President Obama is slated to unveil his long-awaited jobs plan Thursday, September 8. What are the optimal policies he should advocate to restore both short- and long-term U.S. jobs growth? The answer depends first and foremost on the right diagnosis of the causes of anemic U.S. economic growth and corresponding job losses both over the past decade and in the last few years. Three primary—and fundamentally differing—diagnoses have been advanced. The two prevailing ones are: 1) this is a demand...

President Barack Obama and his economic team demonstrated the depth of their engagement on innovation and place-based economic development strategies at the “Winning the Future Forum on Small Business” at Cleveland State University last month. The high-level presence at the event in Cleveland showed that the president’s Strategy for American Innovation is more than just rhetoric—top administration officials and the president himself are hustling to make it a reality. At the forum, the president...