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Why a shutdown threat won’t work
There are many people who think that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is bad policy. I am among them. There are also many who think that the current trajectory of government spending is unsustainable and...
View ArticleDoes Anyone Know the Net Benefits of Regulation?
In early August, I was invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Action, which is chaired by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). The topic of...
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The Precautionary Principle vs. Glow in the Dark Plants
In “The Croods,” a box office hit cartoon showing a family of cavemen, the father issues daily warnings to his family that everything new is bad. He explains to his inquisitive daughter that they have...
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Maryland’s “severe financial management issues”
Budgetary balance continues to evade Maryland. In FY 2015 the state anticipates a deficit of $400 million. A fact that is being blaming on entitlements, mandated spending, and fiscal mismanagement in...
View ArticleEnergy Efficiency as Foreign Aid?
A recent suite of energy efficiency regulations issued by the Department of Energy (DOE) have been criticized due to the DOE’s claim that consumers and businesses are behaving irrationally when...
View ArticleMarkets Fail and Governments Do Too
We often hear that markets fail when it comes to preserving the environment, so government regulation is needed to protect natural resources from the ravages of capitalism. But what happens when...
View ArticleEnvironmental Injustice at the EPA
This past week, the EPA’s science advisory board held a public hearing on efforts to measure the “environmental justice” (EJ) impacts of EPA rules. EJ refers to adverse human health and environmental...
View ArticleWhen Regulatory Agencies Ignore Comments from the Public
A few days ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized a rule setting energy efficiency standards for metal halide lamp fixtures. Last October I wrote a public interest comment to the DOE to point...
View ArticleThe “pension tapeworm” and Fiscal Federalism
In his annual report to shareholders, Warren Buffett cites the role that pension underfunding is playing in governments and markets: “Citizens and public officials typically under-appreciated the...
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The barriers to brewing
Recently, Evan Feinberg of Generation Opportunity described some of the barriers craft brewers face. In one instance, a brewer — who does not prepare any food — was told he had to install a hood for a...
View ArticleHow Complete Are Federal Agencies’ Regulatory Analyses?
A report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office will likely get spun to imply that federal agencies are doing a pretty good job of assessing the benefits and costs of their proposed...
View ArticleCorporate welfare spending is not transparent
Over a century ago, the Italian political economist Amilcare Puviani suggested that policy makers have a strong incentive to obscure the cost of government. Known as “fiscal illusion,” the idea is that...
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Institutions matter, state legislative committee edition
Last week, Mercatus published a new working paper that I coauthored with Pavel Yakovlev of Duquesne University. It addresses an understudied institutional difference between states. Some state...
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Rent control: A bad policy that just won’t die
The city council of Richmond, CA is thinking about implementing rent control in their city. Richmond is located north of Berkeley and Oakland on the San Francisco Bay in an area that has some of the...
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Can historic districts dampen urban renewal?
Struggling cities in the Northeast and Midwest have been trying to revitalize their downtown neighborhoods for years. City officials have used taxpayer money to build stadiums, construct river walks,...
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City population dynamics since 1850
The reason why some cities grow and some cities shrink is a heavily debated topic in economics, sociology, urban planning, and public administration. In truth, there is no single reason why a city...
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Northern Cities Need To Be Bold If They Want To Grow
Geography and climate have played a significant role in U.S. population growth since 1970 (see here, here, here, and here). The figure below shows the correlation between county-level natural amenities...
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Why the lack of labor mobility in the U.S. is a problem and how we can fix it
Many researchers have found evidence that mobility in the U.S. is declining. More specifically, it doesn’t appear that people move from places with weaker economies to places with stronger economies as...
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Government Spending and Economic Growth in Nebraska since 1997
Mercatus recently released a study that examines Nebraska’s budget, budgetary rules and economy. As the study points out, Nebraska, like many other states, consistently faces budgeting problems. State...
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Smart rule-breakers make the best entrepreneurs
A new paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (working version here) finds that the combination of intelligence and a willingness to break the rules as a youth is associated with a greater tendency...
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