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.

Communications and Media

Communication networks, like fixed broadband and cellular services, and the digital media they enable are necessities for daily life, commerce, entertainment, education, health care, public safety, and civic participation. But after decades of consolidation and weakened regulatory frameworks, these telecommunications markets often deliver higher prices, uneven access, and limited public oversight. VPA’s work examines how policymakers can rebuild a fair, affordable, and accountable communications and media system that serves the public.

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.

Consumer Prices and Protection

America is in the middle of a long simmering cost-of-living crisis with no end in sight. Policymakers from across the ideological spectrum are waking up to this fact and trying to find ways to bring down costs.

VPA is contributing to this effort by proposing solutions to bring consumer prices down, using the full toolkit within the long American tradition of policy and law: including network, platform, and utility law; antitrust; consumer protection; industrial policy; and public options.

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.

Insurance

Property insurance (auto, homeowners, workers comp, liability, etc.) costs American consumers and businesses over $1 trillion every year. Because property insurance is a market that has historically been regulated as an Network, Platform, and Utility, VPA is using insights from its NPU project to propose reforms that could improve existing regulation of the market. Our goal is to make the insurance industry work better, by helping consumers get the benefits they are owed at an affordable price.

Maritime Policy

Our work on maritime policy focuses on how policymakers can ensure the country has the capacity and structures it needs to effectively meet the demands of a maritime power.

Music

Music is an essential aspect of culture, bringing people together and fostering creativity and connection. It is also an industry that provides jobs and is an economic engine for many communities. In recent decades, the music industry has changed significantly, with the rise of platforms, monopolized venues, and systematic profiteering. These developments have created significant problems for musicians, music industry participants, and listeners. Our work on the political economy of the music industry aims to ensure that music continues to be innovative and accessible to all, and that its industry works for all of its participants, not only a small few.

Procurement

Our work on government procurement focuses on how policymakers can improve how the government buys what it needs to effectively provide the services the public wants.

Public Governance

Our work on public governance focuses on improving the processes and mechanisms of the government to serve the needs of the people more effectively.

Public Workforce

Our work on the public workforce focuses on how policymakers can improve the systems and structures that govern public workforces to ensure that governments are equipped to meet the needs of the American public and achieve their missions.