Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) allows researchers to analyze encrypted data accurately without decrypting those data. It is an intriguing method for providing access to sensitive datasets while respecting both privacy concerns and licensing agreements and may eventually have significant use in privacy-protecting research protocols. This grant funds a project to demonstrate the usefulness of FHE algorithms in academic research. Computer scientists Kurt Rohloff from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Shafi Goldwasser from MIT are partnering with the University of Michigan’s Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS). IRIS collects sensitive data from universities on grant spending and staffing. Rohloff and Goldwater will develop an FHE computing environment and associated algorithms designed to analyze this sensitive data while observing necessary privacy-protecting protocols. Grant funds will support graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and programmers working on the project, a social scientist to consult closely with the team about the needs and practices of empirical researchers, and outreach to potential users through workshops, publications, and presentations at professional conferences.

The conferences and journal volumes produced by the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) are premier outlets for policy-relevant research on economics. Biannual meetings feature invited speakers as well as a wide spectrum of policymakers, researchers, and other participants. Only commissioned papers that are carefully edited, presented, critiqued, and revised eventually appear in the journal, where they are published together with discussants’ written comments. Many of the most distinguished and active economists on the national scene regularly turn to this platform as a way of conveying timely ideas in a relatively nontechnical but highly visible format. All kinds of policymakers and media from across the political spectrum end up citing BPEA papers quite frequently. Brookings and the BPEA remain among the few institutions in Washington where respectful, impartial, nonpartisan, and evidence-based debate about economic issues still thrives. This grant provides three years of support for the continued publication of the BPEA.