Accelerate Change

Airlines

Since airline deregulation in the 1970s, the U.S. airline industry has consolidated into an oligopoly, forcing travelers to deal with limited options and poor service while the industry seeks bailouts and public support after major crises. VPA's Project on Networks, Platforms, and Utilities addresses how policymakers can improve air travel.

Banks as Public Utilities

In a new paper and policy brief, Morgan Ricks and Lev Menand argue that it is time for Congress to modernize American banking regulation by building on what worked in the past—a public utility approach.

Competition Policy

In recent years, there has been a revival of competition policy in America, including landmark executive actions to institute a whole-of-government approach to competition. VPA contributes to this critical conversation by compiling new ideas in competition policy, drawing on original research, conversations with scholars and policy experts, and recommendations from organizations that work on competition and economic policy.

Defense Production Act

Our work on the Defense Production Act focuses on how policymakers can improve one of the federal government’s most important industrial policy tools and more effectively use the Act’s authorities to meet today’s biggest challenges.

Drone Delivery

Big tech and retail companies have long invested in building drone delivery networks. Now, with new laws quietly opening the door for rapidly expanded drone delivery, we may soon see many more drones flying around making deliveries. VPA’s work on regulating drone delivery offers policymakers tools to empower local communities and govern this new technology in the public interest.

Governing Artificial Intelligence

In a series of new papers, VPA offers solutions to address the concentration of power in the AI industry through antimonopoly policies and measures to build public sector AI capacity. 

New polling from VPA reveals that Americans oppose big tech dominance of AI and support an antimonopoly and public capacity approach to AI.

Grocery Stores

Food deserts are a problem in both urban and rural communities. Some communities have taken action, creating public, co-op, or nonprofit grocery stores. VPA provides a framework for policymakers interested in understanding the case for public grocery stores and the practicalities—and challenges—in implementing them. 

Housing

Many people in the United States are frustrated at the high cost of housing. In recent years, there has been a lively policy debate about how to make housing more affordable.

VPA’s research and work on housing takes an all-of-the-above framework for making housing more affordable: from an industrial policy that would help stimulate housing construction to public options for housing, tax policies, and market-shaping regulations that would prevent abuses of power.