Search

I. Introduction A persistent issue for central banks in emerging market economies (EMEs) has been their difficulties in pursuing counter-cyclical monetary policies such as those adopted in advanced economies (AEs). [...], This paper assesses Latin American monetary policy during the pandemic era against the benchmark of a "balanced" monetary policy strategy, that is, a strategy in which policies respond both to deviations of economic activity from equilibrium as well as deviations of inflation from target. We first review the evolution of Latin American monetary policy during this period. Central banks in the region cut rates sharply in response to the recession of 2020, despite steep currency depreciations, but subsequently tightened policy aggressively as inflation rebounded in 2021. We then compare these developments to the behavior of Latin American monetary policy in previous years. Estimating a Taylor rule for the period 2007 to 2019, we find that Latin American central banks had been responding in a balanced manner to movements in both inflation and output. However, with the pandemic, the weight of inflation in their reaction function rose substantially and the weight of output declined. Consistent with that finding, we find that policy interest rates generally fell less in 2020 than those predicted by the Taylor rule model (estimated over pre-pandemic years), and they rose more than predicted by the model in late 2021 and early 2022. Our findings could be interpreted to mean that Latin American central banks abandoned a balanced strategy in favor of one focused solely on fighting inflation. But we believe it more likely that the model, estimated over a more normal period, simply may not provide a good guideline for how Latin American central banks would (or should) react in response to a downturn of unprecedented depth followed by an equally dramatic inflationary surge. Several good reasons for monetary policy in the region to have tightened unusually sharply over the past year fall outside the scope of the standard Taylor rule, including the expansion of fiscal deficits and debt, the drag on supply from pandemic scarring, and the extraordinary rise in global interest rates.

As the COVID pandemic has made clear, the resources available to vulnerable households can change suddenly. Over the past few years, we have seen sharp changes in employment as well [...], In response to the COVID-19 pandemic two new timely poverty measures have been developed to monitor fast-changing economic conditions for the most deprived. The Han et al. near real-time poverty measure uses responses to a global income question on the Monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) that is available for a subsample of those surveyed. The CPSP monthly poverty measure, widely cited in the media, uses data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the CPS and other sources to impute poverty in the Monthly CPS sample based on demographic and employment variables. This paper evaluates the two measures and their estimates of child poverty around the 2021 temporary changes to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). We argue that conceptually the measure based on responses rather than the one based on imputations is preferable, though both measures suffer from important drawbacks. We also conclude that widely publicized claims that child poverty fell by 25 percent when the Advance CTC payments started and subsequently rose by 41 percent when they ended are based on weak evidence and are overstated. The best evidence, though still imperfect, suggests poverty was relatively stable in 2021 and the first half of 2022. Part of the explanation for the lack of change appears to be a compensating decline in employment among low-skilled workers with children. Other evidence tying changes in well-being to the tax credit is confounded by other policy changes.

1. Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the sharpest downturn in the world economy since the Depression, with global GDP declining 3.1 percent in 2020 compared to a rise of 2.9 [...], This paper describes one of the first attempts to gauge the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global trajectory of real GDP over the course of 2020 and 2021. It is also among the first efforts to distinguish between the role of domestic variables and global trade in transmitting the economic effects of COVID-19. We estimate panel data regressions of the quarterly growth in real GDP on pandemic variables for 90 countries over the period 2020 Q1 through 2021 Q4. We find that readings on the number of COVID-19 deaths had a very small effect in our aggregate sample. On the other hand, changes in the stringency of the lockdown measures taken by governments to restrict the spread of the virus were an important influence on GDP. The economic effects of the pandemic differed between rich and poor countries: COVID-19 deaths exerted a somewhat greater drag on GDP in advanced economies, whereas lockdown restrictions were more injurious to economic activity in emerging and developing economies. In addition to these domestic pandemic effects, global trade represented a significant channel through which the economic effects of the pandemic spilled across national borders. This finding underscores how globalization makes each country vulnerable not only to medical contagion from the COVID-19 pandemic, but to economic contagion as well. Keywords: COVID-19, coronavirus, economic growth, global GDP, 2SLS, two-stage least squares, international trade, health policy JEL No. E0,F1,F4,I1 Declarations of interest: none This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or notfor-profit sectors.

I Introduction In the literature on fiscal federalism, the sources and implications of strategic interactions both within and between layers of government have long been of interest (Gordon, 1983; Dahlby, [...], Our purpose is three-fold. First, we summarize some of the core insights from both classic and more recent papers in the literature on the role of intergovernmental grants in systems of fiscal federalism. Second, we provide an updated look at some of the key institutions through which intergovernmental transfers are implemented in the United States. Third, we consider the rich environment of the COVID-19 pandemic in which new additional intergovernmental transfers were deployed, and present empirical evidence on how they affected state-level corporate tax policy. We conclude by discussing productive directions for future research on the economics of fiscal federalism and the role of intergovernmental grants as policy instruments in federal systems.

I Introduction Fiscal transfers from the federal government to state and local governments play an important role In the US federal system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal fiscal assistance reached [...], We use an instrumental-variables estimator reliant on variation in congressional representation to analyze the effects of federal aid to state and local governments across all four major pieces of COVID-19 response legislation. Through December 2022, we estimate that the federal government allocated $603,000 for each state or local government job-year preserved. Our baseline confidence interval allows us to rule out estimates of less than $220,400. Our estimates of effects on aggregate income and output are centered on zero and imply modest if any spillover effects onto the broader economy. We discuss aspects of the pandemic context, which include the surprising resilience of state and local tax revenues as well as of broader macroeconomic conditions, that may underlie the small employment and stimulative effects we estimate in comparison with previous research.

1 Introduction Brand drug makers have discretion over the prices of their products. These decisions have attracted significant attention, with many U.S. policymakers arguing that prices are too high relative [...], We examine whether the pricing of brand drugs, relative to estimates of their clinical value, is related to the way insurers cover those products in Medicare Part D. The net prices of drugs in our sample vary significantly relative to value-based prices from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), indicating meaningfully different pricing strategies. Coverage decisions, formulary placement, and use of utilization management are clearly responsive to first-order differences in costs of products generally. However, among the subset of relatively high-cost products with value-based price estimates, we observe little relationship between pricing strategies and extensive margin coverage decisions. Plans that cover larger shares of lower-value products tend to have permissive coverage policies and higher resulting premiums. Among potential explanations, we highlight institutional features that may help explain these results and propose an empirical test surrounding upcoming policy changes due to the Inflation Reduction Act.

Key Points * Many municipal governments nationwide face serious revenue shortfalls amid the devastating impact of COVID-19. Local budgetary decisions and service provisions face inevitable trade-offs, and local leaders facing [...]

The thing that keeps me up at night actually is the crushing challenge of the diminishing healthcare workforce in our country. We keep opening medical schools, modestly expanding graduate medical [...], In the official reduced form models used by the CBO, Treasury, and the Social Security and Medicare Trustees for projections and policy analysis, many key variables, like real interest rates, health care cost and economic growth, are assumed, often based on a continuation of past trends. By contrast, in our model, these variables are outcomes produced by supply and demand, based on logical functional forms and deep parameter estimates from the literature or empirical analysis. This latter approach provides a more credible and realistic basis for projections with changing underlying conditions and less subject to optimistic hopefulness. We find that, within the next five to ten years, the deficit relative to national income will grow significantly beyond historical experience, and with the prospect of continued increases, without policy changes, may be regarded as unsustainable. In particular, we project that debt-to-GDP will be 132 percent in 2032, compared to CBO's recent projection of 115 percent. In 2052, we project 258 percent compared to CBO's 189 percent. Our projection of national health care spending relative to GDP in 2072 is 29.9 percent, compared to 28.4 percent by CMS, used by the Medicare Trustees. Longer term, our projections show even worse outcomes for debt, deficits, Social Security, Medicare, and health care spending than official projections, and declines in the rate of welfare improvement. These results mainly owe to higher rates of health care inflation, arising from labor shortage effects because health care is produced in a low productivity, labor-dependent sector, and real interest rates rise in the long-run because of increasing debt, bringing about the vicious cycle of growing deficits and debt. Acknowledgements: We appreciate helpful comments from and discussion with James Capretta, Jagadeesh Gokhale, and Steve Robinson. All opinions expressed and mistakes made are our own and not theirs, nor our organizations'.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, formerly called the Food Stamp Program) provides food benefits to 40 million Americans each month at a total cost of over $110 billion [...], The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is among the nation's largest safety-net programs, helping low-income households afford food, improve nutrition, and support employment. As program expenditures continue to grow, assessing SNAP from the perspective of employment and health outcomes is crucial. We analyze administrative and survey data to document trends in employment and health outcomes for adult SNAP recipients from 1996 to 2019. We find the fastest-growing groups of the adult caseload suffer from low employment levels and poor health outcomes. These results suggest that program reforms should focus on not only reducing hunger but also improving employment and nutrition.

Families are the foundational unit of our social order. Countless social activities and institutions branch from the family unit. It is under the guidance of the family that young men [...], Over the past several years, a major part of the political debate has centered on whether young adults have enough money to raise a family in the US. Indisputably, the data show that fewer Americans are getting married than in decades past, and if they do, they are marrying later in life and having fewer children. Combined with concerns over declining fertility rates generally, there is also a concern over an increasing share of Americans who have children--especially those with low incomes--outside of marriage, which carries a host of social and economic challenges in the US. It has become nearly omnipresent in American political discourse--on both right and left--to blame these declines in family formation on economic hardship. The ascendant narrative suggests that it has become harder for the average American to afford forming a family, which in turn has driven down marriage and fertility rates. In other words, as the relative economic fortunes of Americans have worsened, raising a family has become less financially viable over time. This report takes a closer look at the "family affordability" hypothesis when it comes to our half-century decline in marriage and childbearing. In all, a close and comprehensive look at measures of income and expenses today in comparison to the past suggests that the true causes for declines in family formation are more complex than simply an increase in the financial burdens of raising a family. By most measures, incomes have grown slowly but steadily over the past several decades in real terms. And although incomes have grown much more quickly at the top than the bottom, they have nonetheless grown in real dollars for almost everyone. Some populations, like single mothers with children, face particular financial challenges, but both the growing safety net and increased earnings have made them better off than they were in previous generations. Additionally, contrary to conventional wisdom, the costs of raising a family--including housing, childcare, and higher education costs--have not grown so substantially over the past several decades that they indicate an affordability crisis. The data do show that certain costs have increased in recent years for some populations. For example, the costs of housing for low-income and working-class renters in certain parts of the country and childcare for high-income families have risen sharply in recent years. These financial "pinch points" help explain the plausibility of the "family affordability" hypothesis. However, it is difficult to tease out whether increasing costs in these areas reflect changing preferences among families for a higher standard of living (such as larger homes or higher-quality childcare) or an affordability crunch. If incomes have grown and costs reflect preferences, why does the affordability crisis narrative persist? One reason is that standards and perceptions change. Some goods and services that people need or perceive as necessary today may have been seen as luxury goods in years past. And in some cases, tastes have outgrown means--evidenced by increased consumption, vehicle ownership, and housing size. Another reason is that our stock of social capital--the value of our social networks--has declined in recent times. Strong connections to individuals and institutions offer social support, which can reduce the costs of raising a family. When these connections decline, so can the affordability of family life. Based on my review of the evidence, declining incomes and rising costs from years past are not the primary force driving a deterioration of family life. Certainly, some groups, such as low-income renters, single mothers, and families forced into center-based childcare, may face higher costs than in the past. But these changes are not sufficient to explain the pervasive sense that it is more difficult for the average American to raise a family today than it was in past generations. Instead, incomes not keeping pace with changing preferences likely are behind perceptions of an affordability challenge, as is the availability of less social support than in years past.

April 2023 Key Points * Efforts to deinstitutionalize foster care have significantly reduced placement capacity and forced older children and those with higher levels of need to live in a [...]

April 2023 The Honorable Cathy McMorris Rodgers 1. I was encouraged to read in the 2023 Medicare Trustees Report that CMS actions, most notably removing hip and knee procedures off [...]

Profound changes in technology and climate, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic shock, have fundamentally changed the nature of work for firms and employees. Affected business owners, students, parents, incarcerated individuals, [...], Profound changes in technology and climate, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic shock, have fundamentally changed the nature of work for firms and employees. And, because most labor markets are local, that change requires rethinking how data and evidence can be generated in a timely and actionable way to inform local decisions. The emergence of new types of local data, new cloud-based platforms allowing state and local agencies to securely share de-identified confidential data, and new training programs to build state workforce capacity means that there is new potential for programs that are designed and shaped at the local level. A new workforce information system--a National Collaborative for Local Workforce Information (NCLWI)--can be designed that is driven by local needs and that is timely, actionable, and responsive. This report describes why and how such a system should be constructed. The approach, inspired by the successful National Agricultural Extension Program, is fundamentally local in nature. It should be federally funded but driven by state and local needs, networks, and decision makers. It should build on the success of multistate data collaboratives in sharing data across agency and state lines and partnering with local universities. The result will be bottom-up, locally generated projects that can be tested, improved, and scaled to become products that can be put into practice across the country.

On February 15, 1944, with D-Day approaching, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill chaired a cabinet meeting with an agenda that went beyond the ever-present military and diplomatic concerns. In particular, [...], The UK National Health Service (NHS), now in its 75th year, has devoted supporters inside and outside the country who admire its egalitarian ethic and public-service orientation. However, the rapid deterioration of its performance in recent years, and especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, is too glaring and dangerous to overlook. A major challenge is the health service's near-exclusive reliance on political and bureaucratic processes for resources and organizational direction. Free care at the point of service and publicly owned hospitals sustain the NHS's popularity, but long waits for needed care, even when the services are "free," harm patients. Neither major political party appears ready to explore systemic reform, but if political conditions create an opening, UK leaders might consider moving the NHS closer to the public-private models found in other European economies, as has been suggested at various points in its history and also recently. The lesson for other countries from the NHS's ongoing crisis is that full governmental control of medical care brings risks, not just potential and often-overstated rewards.

Nearly every health policy challenge is magnified by the high underlying cost of health care in the United States. High expenditures in programs like Medicare or Medicaid create budgetary pressures [...]

1. Transparency and Antitrust Enforcement p. 2 II. Site Neutral Payments p. 3 III. Part B Drug Payment p. 4 IV. 340B Reform p. 5 V. Improving and Focusing Competition [...], High health care costs affect nearly all health care debates. High costs make it expensive to expand insurance coverage to new populations or cover new services. High spending in public programs strains government budgets, while high spending in the commercial market reduces wages. In this piece, we highlight areas where the 118th Congress can make tangible progress in reducing health care costs by increasing competition. We specifically focus on a set of procompetitive policies that have attracted various levels of bipartisan interest in recent years. In each case, we describe the rationale for these proposals and discuss how they are likely to make markets work better, as well as how they would affect the federal budget. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all policies that could attract bipartisan interest, but the list we offer here includes some of the most plausible options for passage in a divided Congress. While these policies are far from sufficient to address all inefficiencies in health care markets, they would make tangible progress in the direction of better functioning markets.

Generational categories, such as baby boomers, Generation X, millennials, and Generation Z, are ubiquitous in American culture, featuring prominently in news stories, marketing materials, and published research. Despite their prevalence, [...], Generational cohorts are commonly used labels that serve to capture differences across time. Evolutions in culture, lived experience, and identity centered on specific events or demographic trends (such as the baby boom) collectively influence members of a generation. At their core, these demographic differences are easily quantified. For instance, about half of Generation Z is non-Hispanic white, compared to 71 percent of baby boomers. Religious, educational, and sexual identity all vary considerably between generations. That said, key generational qualities expand beyond demographic comparisons. In order to explore generational differences while keeping in alignment with best practices in social science research, this report seeks to home in on generational difference by exploring formative teenage experiences. Such experiences are largely held in common among members of the same generational cohort, yet due to the ebb and flow of technological innovation, population trends, social mores, and economic circumstance, they vary meaningfully between the generations. Gen Z stands apart socially. Rates of teenage loneliness are high, and younger Americans report having spent less time with friends in person growing up than did previous generations. More than six in 10 Gen Z adults said they felt lonely or isolated during at least some of their teenage years, nearly double the rate among baby boomers (36 percent). Such generational unevenness in formative experiences extends to other aspects of youth as well. Only about half of Gen Z adults say they had a boyfriend or girlfriend during their teenage years, a far cry from the more than three-quarters of Generation Xers and baby boomers who report "going steady" for at least some of their teenage years. Gen Z is also significantly less likely than older generations to have regularly attended religious services, worked a part-time job, or consumed alcohol, pot, or cigarettes for at least part of their teenage years. Similarly, teenage participation in competitive sports and outdoor activities, such as hunting and scouting, is on the decline, though athletic participation among young women outpaces the oldest generations. Political differences both between and within the generations abound. About four in 10 Gen Z adults are liberal, one-third moderate, and one in four conservative. When it comes to political philosophy, a meaningful gap opens between Gen Z men and women. Forty-six percent of Gen Z women identify as liberal, compared to 28 percent of Gen Z men. This is the largest gender gap of any generation. Political trust also varies widely by generation. Just 34 percent of Gen Zers and millennials say that, when they were growing up, political leaders could generally be trusted. This share pales in comparison to the two-thirds of baby boomers and eight in 10 members of the silent generation who say the same. The survey also reveals important differences regarding sexual identity among the generations. Nearly one in three (31 percent) Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ, the greatest share of any generation and far more than Gen Z men (16 percent). One fifh (20 percent) of Gen Z women identify as bisexual, which makes up about two-thirds of the share of Gen Z women who identify as LGBTQ. Meaningful differences also arise between generations and within Gen Z over the stability of sexual attraction over time and whether sexuality is innate or socially constructed.

Most right-of-center criticism of Medicaid comprises a mix of the following: The program's spending incentives stimulate demand while restricting supply. They encourage state officials to maximize their capture of federal [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic, well into its third calendar year, has been America's greatest crisis since World War II. (1) In 2020 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control [...]

The US is an outlier among advanced economies in that its national government does not fully control, through regulation and budgeting, health insurance coverage and the provision of medical care. [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic initiated a dramatic decline in public school enrollment. (1) During the 2019-20 school year, almost all public school buildings closed in March or April 2020. (2) The [...], We examine how COVID-related reopening policies during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years affected enrollment in public school districts. We use difference-in-differences and event study designs to estimate plausibly causal effects of different reopening policies on public school enrollment. Consistent with prior research, we find that public school districts with the most amount of remote instruction during the 2020-21 school year saw the largest enrollment declines in the years following the pandemic, whereas districts with the most amount of in-person instruction saw the smallest enrollment declines. The addition of enrollment data for 2021-22, the second full pandemic school year, allows us to show that districts offering the most in-person instruction in the prior year regained much of their enrollment losses, while districts that offered the most remote instruction saw enrollment decline further. Lastly, enrollment changes are evident across all grade spans but are larger in the youngest grades. Results are robust across a variety of different model specifications. Our findings suggest that reopening policies played a large role in which districts lost and regained enrollment in the years following the pandemic.

I. Introduction Operation Warp Speed has successfully delivered two highly effective COVID-19 vaccines, with additional vaccine candidates undergoing clinical trials. However, vaccine production and distribution are slow, with the vaccination [...], Though COVID vaccines are finally available, the rate at which they are administered is slow, and in the meantime the pandemic continues to claim about as many lives every day as the 9/11 tragedy. I estimate that with the promised rate of vaccinations, if no additional nonpharmaceutical interventions are implemented, 406 thousand additional lives will be lost and the future cost of the pandemic will reach $2.4 trillion, or 11% of GDP. Using a cost-benefit analysis, I assess whether it is optimal for the United States to follow the lead of many European countries and introduce a nation-wide lockdown. I find that a lockdown would be indeed optimal and, depending on the assumptions, it should last between two and four weeks and will generate a net benefit of up to $1.2 trillion. JEL classification: I10, I18 Keywords: COVID-19, Pandemic Curve, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions, Public Health Policy, Lockdown

Key Points * Even before the pandemic, American schools were not attracting or retaining an adequate education workforce. Approximately 10 percent of teachers leave the profession each year. * We [...]

I Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic confronted state and local governments with a unique set of pressures. As during more conventional periods of economic distress, tax revenues were threatened while strains [...], We estimate whether federal aid for state and local governments played a role in advancing population testing for COVID-19 and the administration of vaccines. To overcome biases that can result from the endogeneity of federal aid allocations, we use an instrumental-variables estimator reliant on the substantial variation in federal aid predicted by variation in states' congressional representation. We find that federal fiscal assistance dollars had a modest if any impact on the pace of vaccine rollouts, may have improved the equitability of vaccine administration, and had a substantial impact on the volume of tests administered. Regarding the total number of vaccines delivered, we estimate that an additional $1,000 in fiscal relief per resident, which would amount to $330 billion nationwide, translated into just under 1,200 extra doses of the vaccine being delivered per 100,000 people, with the upper bound of our confidence interval suggesting that we can rule out effects in excess of 7,030 extra doses per 100,000 people. We find that federal dollars predict a smaller gap between the vaccination rates of those with a college education relative to those with a high school education. Finally, our baseline estimate implies that each $1,000 in COVID-19 relief aid per capita generated 55,850 additional tests per 100,000 people.

1 Introduction Fiscal transfers from the federal government to state and local governments play an important role In the US federal system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal fiscal assistance reached [...], We use an instrumental-variables estimator reliant on variation in congressional representation to analyze the effects of federal aid to state and local governments across all four major pieces of COVID-19 response legislation. Through September 2021, we estimate that the federal government allocated $855,000 for each state or local government job-year preserved. Our baseline confidence interval allows us to rule out estimates of less than $433,000. Our estimates of effects on aggregate income and output are centered on zero and imply modest if any spillover effects onto the broader economy. We discuss aspects of the pandemic context, which include the surprising resilience of state and local tax revenues as well as of broader macroeconomic conditions, that may underlie the small employment and stimulative impacts we estimate in comparison with previous research.

Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 INTRODUCTION 3 I. INTERNAL TRENDS AND STATE OF PLAY 5 II. IRAN'S COUNTERPROTEST STRATEGY 8 III. PERSONNEL IS POLICY 20 IV. THE REGIME'S TRAJECTORY 26 V. [...], Iran is becoming a more authoritarian and repressive state, which has direct implications for the future of the region and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Iranian regime is intensifying its efforts to control the population and retain the ruling elite's hold on power amid mounting domestic crises and instability. Regime leadership has always used repression to secure power, but recent trends indicate a change in the political establishment's relationship with the Iranian people. The security services are building an increasingly adaptive and sophisticated police and surveillance state, improving their capability to violently suppress domestic dissent. US decision makers must recalibrate their policies vis-a-vis Tehran to reflect this new reality. Restoring the JCPOA would not reverse Iran's shift toward more repressive governance. A worsening internal security environment, which may intensify in the years ahead, is driving this transition. Popular protests and violence against the regime have swelled throughout the country in recent years, stoking the Iranian leadership's fear of domestic instability. Civil disorder, largely driven by economic grievances, has become commonplace, testing the state's defenses against its own people. Factors further exacerbating authorities' concerns include the COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility that the US will someday resume a maximum-pressure policy, and political uncertainty in the lead-up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's passing. The regime is optimizing its internal security apparatus for social control. Iranian authorities have adopted a three-pronged counterprotest strategy, incorporating prevention, force, and censorship. This approach relies on an expansive constellation of neighborhood patrols, paramilitary forces, and security bases--all designed, in part, to forecast when protests will occur and crush them early. The regime is increasingly involving its conventional military--named the Artesh--and possibly foreign proxy fighters in internal security missions. Advanced technologies are central to this counterprotest strategy. Iranian leadership sees the success of the Chinese Communist Party in controlling and monitoring its own population and seeks to partly emulate this model of social control. Iranian authorities have embraced the concept of internet sovereignty and are increasingly willing to disrupt the internet and telecommunications in Iran to abet their protest crackdowns. They are also investing in domestic surveillance infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI) to suppress dissent. Iranian officials hope to harness AI's analytical potential to synthesize a broad range of data streams collected through increasingly diverse digital means to identify and preempt internal security threats in real time. The regime's more authoritarian mode of governance could change how it interacts with the region and the JCPOA. Iran's rulers may come to perceive the success of their counterprotest strategy as a source of leverage and strength. The regime could believe that it can more effectively repress its citizens with little fear of consequence and that it is better prepared to survive without the economic benefits of the nuclear deal. Understanding this evolution from the Iranian leadership's perspective can help US policymakers address the national security challenge Iran poses to the US and its allies and partners. Policy Recommendations Below are three policy recommendations that the US should adopt. Counter Digital Authoritarianism. The US should integrate its Iran policy into a larger effort to counter the global spread of digital authoritarianism. Iran could become yet another agent for proliferating repressive technologies and methods of social control abroad. Iranian regime leadership has demonstrated its capability and willingness to send its internal security apparatus to Iraq and Syria to support violent crackdowns against protesters and thereby preserve Iranian economic, political, and security interests there. Tehran could increasingly export such capabilities if Iranian authorities conclude such exchanges are in its interest as they refine their repressive tool kit. A broader US strategy to confront the global spread of digital authoritarianism is required, especially if Iran advances further along this trajectory. Adjust the Approach to the JCPOA. The US should not allow Iran to exploit the JCPOA to deter the US from pursuing other matters of interest to American foreign policy and national security. Ascendant hard-liners will promote aggressive and authoritarian behavior in Iran and the region in the years ahead while refusing to compromise with the West on Tehran's missile program and regional activities. Given the opportunity, they would use funds derived from the revival of the JCPOA to abet such efforts. Khamenei and these hard-liners do not consider the nuclear agreement sustainable and may abandon, delay, and reverse its implementation to pressure the US on other matters. Prioritizing the JCPOA above all else will damage the United States' capacity to address the range of issues it faces vis-a-vis Iran. Shine a Spotlight on Repression. The US should broadcast publicly when the regime conducts harsh crackdowns on its citizens. Iranian leadership seeks to hide its repression through internet shutdowns. The US can draw international attention to the regime's abuses and impose a cost on the Iranian leadership if it continues such behavior. The US should especially highlight Iran's use of foreign proxies for domestic crackdowns, if it occurs. Iraqi and Lebanese citizens should see where the allegiances of these proxies lie. The regime's use of foreign fighters for domestic missions in Iran could erode political support for Iranian proxies in their respective home countries or deter Tehran from co-opting them to hurt its own people.

I. Introduction The pandemic spread of COVID-19 poses an unprecedented threat to the U.S. economy, national security, and the quality of life in the United States. Experts agree that a [...], We investigate the optimal duration of the COVID-19 suppression policy. We find that absent extensive suppression measures, the economic cost of the virus will total over $9 trillion, which represents 43% of annual GDP. The optimal duration of the suppression policy crucially depends on the policy's effectiveness in reducing the rate of the virus transmission. We use three different assumptions for the suppression policy effectiveness, measured by the [R.sub.0] that it can achieve ([R.sub.0] indicates the number of people an infected person infects on average at the start of the outbreak). Using the assumption that the suppression policy can achieve [R.sub.0] = 1, we assess that it should be kept in place between 30 and 34 weeks. If suppression can achieve a lower [R.sub.0] = 0.7, the policy should be in place between 11 and 12 weeks. Finally, for the most optimistic assumption that the suppression policy can achieve an even lower [R.sub.0] of 0.5, we estimate that it should last between seven and eight weeks. We further show that stopping the suppression policy before six weeks does not produce any meaningful improvements in the pandemic outcome. Keywords: COVID-19, Pandemic Curve, Attack Rate, Economic Damages, Public Health Policy, Suppression, Mitigation

The federal tax code provides several benefits to households with children, which include deductions for each child or other dependent, lower tax brackets for head-of-household filers compared to single filers [...], Since 1917, tax filers with children have received ever-increasing federal income tax benefits. The tax benefits include deductions for each child or other dependent, lower tax brackets for head-of-household filers compared to single filers with similar incomes, and tax credits for children and childcare expenses. The tax credits have nonrefundable portions that are limited to tax liability and refundable portions that can be received in cash if they exceed tax liability. Recently, both Democrat and Republican lawmakers have advanced proposals to further expand the most prominent child tax benefit, the child tax credit (CTC). Created in 1997 as a $500 nonrefundable credit, the CTC was significantly expanded over the past two decades and is now the largest single tax benefit for households with children. In this report, we begin by detailing the origins of the tax benefits--including the CTC--afforded to filers with children. We discuss various methods and tax principles applicable in analyzing these benefits. We analyze the budgetary, distributional, and incentive effects of current-law child tax benefits. We frame the debate over expanding the CTC in the context of its growth and current budgetary impact. Finally, we evaluate recent proposals to further expand the CTC, including those in President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan, recent legislation adopted by the House Committee on Ways and Means, and Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-UT) proposed Family Security Act.

December 2020 The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the [...], Banking system stress tests are a key component of IMF/World Bank financial stability assessments. The focus on stress tests is predicated on prior belief that there is a strong contemporaneous correlation between bank performance and stress scenario macro-financial variables. Using US data, I use latent factor analysis to show that the presumed correlations are weak at best. This shortcoming is addressed by introducing a novel macro-financial variable to measure system-wide bank performance and using shrinkage estimators to reduce the risk of overfitting. Bespoke stress test models are constructed for the largest 200 banks in the US as of 2008Q2 using alternative shrinkage estimators. Bank performance is forecast over the first three years of the financial crisis using actual economic conditions as the stress test scenario. Parsimonious models including the new banking macro-financial variable are shown to be most accurate, but none of the stress test models analyzed are accurate by any absolute standard. The deficit in forecast accuracy identified herein is likely to be magnified for stress tests forecasts derived from less comprehensive data.

Dramatic demographic changes are underway in China, and they bear directly on the country's economic, social, and geopolitical outlook for the decades ahead. (1) Beijing's official announcement in January 2023 [...], Researchers and decision makers in Beijing and the West pay close attention to many major Chinese population trends, including its pronounced sub-replacement fertility, its shrinking manpower totals, and its rapid population aging. Yet one momentous demographic trend in China has as yet attracted almost no interest: the transformation of the country's family structure. The reason for this oversight is obvious. Beijing, like other modern governments, simply does not collect information on family structure or kinship networks--so the regime does not think about the issue and its implications. In this report, we model simulations of China's past and prospective patterns and trends in kinship networks. We then use the results from these simulations to analyze, assess, and speculate about their implications for China's social, economic, and political future. We believe this is the first study to think through the far-reaching implications of the results of demographic and kinship network modeling for a national population of a major economy and great power. Our simulations show that the Chinese family is about to undergo a radical and historically unprecedented transition, as extended kinship networks atrophy across the nation and close blood relatives disappear altogether for many. This fraying of the extended family and atomization of the nuclear family come at an almost exquisitely inopportune moment in China: Social needs are soaring alongside the rising tally of elderly dependents and the shrinking ranks of those on whom the elderly can rely--two social indicators poised for inescapable collision in the years immediately ahead. Indeed, the withering of the Chinese family as we now know it will make for new and unfamiliar challenges at every stage in the life cycle, for both Chinese people and the Chinese state. Our simulations revealed several key findings. * An unexpected finding: In terms of sheer quantity, Chinese networks of blood kin were never before nearly as thick as at the start of the 21st century. Due to dramatic improvements in survival, men and women in their 30s today (2020) have on average five times as many living cousins as in 1960. China's "kin explosion" may be an important, heretofore unobserved, factor helping explain the Chinese economy's remarkable performance since Mao Zedong's death. * But that kin explosion has reached its zenith, and China is now on the cusp of a severe, unavoidable, and unrelenting "kin crash," driven by its prolonged and increasingly steep sub-replacement fertility patterns. The implosion of consanguineous family networks, in our models, means that China's rising generations will likely have fewer living relatives than ever before in Chinese history: A "kin famine" looms. * Population simulations also project a radical inversion within the nuclear family, with living parents and in-laws outnumbering children for middle-aged Chinese men and women. Further, due to the surfeit of baby boys under the notorious One-Child Policy (1980-2015) and declining cohort sizes, growing numbers of men in the decades ahead will enter old age without spouses or children--the traditional sources of support for the elderly. * China's coming revolution in family structure stands to overturn fundamental social arrangements taken for granted today. The focus of the family in China will necessarily be redirected from the rearing of the young to the care of the old. The reliability and durability of familial bonds of duty will be an increasingly crucial question--perhaps even a matter of life and death for many, including frail and impecunious elders in the Chinese hinterlands. * Notwithstanding the looming macroeconomic implications of old-age dependency burdens, the most consequential economic impact of China's coming revolution in family may actually concern the micro-foundations of the national economy. Since earliest recorded history, China's guanxi networks have helped get business done by reducing uncertainty and transaction costs. Just as proliferation of blood relatives likely proved a powerful stimulant for growth during the era of China's phenomenal upswing, the drastic coming plunge in living biological kin in China between now and 2050 may prove an economic depressant. * The coming revolution in Chinese family structure promises to have political reverberations as well. If the waning of the family requires China to build a huge social welfare state over the coming generation, as we surmise it will, then Beijing would have that much less wherewithal at its disposal for influencing events abroad through economic diplomacy and defense policy. * Further, our simulations indicate that by 2050, close to half of China's overall pool of male military-age manpower will be made up of only children. Any encounter by China's security forces involving significant loss of life will almost unavoidably presage lineage extinction for many Chinese families. Autocracies are typically tolerant of casualties--but this may not at all be the case in the only-child China of today and the coming decades. Analysts and decision makers in China (and elsewhere) have barely begun to think about the many ramifications of this great disruption for China's future. Inattention to Chinese family structure is a blind spot--quite possibly a fateful one.

Few topics capture our interest as completely and intensely as dating and romantic relationships. The process of finding a partner--and the struggle it frequently entails--is an omnipresent feature of the [...], American dating experiences and the relationships that eventually emerge from them are highly individualized. No two stories are the same. But a new survey reveals an enduring gender divide in the way Americans approach dating, the hesitation they express when it comes to partner selection, and the negative aspects of experiences--whether online or off. Coming out of the pandemic and all the social and the romantic challenges it introduced, singles do not appear eager to date. Young women especially report being less interested in actively dating; after the pandemic, more report being single. Women are also more likely than men to report being unable to find someone who meets their expectations. And women, especially college-educated women, appear to have more exacting standards when it comes to dating than men do. Women express greater reservations about dating someone who does not share their views on abortion and are more likely to take issue with someone who smokes, lives with their parents, or is unemployed. Men care less about these qualities in a potential romantic partner. Politics is also a salient part of dating. Roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans report that they would be less inclined to date someone of the opposite party. Support for Donald Trump is an even greater dating liability, especially among more moderate and liberal women. Despite the rising importance of online dating that has given singles a near-limitless supply of potential dates, young Americans express a good deal of ambivalence about using these platforms. Women report more negative than positive experiences using online dating sites and apps. Perhaps as a result, a growing number of young people are finding partners in their more immediate social circle. Compared to previous generations, young adults today are far more likely to say their current partner or significant other was a one-time friend.

Mandated medical leave from work has existed at both federal and state levels in the United States for over 25 years under family and medical leave laws.1 These laws generally [...]

There are more than three million reports of child abuse and neglect each year in the United States. (1) Deaths from child maltreatment are on the rise, reaching almost 2,000 [...]

In August, the US consumer price index (CPI) posted an increase over the preceding 12 months of 8.3 percent, and core inflation, which excludes the volatile energy and food components [...], Soaring job vacancies have been widely cited as an indication of overheated labor markets pushing up wages and inflation. But have tight labor markets and rising wage rates been the main drivers of the recent surge in inflation? The US evidence for this Phillips curve story is mixed at best. In this report, we examine the international evidence and ask: Have economies with larger increases in wage growth since the beginning of the pandemic experienced larger increases in core inflation? We find the answer is no. Although there is a strong correlation between job vacancies and core inflation across countries, there is only a tenuous correlation between nominal wage growth and core inflation. We conclude that rising job vacancies are proxies for rising aggregate demand, which has pushed up prices of intermediate inputs and markups over cost. Central banks may still need to tighten monetary policy to restrain inflation, but large increases in unemployment may not be necessary to bring inflation under control.

Chairman DeSaulnier, Ranking Member Allen, and other members of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, thank you for inviting me to testify at this morning's hearing examining the [...]

Introduction On September 28, 2022, President Joe Biden is convening the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, where he will reveal a national strategy to end hunger and [...]

Nearly 90 years after Congress first declared it the policy of the United States that all Americans should have access to 'rapid, eficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide' communications services, (1) and [...], For decades, Congress has made it the United States's policy to make modern communications services available to all Americans. This policy recognizes that in certain rural areas and economically depressed communities, the fxed costs associated with broadband deployment would make providing service prohibitive absent government subsidies. The principal means by which Congress has authorized the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to achieve universal service, however, no longer makes sense in today's technological environment. Currently, through the Universal Service Fund, the FCC subsidizes broadband deployment with fees collected from providers (and ultimately users) of legacy communications services like voice telephony. That system is unfair, as it unduly and regressively taxes the disproportionately lower-income Americans who continue to use legacy voice services. It is also unsustainable, as the FCC will soon be unable to collect suficient revenue from the dwindling number of legacy-service users to fund modern broadband deployment. Recent congressional actions suggest a potential path out of this dilemma. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress directly appropriated billions of dollars to subsidize broadband deployment and enable lower-income Americans to stay connected. Congress could choose to make such appropriations permanent and tailored to areas of genuine need, rather than continue to support the existing archaic universal-service funding mechanism. Absent direct appropriations, there will be increasing calls to reform the Universal Service Fund to expand its contribution base to keep it solvent. For example, FCC commissioners from both parties and some internet service providers have proposed requiring internet platforms to contribute to the fund because they benefit from the user trafic that rides over modern broadband networks.

Now comprising nearly 20 percent of national health care spending, or $829.5 billion annually, the Medicare program continues to evolve (CMS 2021d). Originally designed to finance acute care characterized by [...], Medicare beneficiaries frequently select suboptimal Medicare Advantage plan products or elect traditional fee-for-service Medicare due to choice paralysis, cognitive impairments, and consumer health insurance illiteracy. Medicare Advantage Chronic Condition Special Needs Plans (C-SNPs) offer an opportunity to tie disease to both plan design and marketing, simplifying consumer choice architecture. This report explores additional refinement in the C-SNP program to help unlock this potential, examining programmatic regulatory requirements, qualifying diseases, and marketing rules with an aim to improving care for multi-morbid Medicare beneficiaries.

Key Points * In the post-Roe v. Wade world, state governments will revise laws and regulations about abortion access. All states, whether their elected officials favor abortion access or decide [...]

Key Points * After the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, President Donald Trump tasked a multiagency effort to review best practices for school safety, which issued a landmark Federal Commission [...]

Key Points * From September 2021 to late February 2022, school district mask mandates were in place for 61 percent of students in the US. * During that period, Centers [...]

Key Points * Cannabis containing more than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which the US government still calls 'marijuana' but here we call 'weed,' has been legalized by many state governments [...]

As the US starts returning to a post-pandemic normal, it is useful to assess how workers and families fared during the COVID-19 pandemic to help inform future policies and crisis [...]

After almost a year of a pandemic-induced labor shortage, employers are facing two unique issues with developing talent. The first is attracting workers in an economy that is over three [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic--and the school closures, mandates, and fearmongering it induced-has exacerbated the growing K-12 public school teacher shortage. (1) As a result, our nation faces a severe classroom-staffing crisis, [...]

Contents Executive Summary 1 Introduction 2 I. Congress' COVID-19 Legislating--a Brief Chronicle 4 Prehistory: Pandemic Preparedness in the Before-Times 4 Early Warnings: January-February 2020 5 Massive Response: March-April 2020 7 [...], This report provides the first comprehensive account of Congress' response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While some political observers feared that partisan polarization and general complacency had left the federal government unable to act, no matter how dire the circumstance, in fact the coronavirus emergency provoked a historic flurry of congressional activity. By uniting behind deals negotiated by their leaders, legislators proved themselves able to rapidly mobilize trillions of dollars through massive deficit spending unprecedented in peacetime. But the historic legislation they passed in March and April 2020 was accompanied by little meaningful public deliberation about the difficult trade-offs that COVID-19 forced onto American society. As the acute phase of crisis response abated, lawmakers never seriously pursued broadly acceptable compromises on crucial issues such as lockdowns, testing, and vaccine regulations. Although Congress provided a second major round of spending with laws in December 2020 and March 2021, COVID-19 mostly disappeared from the legislature's agenda even as it killed hundreds of thousands more Americans. A widespread belief that public health experts were best suited to handle pandemic policy questions leads some observers to question whether legislators could have contributed by being more active. But legislators' deference to agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration was often unwarranted, as bureaucrats refused to depart from familiar routines to confront the fast-moving crisis. A more active legislature, taking into account all manner of considerations, including but not limited to public health concerns, would have been better equipped to broker compromises backed by broad coalitions. Such work could have secured better policies and a less rancorous politics. We must reflect on Congress' failures of leadership in response to COVID-19 if we hope to achieve better results when confronted with future emergencies.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many residents of North Las Vegas had long felt mistreated by the Clark County School District (CCSD), the country's fifth-largest school district by enrollment. (1) [...], Key Points * The Southern Nevada Urban Micro Academy (SNUMA) is a first-of-its-kind partnership between the North Las Vegas city government and an innovation-focused education nonprofit to create microschools, operated entirely outside of incumbent public school systems and designed specifically as an in-person solution for city families to counter pandemic learning loss. * SNUMA microschools produced academic learning gains that surpassed those of local public schools--and at a fraction of their average, per-pupil funding levels. * This report outlines the successful SNUMA model and explains how it could be scaled nationally.

February 2021 The federal government created the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in 1946. Since then, the program has provided free or reduced-price lunches (and eventually breakfasts) to millions of [...]

Fake and substandard medicines are a significant problem in developing nations, and a growing problem in developed ones too. There have been assessments of basic medicine quality from many countries [...]

The number of homeless individuals sleeping on the streets in the United States has been declining rapidly, according to annual counts conducted since 2007. This has caused some to celebrate [...]