Feels Like 10 Degrees

WNYC: Dean of Columbia Business School and the Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics and Finance, Glenn Hubbard, discusses how the same energy and money we devote to charity can be devoted to local business to help end poverty in developing nations. The Aid Trap: Hard Truths about Ending Poverty, written with William Duggan, shows how supporting the local business sector of poor countries would let citizens take charge of growing their own economies.

WNYC: There are more than 220,000 small businesses just in New York City– that’s 20,000 more than five years ago. These are businesses that employ fewer than 50 people each, but overall they provide almost 40 percent of private sector jobs. Some economists say it is these small-time entrepreneurs who drive New York’s economy... After Wall Street fell, the WNYC newsroom decided to track, as best we could, what went down along Main Street. The many main streets around this city, that is. And we wish there was one big lesson we learned. But what our reporters found instead...that each main street has its own, unique ecosystem.

NYT: Little empires of restaurants, bars, clothing stores and other establishments started by homegrown entrepreneurs have multiplied in this patch of brownstone Brooklyn, sending up new sprouts every few blocks... “The cluster retail model really works,” said the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, who has been looking to spur similar kinds of economic development in his borough because, he said, money spent in locally owned stores has a far greater economic benefit for the surrounding neighborhood than money spent in national chains... As Ben Wiley [Bar Great Harry and Mission Dolores] put it, opening a new bar is less an expansion than an insurance policy. “I was never like, ‘Dude, let’s have five or six bars — live large,’ ” he said, laughing. “Four would be enough.”

WNYC: If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: William Eggers and John O'Leary discusses how we can renew our trust in our government and renew its legacy of competence...