More articles we would like to commission

Write for Works in Progress.

Here is another list of articles we would like to publish. The previous two lists are here and here, though most of their entries have since been commissioned (and some, on second thought, abandoned).

The list below is a sample of topics. We also want to broaden the types of pieces we publish. The historical case study has become our staple, and we’ll keep running them. But some of our best early work took other forms, like Stephan Guyenet’s 2021 feature on semaglutide, or Keller Scholl’s diary of a Zika vaccine trial. We’d like to do more pieces like those: more narrative journalism, more diaries, and more reporting. If you have an alternative format in mind, please pitch it.

Writers interested in pitching should email wip-pitches@stripe.com with a brief introduction, the pitch in question, and a few paragraphs setting out the argument and the evidence behind it. Our pitching guide can be found here. It is worth reading carefully, as our requirements are not those of other publications.

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Illustration by Olivia Sullivan.

The importance of cheap capital. Scotland got rich in the 1700s and 1800s due to good banking institutions. China researches and invests at impressive rates today, in part due to restrictions on where capital can be invested, and on consumption spending. Europe has fallen behind American growth since 2010, perhaps because banking has prevented the flow of credit. Capital matters a lot. Are these stories true? What does it tell us about what poor or stagnant economies should do differently?

Did Prohibition work? Alcohol prohibition in the United States is remembered as a failure, but alcohol consumption did fall sharply, and its impact on health outcomes, traffic accidents, and domestic violence was probably not trivial. Did it work after all? Were any of its benefits enduring?

A history of the Stein-Hardenberg reforms. In the early nineteenth century, Germany’s economic life was largely organized around serfdom, the guilds, and a complicated structure of jurisdictions inherited from the late Middle Ages. After Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon in 1806, two chief ministers, Karl vom Stein and Karl August von Hardenberg, embarked on an enormous program of reform. Within a few years, serfdom had been abolished, land reformed, the guilds crushed, local government established, and the foundations of industrialization laid. We’d love to read a good history on this episode, of the kind we published on the Hanseatic League.

How Emmanuel Macron undermined the French growth machine. Until the late 2010s, French physical growth was legendary. It built highways, high-speed rail, industrial areas, homes, and energy infrastructure at a pace to inspire envy. But since Macron reformed local property taxes in 2018, this growth machine seems to have disappeared. What happened? What did the reform change, why, and is there a path back?

The Korea divergence. North and South Korea shared a language, culture, and economic base in 1945, and by some measures the North was more industrialized as late as the 1960s. It’s one of the most striking natural experiments in development economics. How similar were they really, how quickly did the gap open, and how large is it now?

North Korean baby bust. We’d also like an article on North Korean birth rates, which seem to be falling rapidly, although probably less quickly than in the rest of East Asia. What does North Korea’s trajectory imply for the prevailing explanations of the “baby bust”?

The spread of tipping. Over the past ten years, a practice once confined to American restaurants has migrated to coffee shops and hamburger stands around much of the world. The cause seems to have been Square’s payment terminals, which made soliciting tips convenient and the default option. But was this inevitable? In particular, we’d like a piece that tells this history from the inside: what led to the design choice, and how important was terminal design really?

What happened to Polish fracking? Europe has large reserves of shale gas. It is often argued that the lack of exploitation is due to regulatory obstacles: many European countries banned fracking over the last ten years. But Poland has reserves, started drilling in 2010, granted licenses to foreign producers, and still didn’t extract any gas. Why?

Modern architecture in Bhutan. After the Second World War, modernist architectural styles became dominant around the world. There is only one exception: the mountain kingdom of Bhutan. Still today, every normal house, flat and office block is built in the old style of Bhutan, with deep eaves, colorful brackets, and timber-mullioned windows. How did this happen? What challenges have Bhutanese builders faced as a result? How is Bhutan’s unique trajectory seen by its people today?

How to make an anti-addiction drug. Addiction was treated as a moral failing long after it was understood to be a neurological condition. But now many anti-addiction medicines are available, including methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone. How have addiction medicines been developed, and how do the different ones work? Are there more coming through the pipeline?

How gas turbines became so efficient. Few artifacts of modern civilization are as optimized as the gas turbine. This efficiency rests on a long accumulation of innovations: single-crystal blades, ceramic coatings, internal air cooling, computational fluid dynamics, and ever-higher firing temperatures. Who deserves credit for these improvements? More importantly: how much further could we go?

The world’s most successful land reform. Plots in both the Indian and Pakistani Punjab are efficient squares, contrasting starkly with the inefficient customary strips that predominate across the rest of the subcontinent. This, plus historic irrigation schemes, explain why it is the region’s breadbasket. How did Victorian-era governors and post-WW2 Indian farmers pull this huge reform off?

Cycling in the Netherlands. It is well known that the Dutch are keen cyclists: they are about ten times more likely to travel by bicycle than the French, British or Spanish, let alone Americans or Australians. But the explanations standardly given for this are obviously inadequate: the Netherlands may be flat and temperate, but it is hardly unique in this. Why, then, has cycling ended up playing a completely different role in Dutch life than it has in almost any other modern society?

The long wait for RNAi crops. RNA interference, which is the cell’s natural mechanism for silencing genes, was first observed in plants in the 1980s, and has been understood well enough to engineer for decades. But the first RNAi-based pesticide only cleared EPA approval in 2023. What applications could it have in agriculture?

Medical specialization. South Korea has become the world leader in cosmetic dermatology, Turkey in hair transplants, Spain in IVF. Are these concentrations accidental or do they reflect regulation, funding or agglomeration? How did these clusters emerge, and what can they tell us about how medical innovation and expertise develop?

Inflation, disorder, and social trust. Countries around the world are seeing upswings of extremist politics and populism. Is this all down to inflation? This article would go through the historic links between inflation and social and political disorder. Did inflation contribute to Nazi Germany? Did inflation end the Soviet Union? Might it have ended the Roman Empire? Can the price system be sustained in the face of high inflation today?

Embrapa and R&D in the developing world. Brazil’s agricultural research corporation transformed the cerrado – a vast tropical savanna once considered unfit for farming – into one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions. How was Embrapa set up, and what did it do? What does it tell us about publicly funded R&D in low- and middle-income countries?

The brain’s locked door. The blood-brain barrier keeps pathogens and toxins out of the brain with remarkable efficiency, as well as nearly every drug we try to send to it. That makes it incredibly hard to develop safe and effective treatments for conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and brain tumors. How do we crack it?

Making dynamic pricing work. People dislike surge pricing. But the practice to which it belongs is among the most useful mechanisms in modern commerce. Charging different prices to different buyers widens access to goods, allocates them toward those who value them most, and sustains markets that would otherwise be too small to serve. We would love to read a piece on the subject, either on notable historical episodes or an account of technical advances that have made modern surge pricing possible.

Why don’t we have a syphilis vaccine? Syphilis is one of the oldest diseases recorded, and is rising again across wealthy countries. Untreated, it can cause blindness, cardiovascular disease, brain damage, and in fetuses, stillbirth or severe disability. But we still have no vaccine. Why?

The invention of super glue. Cyanoacrylate, also known as super glue, was discovered by accident, dismissed, and rediscovered. Its extremely adhesive properties make it used across industries: in medicine to repair wounds and blood vessels, in forensics to lift fingerprints at crime scenes, and in the home to fix crockery in kitchen drawers. What’s the story behind super glue?

How the World Bank prevented a famine. International development institutions are typically slow-moving, long-horizon lenders. But in 2017, during Somalia’s worst drought in decades, the World Bank and other organizations deployed emergency financing fast enough to help avert a large-scale famine. What did they do?

The versatility of plastic. Plastic is one of humanity’s great creations. It extends the shelf life of food, reduces the weight and emissions of transport, and has made everything from clothing to electronics and construction materials more durable and affordable. How were plastics developed, and how did they become so widely used?

The CDC’s disease detectives. The Epidemic Intelligence Service has been training field epidemiologists and deploying them to outbreaks since 1951, including smallpox, Ebola, and COVID. What has it accomplished and how?

Where’s my p53 cancer drug? p53 is the most important protein in protecting us against cancer, and half of all solid tumors develop mutations in it. Restoring its function is probably the most obvious target in oncology. So why, decades after the discovery, do we still have no effective drugs against it? What makes p53 so hard to target, and what strategies could help to tackle it?

How the Serum Institute became the world’s largest vaccine factory. In 1966, a horse-breeder in Pune started extracting serum from his animals to make biological products. Today the company he founded supplies vaccines to more than 170 countries and was a key part of the global COVID-19 response. How did it come to dominate the market?

When Germany was the world’s scientific engine. For roughly a century from the 1820s onward, the German-speaking world produced a remarkable concentration of scientific talent across physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. What created the conditions in the first place? Was it specific institutions – such as the Humboldtian research university, the academies, the seminar system – or state patronage, the fragmentation of German principalities, or something else entirely?

Bonds for R&D. Governments borrow to build infrastructure on the logic that future generations will benefit and should help pay. The same argument could apply to basic research, but R&D is rarely funded this way. Could long-term government bonds be earmarked for research and development work?

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