EconoFact continues to grow, reintroduces facts, analysis into policy debates

Emily Thompson, tuftsdaily.com

Image from article, with caption: Kailash Prasad, Michael Klein and Edward Schumacher-Matos pose for a portrait in Cabot.

Excerpt:

EconoFact, an online publication launched just over a year ago by faculty at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, is continuing to work toward its mission of reintroducing facts and economic analysis into public discourse on social and economic policy.

EconoFact provides data and analysis of current policy issues through short memos written in accessible language, according to the EconoFact website.

Michael Klein, the William L. Clayton professor of international economic affairs at The Fletcher School and co-executive director of EconoFact, said he noticed a lack of sound economic policy ideas from either side during the 2016 presidential election campaign and wondered what he could do to remedy it. Klein was the chief economist in the Office of International Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2010 to 2011. ...

Klein approached the Director of The Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World at The Fletcher School and Edward R. Murrow Visiting Professor of Public Diplomacy Edward Schumacher-Matos about the concerns he and fellow economists had.

“Their great fear was that economic and social policy was going awry, and they wanted to know what they could do about it, how could they influence the public debate. So I said I had an idea, and that idea was EconoFact,” Schumacher-Matos said.

Schumacher-Matos explained that he had conducted research on how audiences react to articles based on their biases, and concluded that it was important to use a fact-first formula when designing EconoFact. ...