Economics | Reseach

The Economic Situation, June 2013

Bruce Yandle | Jun 17, 2013
The US economy is creating new wealth and growing employment, albeit at a slow pace. But uncertainty is the key word that describes the economic situation at mid-2013. There are major unknowns with respect to Fed policy, taxing and spending, the effects of Obamacare on employment, the implementation of Dodd-Frank financial reform, regulatory policy affecting the production of electricity, and the prospects for Europe’s recovery from an extended recession. Add to this pallid picture reductions in growth in China, India, and the developing world taking some of the edge off the global boom, which, in spite of that growth haircut, is still tugging away on America’s export growth.

The Economic Situation, December 2012

Bruce Yandle | Dec 05, 2012
As 2012 comes to an end, how is the great American bread machine faring? Are we about to move from the pale-growth doldrums and shift into passing gear? Or will 2013 bring more of the same?

The Case for Nominal GDP Targeting

Scott Sumner | Oct 23, 2012
The history of central banking is a story of one failure after another. This does not mean our actual monetary regimes have been the worst of all possible regimes—far from it. But it does mean we can improve policy by learn- ing from experience. Every proposed reform is a response to a previous failure, an implicit display of lessons learned.

Economic Analysis By Federal Financial Regulators

Hester Peirce | Oct 23, 2012
This paper will describe just how little high-quality economic analysis the federal financial regulators charged with implementing Dodd-Frank and regulating the financial markets are doing.[3] Although each regulator has a unique approach to economic analysis, all of their approaches fall short of the standard to which executive agencies are held. More fundamentally, the federal financial regulators are depriving themselves of analysis essential to the proper exercise of their rulemaking functions.

Uncreative Destruction: The Misguided War on Vertical Integration in the Information Economy

Adam Thierer, Brent Skorup | Oct 16, 2012
We argue that the antitrust harms Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu fears are not present, and we highlight scholarship on the accepted benefits of vertically integrated firms. We show that Wu's remedies are policy preferences wrapped in the language of competition law. In fact, the information economy is largely competitive and does not warrant interventionist regulatory enforcement. Since much of American economic vitality flows from the information economy and technology, policymakers should reject a radical antitrust remedy like Wu’s preemptive Separations Principle.

The Economic Situation, October 2012

Bruce Yandle | Oct 09, 2012
This special Mercatus Center edition of my Economic Situation report focuses on what I call the stumbling U.S. economy. In the report, I seek to explain how and why the economy is performing so poorly. I do this by assessing some of the economy’s major features. The first assessment involves an examination of the economy’s uneven pulse beat, best seen in GDP growth data. I then turn to state unemployment and state GDP growth data and present another picture of uneven growth. After discussing federal budgets and deficits, I turn to labor markets and then to an assessment of the Federal Reserve Board’s efforts to stimulate the economy using quantitative easing. I conclude this special report with a brief review of what has happened to income distribution and a short summary of what I expect we will see across the rest of 2012 and in 2013.

Medicaid Reform and Emergency Room Visits: Evidence from West Virginia's Medicaid Redesign

Tami Gurley-Calvez, Genevieve M. Kenney, Kosali Simon and Douglas Wissoker | Oct 02, 2012
We use an innovative redesign of West Virginia’s Medicaid that took place from 2007 to 2010 to estimate the causal impact of incentives within Medicaid to encourage better health and health care behaviors and reduce emergency room (ER) visits.

Who Pays the Tax? Theoretical and Empirical Considerations of Tax Incidence

Cecil Bohanon, Brandon Pizzola | Sep 24, 2012
The question of who pays a tax has a discernible answer that need not be shrouded in technical mystery. This paper offers those who have little or no formal exposure to economics a tutorial in the economics of tax incidence.

Taxing Marriage: Microeconomic Behavioral Responses to the Marriage Penalty and Reforms for the 21st Century

Jason J. Fichtner, Jacob Feldman | Sep 17, 2012
Politicians often stress that marriage is a key institution that promotes family values. However, many aspects of the federal tax code do not promote marriage and may in fact provide disincentives and penalize marriage. As more women enter the labor force and female wages rise, the marriage penalty becomes increasingly important to horizontal tax equity concerns and for economic growth. Today, the United States is one of only seven Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to employ joint taxation for married couples.1…

The Economic Situation, September 2012

Bruce Yandle | Sep 11, 2012
The U.S. economy has not been healthy since 2001 when 9/11 pushed the country into a recession. As the accompanying data tell us, real GDP growth has risen to meet the long-term average of 3.11 percent just once since 2001, and that was in 2004. The combination of wars, financial collapse, natural disasters, and political games has taken a heavy toll on economic growth. No one is talking about 3 percent or better growth anytime in the foreseeable future. But it’s not just about Democrats and Republicans. It’s about something deep in the economy