All Publications

This report highlights the best of recently proposed investments in the state’s workforce and offers ideas on how to maximize them to promote economic competitiveness — namely, by building on Wisconsin’s nationally acclaimed efforts to forge a more functional labor market through career pathways and industry partnerships. Specifically, we offer our recommendations on key workforce investments in the biennial budget proposal and “Fast Forward” legislation that can advance business and family prosperity in Wisconsin.

This report presents recommendations on potential high impact philanthropic investments to advance deep building energy efficiency improvements at scale within the healthcare sector. It is one of five reports being developed for a coalition of six philanthropies that are collaborating to see what they – and others – might do to rapidly increase and scale the energy efficiency retrofit market for buildings in the United States. These philanthropies are the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Energy Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Living Cities, MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. The other sectors for which market development strategies are being developed include: commercial office, commercial retail, single-family residential, and multifamily residential.

Wisconsin has the regrettable distinction of ranking among the worst states in the nation in terms of racial equality. Various aspects of the disparity – from education to jobs and income to incarceration – have been documented consistently for more than a decade. This report pulls together a range of data from public sources to make the racial disparities in the state clear. Brutal inequities in the state span measures of poverty, unemployment, educational attainment, and incarceration.

The Living Wage Ordinance for Milwaukee County would establish a floor on wages of $12.45 per hour for the work done in support of the public priorities achieved through county contracts, leases, and concessions. Using the best estimates of covered workers available, COWS simulates the impact of the $12.45 living wage on covered workers.

Articles in The Good Society respond to the premise that “current versions of socialism and democratic capitalism fail to offer workable visions of a good society and seem increasingly to contradict such basic values as liberty, democracy, equality, and environmental sustainability.” The journal publishes outstanding dialectical articles on the pressing political, social, religious, and legal questions facing twenty-first-century society and aims to “create a theoretical basis for the eventual restructuring of real world political-economic systems.”

Living wage ordinances are enacted by local governments to raise job standards for workers at firms that do business with a city or county, or that benefit from taxpayer assistance. At least 140 communities in the U.S. have passed such laws over the past two decades, and there is now a significant body of research on their effect. The evidence shows that living wage ordinances raise wages for low-income workers, often by a significant amount, with few if any measurable negative effects on either employment or taxes. Any government considering a living wage ordinance of its own should consider the track record of living wage laws in other communities in order to implement the best living wage law possible.

Document includes Executive Summary.

SSTI project, with a matching grant from the Center for Freight Infrastructure Research and Education (CFIRE),  identifies and evaluates freight transportation demand management (TDM) strategies to improve transportation efficiency by reducing the social costs associated with goods movement in urban areas.

Information about various freight transportation demand management (TDM) strategies was gathered through a review of literature, an online survey, and interviews with implementers. Strategies are compared based on their costs, benefits, and implementation difficulty. Case studies of six US cities using innovative freight TDM strategies are also included.

To gain a better understanding of the post-secondary education needs in each state, we – together with CLASP – developed profiles of adult workers in every state who are in need of better skills and wages. Click here to learn more about your state.

In a joint effort with the Bipartisan Policy Center and SSTI, the Eno Center for Transportation held a daylong meeting June 20 to discuss federal performance measures for highways. Under MAP-21, the U.S. DOT was required to create and implement a number of performance measures to help guide and monitor federal transportation spending. The workshop brought together a number of experienced experts as well as officials directly involved in and affected by the upcoming ruling.

This report is the result the meeting and summarizes the recommendations based on the workshop discussion and previous research, and includes recommended measures of congestion and system performance as well as additional considerations for their successful implementation. These recommendations integrate the performance measures currently in development or in use by workshop participants as well as the perspectives of participants related to these measures and their value to national, state, and regional interests.