Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the GOP calculations seem to be right, except for one aspect:
“They calculate numbers for ‘a household’ when it’s unclear how many people are in a household,” Chinn said in an email. Chinn previously analyzed the report for a Wisconsin Watch fact-check of an ad that said Wisconsinites are spending $10,000 more per year compared to 2021.
Top employers across Wisconsin landed on the latest Forbes report ranking midsize and large employers for the nation’s best places to work. The University of Wisconsin-Madison was ranked 113th nationally among large employers with more than 5,000 employees.
“There has not been a line in terms of what modifications are okay,” said Dietram Scheufele, who studies misinformation and social media at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Public opinion about what’s acceptable in altering content has changed, such as editing photos of ourselves on Instagram or LinkedIn, he said.
“If some deepfake comes out of Biden falling down repeatedly right before the election in key states, and it all turns out to be fake five days later, that’s completely irrelevant,” Scheufele said. “We don’t have video-assisted review like we have in in football, which means the game will have ended and the result will stand.”
Kyle Cranmer, a professor of physics and the director of the Data Science Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the emergence of Chat GPT has certainly sparked a major increase in artificial intelligence.
Sausage-making and bratwurst are part of history and tradition in Wisconsin, yet there is always something new to learn. That’s the view of Nathan Broker, the head sausage-maker at Fox Bros. Piggly Wiggly. After working his way through a two-year program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Broker earned the title of Master Meat Crafter in December.
Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist at UW-Madison and the state’s climatologist, said the weather is already causing economic impact, especially on the tourism industry in northern Wisconsin.
“They depend on snow and ice for skiing and skating and ice fishing and so forth,” Vavrus said. “There’s been closed snowmobile trails. There’s been winter festivals that have been canceled, unsafe ice conditions for fishing and so on.”
Although the recent avoidance of a U.S. recession has surprised many economists, a downturn could still occur in the coming months. That’s the view of UW-Madison economics professor Menzie Chinn.
Slightly more Wisconsin farmers reported taking steps to protect soil and water quality in 2022. They planted nearly 754,000 acres of cover crops — plants that protect the soil and keep it in place during the offseason — about a 23% increase from 2017. The number of acres that were not tilled also increased, from about 2.2 million in 2017 to about 2.4 million in 2022. No-till practices reduce soil disturbance.
Those acres are still just a small portion of Wisconsin’s total farmed acres. “I would have hoped to see that pick up a bit faster,” said Erin Silva, a professor of organic and sustainable agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Other members of Wisconsin’s tech hub consortium include businesses (GE HealthCare, Accuray, Exact Sciences, Plexus and Rockwell Automation), colleges and universities (Madison Area Technical College, Milwaukee Area Technical College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and the Universities of Wisconsin), economic development agencies (Milwaukee7, Madison Region Economic Partnership and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation) and workforce training organizations (Employ Milwaukee and WRTP | BIG STEP).
Remote work in Wisconsin drops 11% as companies transition back to in-person work in wake of COVID-19 pandemic.
Valentine’s Day reminds us to show our love to the important people in our lives. We usually declare our romantic love, but sometimes all the hearts and flowers remind us to express our love to others who are important in our lives as well. For a lot of us, this could mean our dogs. About half of U.S. households keep dogs as pets. Not only in word, but also in deed, many people express their love for their dogs not merely as pets, but as family.
Written by David L. Weimer is the Edwin E. Witte Professor of Political Economy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is coauthor with Aidan R. Vining of “Dog Economics: Perspectives on Our Canine Relationships” (Cambridge University Press 2024).
Written by Sarah Halpern-Meekin, a Professor of Public Affairs with the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Vaughn Bascom Professor of Women, Family, and Community in the School of Human Ecology.
“Pittsburgh has recovered from the collapse of its steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s by building out competencies in computer and data science, A.I. and automation and now medical treatments. … Minneapolis-St. Paul — once the flour-milling capital of the world — is now a dynamic finance, retail, medical and biomedical hub. Nearby Madison, Wis. — home to the University of Wisconsin and its University Research Park — hosts over 125 start-ups.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to recruit up to 150 new faculty members over the next three to five years for a research initiative focused on artificial intelligence.
An analysis by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found Wisconsin’s student loan debt is low compared to most other states. Federal student loans still directly affect more than a half-million Wisconsin residents — an estimated 715,800 people — for an average of $32,230 in loans each; that’s nearly one in four people in the labor force, according to 2020 data.
Whether you love beets or hate them, you probably haven’t given them as much thought as Irwin Goldman.
A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Goldman is also former chair of the department of horticulture. The Goldman Lab there is even named after him. He and colleague Nick Breitbach spent decades trying to breed a better beet. Now the Badger Flame Beet is getting attention nationwide from growers and chefs as it becomes increasingly available.
“I do not think this is about fairness – premiums are set based on accident rates and risks associated with different demographic groups and would be higher if the groups are involved in higher rates of accidents or other damages,” said Nancy Wong, Kohl’s Chair in Retail Innovation, Professor of Consumer Science, Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Some banks are good at originating, and they don’t have the capacity to hold these loans on their balance sheet,” said Anthony DeFusco, associate professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And so it frees up resources for them if they sell your loan.”
Low-wage workers have found it especially hard to afford higher housing costs, even before a spike in prices in 2022, explained Laura Dresser, associate director of the High Road Strategy Center (formerly COWS, a left-leaning think tank) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dresser’s research has found that increasing the minimum wage to $15 over the next five years would increase wages for one in seven workers in Wisconsin. That includes one of every four Black and Hispanic workers.
’enCourage UW’ app brings hundreds of learning activities to users phones.
Maintaining “truth in maple syrup” would support the Wisconsin maple industry, which is the fourth largest in the country, she argued. Wisconsin produces about 300,000 gallons of syrup a year, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
Developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1939, a corn known as W335A sat overlooked in a seed bank for decades. Today, that red heirloom corn is what sets apart J. Henry & Sons whiskey and bourbon. They’re the only ones in the world using it.
Grown for three generations at the Henry family farm in Dane County, W335A fell out of favor in the 1970s when higher-producing options became more available. It sat untouched at UW-Madison until 2006, when the Henry family began propagating the seed again. They began turning it into whiskey in 2009, and in 2015 J. Henry & Sons sold its first bottles.
Union membership in the state hovered between 215,000 and 230,000 from 2015 through 2021. That makes it hard to tell if the membership gains in the new data reflect actual membership increases or a correction after an under-estimate last year, said Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“You need to see multiple years of data to really know what’s going on or to be able to say, ‘Absolutely, unions are growing in this state,’” she said.
“If we’re thinking about how we want to manage or protect groundwater resources in the future, we really need to be thinking about what’s happening on the land surface. And if you look at Wisconsin, greater than 90% of the land is, really, rural land,” said Michael Cardiff, a professor in the department of geoscience at UW-Madison. “Rural water users are probably most connected to the largest area of land in Wisconsin, and could probably tell us about what sort of concerns they’re seeing.”
Sports betting is now legal in 38 states. We talk about why the sports gambling industry is booming and how it’s affecting sports leagues themselves with Jason Kido Lopez, an assistant professor in media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
With the new year, millions of people resolve to diet, exercise more or make changes in other aspects of their lives, including personal finances. For most of us, personal finance-related resolutions are a combination of spending less, saving more and maybe paying off some debts. Some of the newfound attention to our financial outlook may even stem from an expensive holiday season that just wrapped up. But the new year offers new opportunities to get on track.
Written by J. Michael Collins, the Fetzer Family Chair in Consumer and Personal Finance at UW-Madison and a professor in the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the School of Human Ecology.
Resources to start a small business in Madison include: University of Wisconsin-Small Business Development Center partners with banks, chambers of commerce, economic development organizations to support small business owners.
“(Nicotine) literally alters the makeup of the brain as it’s developing,” explained Chris Hollenback, the communications director for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. “You have these receptors saying ‘more, more, more.’ When you’re under the age of 17, it’s easier to get addicted and harder to quit.”
Written by Dr. Jonathan Patz, the Vilas Distinguished Professor & John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute & Department of Population Health Sciences.
Claire Allen runs the office at UW-Madison every Tuesday from 10 to 4. She’s been staffing it for nine months as a housing counseling specialist.
“For a lot students, their first time renting is in college,” Allen said. “Lease questions, roommate conflicts, security deposit questions, options to end a lease if it’s not working out,” Allen said. “Questions about landlords not addressing repairs, that’s a big one.”
Although the pandemic exacerbated many of Wisconsin’s workforce issues, labor force participation has been steadily decreasing across the state since its peak in the 1990’s. Today, at the Regional economic Conditions Conference hosted by the Federal reserve Bank of Minneapolis, UW Madison economist Matthew Kures said the age of workers has been a large factor in the decline.
“We simply have fewer workers of working age and prime working age than we had a decade ago or two decades ago,” said Kures.
No longer tied to milking cows herself twice a day, Hinchley says both she and her dairy cows are happier with the robotic milkers operating 24 hours a day.
“It’s not necessarily something that you would have to do in order to stay in the dairy business,” said Chuck Nicholson, a UW-Madison professor of animal and dairy sciences. He noted only about 8% of Wisconsin’s dairy farmers have implemented the new technology, typically family farms that want to save on labor costs. “The labor shortage is definitely a key motivating factor.”
The first female UW-Madison faculty member to start a biotech business, Allen-Hoffmann left her role as CEO of Stratatech after the acquisition and has since retired from her subsequent role as vice president of regenerative medicine at Mallinckrodt. She did not respond to a request for comment.
“When many talk about ‘totaling a car,’ it is often taken to mean that the car is a total wreck and cannot be salvaged, certainly not driven. However, in the insurance world, ‘totaling’ is when the insurer declares the book/cash value (e.g., Blue Book Value) of the car just before the accident is less than the costs of covered repairs from the accident,” says Karen C.A. Holden, professor emeritus, Department of Consumer Science and Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin – Madison Institute on Aging.
Despite documented systemic barriers, a new UW-Madison study shows mothers with low incomes find the credit system in the United States legitimate. We speak with Sarah Halpern-Meekin and J. Michael Collins, two of the researchers.
UW-Madison professor and editor Nate Jung describes how students can approach using generative AI to improve reading and writing skills while remaining mindful of its limitations as a teaching tool.
Stem cell biologists are gaining new insight into the human brain — thanks to technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Randolph Ashton is the associate director of UW-Madison’s Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center and says they can use that research to screen for numerous conditions like spina bifida and autism; and, according to Dr. Ashton, RosetteArray technology could eventually help scientists develop more specific medical treatments – and perhaps even a cure. When it comes to medical ethics, he says his primary concern is the prohibitive cost of such treatment.
We assess several bills working through the Wisconsin legislature that would seek to reform predatory — yet legal — payday loan operations, including one that could cap interest rates, and another that would expand the definition of a “payday loan.” Interview with Sarah Orr, clinical professor and director of the Consumer Law Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Megan Moreno is a University of Wisconsin adolescent medicine physician and co-medical director of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. She often warns parents against romanticizing their own methods of socialization as adolescents over what their kids do to make and keep friends.
“I have a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old, and one thing I think a lot about is checking my own biases of how they’re supposed to be spending their time,” Moreno said.
Quoted: “There can be some ability to trace that, because each company would be producing, potentially, different types of PFAS that could be linked back to them,” said Steph Tai, a law professor and associate dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an expert on environmental law.
“There are companies out there lending to Wisconsin consumers at really just exorbitant interest rates. I mean, I’ve seen 400 percent, 300 percent APRs,” said Sarah Orr, director of the University of WIsconsin-Madison Law School’s Consumer Law Clinic.
“And although the repayment terms are more like an installment loan, they’re really just terrible financial traps for people,” Orr continued. “A person who gets one of these products really spells ruin. I don’t know any other way to express it.”
To improve their effectiveness, helmets worn by military personnel and sportspeople must employ a liner material that limits both. This is where researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison come in. Determined to prevent – or lessen the effect of – TBIs caused by knocks to the body and head, they’ve developed a new lightweight foam material for use as a helmet liner.
“In some sense we’re seeing a continuation of this tendency that we see at the national level, that whatever slow down there is coming, it keeps on getting pushed further and further into the future,” University of Wisconsin-Madison economics professor Menzie Chinn said.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the first lab-grown chicken meat for commercial sale. It’s the first cell-cultivated meat to be approved in the country, and it’s grown from stem cells in a bioreactor—no slaughter required. We talk to Jeff Sindelar, a professor and extension meat specialist in the department of Animal Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about whether lab-grown meat could eventually compete with the factory-farmed meat that dominates the industry.
“If oil prices are going to stay at the levels that they are, then we can continue to see at least not an upward movement in gasoline prices, and that’s gonna allow us to have inflation continue to fall,” said Menzie Chinn, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Underage sales of nicotine products have more than doubled in Wisconsin since 2019, the year when the federal age for purchasing tobacco products was raised to 21. Wisconsin has kept the minimum age at 18 in spite of research showing that raising the smoking age reduces nicotine addiction. Dr. Michael Fiore, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, explains.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who studies technology in education said artificial intelligence holds promise in schools. David Williamson Shaffer is the Sears Bascom Professor of Learning Analytics at UW-Madison. He got into this work after being a teacher in the 80s and 90s.
“Graphing calculators and computers were just starting to come to the place where they were impacting the classroom, were a kind of change agent,” Shaffer said. “They were a way in which the old system was disrupted just enough that we had a chance to rethink a little bit about what we were doing.”
“The challenge that insurance companies face is that since they do not have the same information as drivers, they must set higher insurance premiums that consider the average risk of drivers,” says Jordan Van Reign, assistant teaching professor and MSPO Associate Director, Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics (AAE), University of Wisconsin–Madison. “If insurance companies could have the same information about risk as drivers, they could set individual insurance premiums that better match the risk of each individual. This would improve overall market efficiency by reducing overall rates and better matching rates to the risk of individuals.”
Nations were divided over whether to create a timetable for eliminating fossil fuels at the latest United Nations’ conference on climate change. We learn what happened from Sumudu Atapattu, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor attending the conference.
Patrick Remington, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said the rate of underage tobacco sales is going in the wrong direction.
“It’s more than just a minimal change,” Remington said. “To me, that would be cause to certainly redouble the efforts to vendors and sellers to comply with federal law.”
“Farmers would welcome warm and dry (conditions) to get out and have things planted in a timely fashion, but they need moisture in the soil for germination and early growth,” said Chris Kucharik, a plant and agrosystem sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Several companies say they’re close to achieving nuclear fusion that could be used as clean energy. Cary Forest, a physics professor at UW-Madison, explains why fusion is so difficult to achieve and whether commercial fusion is realistic.
People are generally staying in their homes longer, says Mark Eppli, director of the Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the University of Wisconsin. In 1988, for example, “your average time in a house was 10 or 11 years.” Today, he says, it’s 20 years.
“That’s really long; inventory’s going to stay low,” Eppli says. “With high interest rates making housing all the less affordable…it’s going to keep people in their houses even more.”
“It’s a big deal to have that many logical qubits. A very remarkable result for any quantum computing platform,” says Mark Saffman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He says the new quantum computer greatly benefits from being made of atoms that are controlled by light because this kind of control is very efficient.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is opposing an economist’s application to trademark phrases that include the word “bucky.”
Ed Hirs, an expert on Texas’ power grid and a lecturer at the University of Houston, applied late last year to trademark “buckynomics” and “buckymarkets” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Scientists have said the world needs to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Energy expert Greg Nemet, a public policy professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said any new natural gas plants would guarantee fossil fuel emissions beyond that date, or they would need to be shut down early.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say new technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere must be developed faster to meet goals to reduce global warming.
Enter the steadying voice of Charles Isbell Jr., a nationally recognized expert in computing and AI who started work this summer at the UW-Madison as its latest provost.
If the UW-Madison were a private company, the role of provost might best be described as “chief academic officer.” It is historically the No. 2 position on campus behind the chancellor. Isbell is settling into that role across UW-Madison’s many colleges and schools, but he also brings a wealth of experience in what is one of the defining technological moments in a generation.
Someone who already has a “good credit score” likely already has several credit cards. With credit scores, sometimes it can be easy to constantly pursue perfection–a FICO score of 850. The reality is that a score of 720 or above will provide individuals with strong credit offers across the board. More cards is not always better. — Jonathon Ferguson, financial capability specialist, University of Wisconsin-Madison-Financial Education Division of Extension
