications in organizational economics, industrial organization, and political economy.
@fikripitsuwan teaches courses in microeconomics, game theory, decision theory, market design, and the economics of networks.
Prof. Pitsuwan is also a Cornell alum (Go BIG RED)!
Learn more about his background and teaching here: https://publicpolicy.cornell.edu/people/fikri-pitsuwan/
🍁 Happy Thanksgiving, Brooks School Community 🍁
As always, we’re grateful for our incredible students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Your dedication to creating positive change in the lives of others inspires us every day.
Professor Matthew Hall @fertmortmig, director of the @PopulationCU, appeared on @SpecNews1Albany with Susan Arbetter @sarbetter to discuss why New York State’s population is shrinking and how policymakers might address the trend.
Watch the interview here: https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/capital-region/politics/2024/11/22/head-of-cornell-population-center-on-n-y--population-loss
Their conversation centered on findings from the Program on Applied Demographics’ latest report, which projects a significant population decline driven by low fertility rates, an aging population, and insufficient in-migration to offset these shifts.
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/11/stark-population-decline-projected-nys