This report examines community concerns and challenges related to extreme heat during a typical year and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It considers which policies have helped address these concerns and challenges and identifies potential opportunities to further support community members with the challenge of extreme heat. The report focuses specifically on American Indian and Latino/a community members, given their disproportionate risk of experiencing detrimental impacts of extreme heat and overlapping risk factors for negative outcomes of COVID-19.

This report examines community concerns and challenges related to extreme heat during a typical year and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It considers which policies have helped address these concerns and challenges and identifies potential opportunities to further support community members with the challenge of extreme heat. The report focuses specifically on American Indian and Latino/a community members, given their disproportionate risk of experiencing detrimental impacts of extreme heat and overlapping risk factors for negative outcomes of COVID-19.

If Arizona is to prosper into the next century, our focus needs to turn to what is essential for our future: The preservation of our groundwater and our increasingly fragile aquifers. This analysis shows that Arizona continues on a path of unsustainable groundwater use that threatens the health and welfare of our state. It is not too late for a course correction, but that will require that Arizonans face the truth and make bold choices.

The state government general fund shortfall in the current fiscal year is projected to be between about $550 million and $1 billion. This shortfall will need to be eliminated through spending cuts and/or revenue enhancements. The Legislature has demonstrated a preference for spending cuts. However demand does not decline during a recession for most public-sector services, including university services. Any reduction in funding for universities will have a negative and direct effect. A reduction in state government spending for universities of around $200 million would cause direct and indirect job losses of approximately 4,000. A substantial decrease in state government funding for universities will have negative consequences beyond these short-term effects.

High quality early childhood programs have proven effective in raising educational attainment and improving earnings and labor market performance. These results are all the more appealing in light of the general ineffectiveness of adult retraining programs. In the area of crime prevention, sociologists and criminologists have also turned their attention to early childhood intervention programs. In contrast to juvenile treatment programs, early interventions hold special promise in that they are preventative rather than crisis-oriented and take place before anti-social behavioral patterns become entrenched. The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive look at the economic issues surrounding early care and education in Arizona.

Economic convergence was only a matter of time for Ireland. That it happened when it did and in such a short period of time was the result of both thoughtful decision-making on the part of many stakeholders and a favorable set of external economic developments. To continue to achieve rapid economic growth, however, Ireland will not be able to rely on increased labor utilization but must succeed in raising output per worker. This, in turn, will require more entrepreneurial activity and participation higher value-added activities. Ireland will need to participate more in the creation of knowledge and not simply be operational in the application of knowledge-based technologies. Arizona, like Ireland in the 1980s, has an opportunity to change its growth trajectory. Arizona can follow Ireland’s lead today and pursue the returns that can accrue from strategic investments or continue on its current path.

Growth in the stock of knowledge has been the most important factor behind the dramatic rise in living standards in the United States and other countries over the past 100 years. Systematic efforts made by firms, universities, governments, and other organizations to increase the stock of knowledge are referred to as research and development (R&D). The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the entire system of R&D in the United States—or as it is sometimes called, the national innovation system. Special emphasis will be placed on basic research. This is the component of R&D that is most likely to be underprovided by the private sector and the one that figures most prominently in public policy toward science and technology. The report also emphasizes the role of universities that, in the United States, perform the lion’s share of basic research.

The report provides a variety of basic statistical indicators of R&D effort and identifies recent trends in sources of R&D funding. The report also reviews classic arguments on the appropriate role of government in supporting R&D and the strengths and weaknesses of universities as performers of R&D. The U.S. national innovation system is compared with those in other major industrialized countries.

This paper provides a review of studies that examine the extent to which university research promotes local economic growth and development. The primary focus of the paper is on economic impacts that derive from the innovative outputs of faculty. this paper evaluates Arizona State University and the Phoenix metropolitan area in terms of factors that enhance the local economic impact of university research. The potential for local impacts from ASU’s research and graduate programs is greatly aided by the fact that ASU is located in a major metropolitan area with a climate and other natural amenities that mobile professional workers find attractive.

The analysis of the value of higher education contained in this report represents an important dimension of the P3 research agenda since measuring the value of educated workers can provide empirical context for understanding the importance of an educated and skilled workforce in a modern economy. In this report, the increases in individual earnings realized from enhanced educational attainment are measured and the benefits to the economy and society in general that are provided by a highly educated workforce are examined.