Search

December 13, 2021 RIN 1210-AC03 Docket EBSA-2021-0013 CFR 29 CFR 2550 Document Citation 86 FR 57272 Document Number 2021-22263 By electronic submission: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/14/2021-22263/prudence-and-loyalty-in-selecting-plan-investments-and-exercising-shareholder-rights The Employee Benefits Security Administration of the [...]

Key Points * Due to the steady decline of print news in America, many Americans now live in news deserts, where there is no newspaper covering local issues. The absence [...]

Chairman Smith, Subcommittee Chairman LaHood, Ranking Member Davis, and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am Bruce Meyer, McCormick Foundation Professor at the [...]

This paper presents a critique of a recent analysis by my friends and colleagues Kyle Pomerleau and Shuting Pomerleau in the pages of Tax Notes Federal examining policy alternatives for [...]

Key Points * Greater output of final products does not improve supply-chain resilience. Manufacturing more with the same supply chains could even create more vulnerabilities. New policies must address full supply chains, not just the final stage. * Companies selling in the US should be responsible for knowing their suppliers, through the full extent of the chain. For products deemed critical, Chinese participation at any point in the supply chain should be restricted. * The single weakest link in many supply chains is constitutive materials, since these enable the next stages of production and are often sourced overseas. The US must quickly determine where projected materials demand exceeds reliable supply., There's been a great deal of talk about supply chains, yet the US government has done little. (1) There are in fact good reasons for inaction: Shifting supply chains is [...]

The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) system has a broad scope and provides important resources to economically vulnerable children who live apart from one of their parents. Yet, it is subject to critique for intervening too much, too little, or in the wrong ways. In this paper, we then consider some long-term issues of concern, identifying areas of emerging agreement (at least between the two authors), and exploring some of the fundamental questions that remain to be addressed. We argue that CSE reduces child poverty, helps to promote parental responsibility especially for parents living apart from their children, and for many families is a convenience. Contrary to early proponents of the program, we argue that CSE should not be used for cost recovery; collected child support should always directly benefit children, not offset government costs. Finally, we outline areas of agreement and disagreement related to mandated cooperation with CSE. In this way, we aim to clarify both areas where bipartisan policy reforms may be more feasible, and areas that remain particularly challenging., Introduction The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) system is important in providing resources to children who live apart from one of their parents. This is especially true in poor households. In [...]

This comment paper addresses policy issues inherent in the proposed rule from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 'Management and Protection of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.' (1) At [...]

Chairman Wyden, Ranking Member Crapo, and distinguished members of Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Bruce D. Meyer, and I am the McCormick Foundation Professor [...]

The American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law in March of this year, created the most ambitious antipoverty policy since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The law authorized a one-year expansion [...]

Following Manzan (2021), this paper examines how professional forecasters revise their uncertainty (variance) forecasts. We show that popular first moment 'efficiency' tests are not applicable to study variance forecasts and instead employ monotonicity tests developed by Patton and Timmermann (2012). We find strong support for the Bayesian learning prediction of decreasing patterns in the variance of fixed-event density forecasts and their revisions as the forecast horizon declines. We explore the role of financial conditions indices in variance forecasts and document their predictive content for the revision process of US professional forecasters, although the evidence is weaker for euro area forecasters. Keywords: Variance forecasts, survey expectations, Bayesian learning JEL Codes: C53, E17, E37., I. Introduction The study of expectations and the process underlying their formation remains a topic of considerable interest and importance. The recently published Handbook of Economic Expectations (2022) speaks to [...]

We compile a comprehensive dataset of adverse cyber events experienced by U.S. firms. We then categorize cyber incidents by their detrimental impacts on firms' assets and operations and show that firms suffer significant value losses across multiple cyber categories. These losses also spill over to economically linked firms, thereby amplifying the negative effect of malicious cyber activity on the economy. We additionally assemble a lexicon to identify from public sources firms that possess trade secrets, work on emerging technology or critical infrastructure projects, or have government and defense contracts, and show that such firms face a higher risk of a cyber incident. JEL classification: G10, G12, G14, G17 Keywords: Cyberattacks, Malicious Cyber Activity, Cyber Threat Actors, Attack Vectors, Intellectual Property Theft, Trade Secrets, Critical Infrastructures, Emerging Technologies, Defense Contracts, Government Contracts, Spillover Effects, Economically Linked Firms, Corporate Transparency, 1. Introduction As the U.S. economy grew more reliant on information technology, malicious cyber activity has emerged as a new threat to corporations, government, and private citizens. Illegal activities, such [...]

This comment paper addresses the revision of guidelines for regulatory benefit/cost analysis by federal agencies, as proposed by the Office of Management and Budget in its draft Circular A-4 of [...]

The launch of ChatGPT has captured the world's imagination about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI): In just its first two months, over 30 million people used the tool, and [...]

1. Introduction President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty in 1963, which led to a major expansion of the social safety net, including the introduction of Medicaid, Medicare and [...], Without Congressional action, the recently released National Academy of Sciences report, "An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line," could have substantial effects on government program eligibility and spending--if its recommendation to "redraw the line" is implemented by the Census Bureau, and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) is made the official one by the Office of Management and Budget. This change to the official poverty measure could be made as soon as September 2023, and major government transfer programs whose eligibility standards are tied to the official poverty guidelines could be affected in 2024. In this paper, I first project that making the SPM the official poverty measure would increase the poverty guideline for a family of four by $6,400 (20 percent) in 2024 and by $13,150 (34 percent) in 2033. I also show that if state-specific SPM thresholds were used, then poverty guidelines would be higher in high-cost states like California (21 percent higher than the national average) and lower in low-cost states like West Virginia (19 percent lower than the national average). I then estimate how the change in the poverty guidelines would affect government spending on the two largest entitlement programs whose eligibility standards are tied to the official poverty guidelines. I estimate that over the next decade (2024-2033) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spending would be $47 billion higher, and Medicaid spending would be $78 billion higher. Thus, basing the U.S. poverty guidelines on the SPM would increase government spending by at least $124 billion over the next decade.

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.

December 2023 Leading voices at America's most prominent universities have recently pointed out that institutions of higher education are failing to offer students the civic education they need to play [...]

The modern environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement and related stakeholder capitalism strains are nothing new. They have historical precedent in pre-Enlightenment times when the church, crown, guild, and village similarly extracted rents from capital and labor to the detriment of both--and society more broadly. Impeding the employment of labor and capital to promote the well-being of others reduces the incentive to work, save, and invest, causing economic growth to stagnate. Allowing a self-appointed elite to impose ESG constraints on investment generates inferior returns on investment, compromised economic outcomes, and little in the way of desired social and environmental benefit. Human flourishing and global prosperity would be enhanced if those who choose to use their money to promote ESG goals instead invested to maximize returns and used some portion of their profits to promote environmental and social goals directly. Impact investing, in which capital owners make informed choices about likely trade-offs between financial return and specific nonfinancial priorities, can also be highly effective., The modern-day phenomenon that has become known as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing did not spontaneously generate, nor was it hewn into stone tablets and handed to Moses on [...]

The Walter Berns Constitution Day Lecture Series A scholar of political philosophy and constitutional law, Walter Berns wrote extensively on issues of American government and its founding principles. He authored [...]

While it is widely known that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is the policy document that sets authorizations and legislative boundaries for the Department of Defense (DOD), in recent [...]

The Administrative Procedures Act (APA), first passed in 1946, requires that all federal agencies obtain public input before formulating, amending, or repealing a regulation. Specifically, they must 'give interested persons [...]

Community colleges have long been tasked with educating a workforce that meets local, regional, and state needs. This role, how it has evolved, and how it is carried out today [...]

Well before John Adams assumed the presidency on March 4, 1797, James Madison was convinced that Adams, like Alexander Hamilton, was overly fond of monarchic government. Though Hamilton was careful [...]

Donald Trump's ascendancy has inflicted many changes on the right, including substantially altering its posture on economic issues. (1) Where this blend of economic nationalism and conservative populism has been [...]

Socialism is the ultimate big lie. While it falsely promises prosperity, equality, and security, it delivers the exact opposite: poverty, misery, inequality, and tyranny. Equality is achieved under socialism only [...]

Key Points * The Biden administration's Department of Education is taking steps to undermine institutions' ability to work with outside providers for many functions necessary to deliver high-quality course-work to [...]

Place-based policies aim to stimulate economic development in disadvantaged areas with the goal of improving the well-being of residents. A provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act aimed to spur private investment in low-income areas called Opportunity Zones (OZs). We evaluate the impact of OZs on investment using data on the near-universe of commercial retail, office, and industrial real estate investments in the United States and a regression discontinuity design that exploits randomness near the OZ eligibility threshold. From 2019-2022, we find economically small and statistically insignificant point estimates of the effect of OZ eligibility on census tract-level investment. Additional data from MasterCard show no robust evidence of increased business activity nor consumer spending. However, we find suggestive effects on investment in multi-family housing in certain years. We conclude that almost five years after the OZ policy was implemented, there is no evidence of a private investment response that has spread beyond multi-family housing, limiting the potential of the policy to stimulate broad economic development and improve the well-being of residents. JEL Codes: H53, E22, D61 Keywords: Opportunity zones, investment, tax policy, poverty, 1 Introduction Rising geographic disparity in economic well-being in recent decades has focused attention on place-based policies as a tool to help people living in distressed areas. While in the [...]

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 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.

The estimates on benefits and costs asserted by the Department of Energy (DoE) in the proposed rule on 'Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Conventional Cooking Products' demonstrate that it cannot satisfy any plausible benefit/cost test. The maximum annual consumer savings in the DoE lifecycle analysis is for gas cooking tops, asserted by DoE to be $1.51 per year per unit. That number is too small to differ from zero as a matter of statistical significance; the figures for the other cooking technologies are smaller, and in most cases are effectively zero. Accordingly, the savings, whether delineated in dollars or units of energy, are too small to satisfy the legal requirements promulgated under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA). Nor does the DoE analysis examine the forgone service quality characteristics to be lost under the proposed rule. If DoE is correct that the savings, again whether delineated in dollars or units of energy, are sufficiently significant to satisfy the requirements of the EPCA, then unless DoE asserts that consumers are irrational--which it does not do--then it must be the case that the forgone service quality characteristics, if monetized, are greater than the asserted savings. A continued pursuit of the specifics of this rule, accordingly, is inconsistent with the central principle underlying support for a market economy, to wit, a definition of economic value as revealed by consumer preferences reflected in market prices. If DoE views consumers as irrational, it should say that explicitly, justify it, and justify as well the implicit premise that DoE officials and staff are more rational. The DoE assertion of climate benefits is preposterous, as a straightforward application of the DoE estimates of the reductions in GHG emissions to the EPA climate model, under assumptions that exaggerate the effects of such reductions, yields a prediction of a temperature decline in 2100 of 0.005[degrees]C, a figure effectively equal to zero, and undetectable in any event given the standard deviation of the surface temperature record. DoE attempts to circumvent this obvious problem by using instead the interim IWG estimates of the social cost of carbon, but those estimates are fatally flawed and heavily politicized, in that they (1) distort the actual economic growth predictions produced by the integrated assessment models, (2) base predictions of future climate phenomena on climate models that cannot predict the past or the present, (3) incorporate 'co-benefits' in the form of a reduction in the emissions of other criteria and hazardous air pollutants already regulated under different provisions of the Clean Air Act, (4) incorporate the asserted benefits of GHG reductions on a global basis, and (5) employ discount rates that are inconsistent and inappropriate. In short, the proposed rule cannot satisfy any basic standard of analytic rigor, a plausible benefit/cost test in particular. It should not be finalized in this form., RIN 1904-AD15 Docket EERE-2014-BT-STD-0005 Document 2023-00610 Document Citation 88 FR 6818 This comment paper addresses the benefit/cost analysis presented in the rule proposed by the Department of Energy (DoE) on [...]

For most of American history, the formal process that certified the winner of the presidential election--a joint session of Congress, presided over by the vice president (serving as president of the Senate), that opened and counted each state's electoral votes--passed with little public notice. The constitutionally required voting by the Electoral College and the subsequent tabulation were mere formalities between the general election and inauguration. Consequently, since the disputed presidential election of 1876, the details of the process and the respective powers and authorities of Congress and the vice president during the counting process have attracted little attention. That changed with the 2020 presidential election. Claiming fraud and illegality, President Donald Trump urged Vice President Mike Pence, when Pence presided over the vote count on January 6, to either throw out electoral votes for Joe Biden from half a dozen states or return them to state legislatures for further investigation. As a result, Trump supporters came to believe that if Pence did what Trump called the 'right thing,' (1) the incumbent president would begin a second term on January 20, 2021. This event has resurrected the question of whether, under the Constitution, Congress or the vice president has final say in counting the Electoral College votes. We argue, contrary to the former president, his lawyers, and some legal scholars, that this authority resides with Congress and not the vice president--and that the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, which affirms that view, is constitutional. Our analysis proceeds in five stages. First, we show that the framers viewed the vice presidency as an insignificant office, virtually an afterthought. It was conceived only in the Constitutional Convention's last days to provide a successor to the president if the office became vacant and to incentivize presidential electors, who were to cast two votes, to look beyond their local favorites. To give the vice president something to do, he was then made president of the Senate, possessing the single substantive power to break ties. In short, it is highly unlikely the Constitution's framers would have given the vice president a potentially crucial say in selecting a president. Next, we analyze the relevant language in the Constitution: 'The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted,' (2) language repeated in the 12th Amendment. The shift from the active voice--the president of the Senate shall 'open all the Certificates'--to the passive--'and the Votes shall then be counted'--implies that someone other than the vice president would count the votes. If the framers intended to vest the counting authority in the vice president, they would have simply written, 'The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates and count the Votes.' Third, the natural reading of the necessary and proper clause grants Congress the authority to legislate and regulate the counting of electoral votes and provide a mechanism to resolve disputes. This was amply demonstrated in legislation passed in 1792 that reached deeply into the electoral process and again in 1800, when majorities in the House and Senate respectively passed measures that had Congress or an appointed committee resolving disputes. In these debates, not a single member opposed to the proposed measures put forward the alternative idea that it was the vice president's role to settle contested votes. The silence here is telling. Fourth, and consistent with our analysis of the language above, congressional records for the first five presidential elections show Congress doing the actual counting through tellers appointed by the Senate and the House and drawn from their members. As president of the Senate, the vice president opened the sealed packets and handed the certificates verifying the electors' names and recorded votes to the clerk, who then transmitted the papers to the tellers for inspection and totaling. From these early vote counts, it is clear that (1) the members of the House and Senate were not mere observers and, in turn, (2) the vice president's role was essentially ministerial. Finally, we maintain that the principles and structure of the American constitutional order are inimical to allowing the discretion and will of an individual (especially one who often has a personal stake in the outcome) to decide presidential elections. The founders' understanding of the norms of republican government and the rule of law, the requirement for checks and balances, and Madison's principle that 'no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause' (3) all point toward Congress, not the vice president, possessing that power. As Vice President Pence aptly articulated to his staff, There was no way that our framers, who [abhorred] concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person, particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for the election, in a role to have decisive impact on the outcome of the election. (4), APRIL 2023 On December 29, 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill to fund the federal government for fiscal year 2023. Included in the bill's [...]

Although American politics today are defined by sharp, bitter disagreement, a bipartisan US grand strategy for great-power competition has emerged. This grand strategy has taken shape over the course of the Trump and Biden administrations. Like all grand strategies, it is built on a range of critical assumptions about how the world works and how America can and should use its power to address a range of challenges. But how solid are those assumptions? This report makes explicit 17 critical assumptions underpinning US grand strategy today and subjects them to an intellectual stress test. In other words, it asks whether they can bear the weight of world affairs. While the assumptions we survey are of varying strength, this assessment leads to a sobering conclusion: Prevailing in great-power rivalry is likely to be more difficult, expensive, dangerous, and all-consuming than US policymakers have so far been willing to admit--or than the American public presently understands., In 2015, this report's authors prepared a paper on critical assumptions in American grand strategy. (1) We catalogued several dozen assumptions undergirding American grand strategy in the post-Cold War era [...]

We develop new facts relating news coverage, interest groups, and events in the legislative histories of minimum wage increases. First, we create and validate a database of news articles that includes coverage of minimum wages and organized labor. Second, we show that policy changes predict increases in news coverage that connects organized labor and minimum wages, in particular when those articles reference high-profile interest groups and research output. Third, these policy events lead coverage of organized labor to shift towards articles about minimum wages. We observe that the minimum wage's popularity with the public makes this shift qualify as 'good PR,' an assessment that is supported by sentiment analysis of articles about organized labor. This public relations channel can thus help rationalize why interest groups engage in policy advocacy. JEL Classification: D71, D78, P16 Keywords: political economy, social choice, minimum wage, unionization, Section I: Introduction Over the past decade, labor unions have emerged as advocates for historically high minimum wages. (1) Since its inception in 2012, the 'Fight for $15' movement has [...]

We compile a comprehensive dataset of adverse cyber events experienced by U.S. firms. We then categorize cyber incidents by their detrimental impacts on firms' assets and operations, e.g., data theft, ransomware attacks, security breaches, denial of service attacks, and show that firms suffer significant value losses across multiple cyber categories. These losses also spill over to economically linked firms, thereby amplifying the negative effect of malicious cyber activity on the economy. We also compile a lexicon to identify from public sources firms that possess trade secrets, work on emerging technology or critical infrastructure projects, or have government and defense contracts, and show that such firms face a higher risk of a cyber incident. JEL classification: G10, G12, G14, G17 Keywords: Cyberattacks, Malicious Cyber Activity, Cyber Threat Actors, Attack Vectors, Intellectual Property Theft, Trade Secrets, Critical Infrastructures, Emerging Technologies, Defense Contracts, Government Contracts, Spillover Effects, Economically Linked Firms, Corporate Transparency, 1. Introduction As the U.S. economy grew more reliant on information technology, malicious cyber activity has emerged as a new threat to corporations, government, and private citizens. Illegal activities, such [...]

Keywords: antitrust; consumer welfare; competitive advantage; regulation JEL codes: K21, L12, L22, L4, Introduction A current controversy in antitrust is use of the consumer welfare standard (CWS). CWS in effect states that a merger or anticompetitive business practice is illegal if it makes [...]

At the roughly 1,000 public community colleges in the US, millions of students enroll in courses and programs that prepare them for either academic pursuits (such as transferring to a [...]

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.

This comment paper offers observations on the science and policy analytics of the Environmental Protection Agency supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking on 'Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified [...]

In the next dozen years, a new form of money will appear worldwide: central bank digital currencies--government-backed, digital bearer instruments that operate a lot like cash but reside in digital wallets on smartphones and other devices. Unlike the electronic money we now send through banks and payment providers, this kind of money will allow for transactions that are both digital and hand-to-hand, not passing through financial institutions. And unlike current variants of cryptocurrency called 'stablecoins,' which are operated privately with their value pegged to national currencies, central bank digital currencies will enjoy the full faith and credit of their sovereign issuers, making them equal in value to the paper money they augment or replace. Countries around the globe are actively advancing this new form of sovereign digital currency. The United States has a chance to lead in this area and advance well-established democratic principles. If a US central bank digital currency is to comport with American values, though, that leadership will require fresh thinking about current US financial surveillance policy. As an important recent report from the White House's technology advisory office makes clear, it is time to reconsider today's privacy-invasive financial surveillance regime and shift to intelligent enforcement. If there is to be American leadership in the digital future of money, the financial surveillance status quo is the wrong foundation to build it on., Work on central bank digital currencies (CBDC) is underway around the world. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has already placed its digital currency the eCNY, in the hands of [...]

This comment paper to the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ('Agencies') addresses issues of economic analysis and other topics inherent in [...]

This comment paper addresses issues of economic analysis and other topics inherent in the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rule on renewable fuel standards for 2023-2025. (1) It is organized as [...]

This paper responds to a request for comment from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (hereinafter Fed) on its 'high-level framework' 'draft principles' for the evaluation and [...]

This paper provides a comprehensive account of the evolution of default risk for newly originated home mortgages over the past quarter century. We bring together several data sources to produce this history, including loan-level data for the entire Enterprise (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) book. We use these data to track a large number of loan characteristics and a summary measure of risk, the stressed default rate. Among the many results in the paper, we show that mortgage risk had already risen in the 1990s, planting seeds of the financial crisis well before the actual event. Our results also cast doubt on explanations of the crisis that focus on borrowers with low credit scores. The aggregate series we present in this paper are available for download at https:/www.fhfa.gov/papers/wp1902.aspx. (1) JEL Classification: E32, G21, G28, H22, R31 Keywords: mortgage risk * housing boom * default * foreclosure * house price * leverage, 1. Introduction Since the global financial crisis, there has been an outpouring of research to understand the developments in the U.S. home mortgage market that precipitated the crisis. (1) Nonetheless, [...]

Despite large increases in the representation of women and people from other minority groups on corporate boards, public and private regulators are pushing for more. California already passed mandates requiring firms headquartered in the state to meet quotas for women and members of other underrep-resented groups on their corporate boards. The Nasdaq stock exchange proposed a similar mandate. To support this forced injection of diversity, the regulators point to a wealth of citations claiming diversity improves a firm's value. Upon examination, though, the research base does not hold up. Many citations come from consulting firm position papers that lack credibility. These reports imply that, because higher-value firms tend to have more-diverse boards, diversity causes the increase in value, without even attempting to adjust for other differences across firms. The academic literature noted in the Nasdaq proposal is not much better. Reliable causal inferences require methods that ensure one is comparing apples to apples, whereas most of the cited literature does little more than add a few control variables to get to an apples-to-bananas comparison, at best. It also appears that the Nasdaq proposal selectively surveyed the literature on board diversity. When meta-analyses are consulted, the literature as a whole finds little relationship between board diversity and firm value. This systematic review of the literature aligns with numerous other literature reviews, even those performed by individuals predisposed to ffavor diversity mandates, finding that the evidence is weak for a business case for diversity. The Nasdaq proposal ignores many studies that are much more reliable methodologically. For example, studies examined the enactment of diversity requirements in Norway, using it as a natural experiment that would provide insight into what happens when firms are forced to diversify their boards. Findings from the Norwegian experience indicate, at best, that diversity mandates do not improve firm value, and some studies find the quotas harmed firm performance. Additionally, many firms chose to go private to avoid the regulation. There is no credible evidence that diversity requirements systematically improve firm performance., Women are better represented on US corporate boards than ever before. According to data from the proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), by 2019, women held more than one-fourth [...]

Good afternoon. My name is Howard Husock, and I am a senior fellow in domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a leading public policy think tank in [...]

We examine businesses' choices of mobile platforms - iOS and Android - contrasting firms in the U.S., India, and Japan. Using Crunchbase[R] data on startups seeking external funding, we find that many of the 47 business categories analyzed are likely to use mobile platforms, but some have a negative propensity to do so. Many that tend to use platforms exhibit no platform preferences, implying substitutability. Many that do exhibit a platform preference also tend to not use platforms, indicating an indifference as well. Results across India, Japan, and the U.S. are largely similar, with the exception of more business categories exhibiting platform preferences in the U.S. Keywords: platforms; network effects, competition; differentiation; startups JEL codes: L26, L86, M13, O30, I. Introduction The proliferation of smartphones has changed the way people interact with technology and access information. People are able to seamlessly integrate communications, information retrieval, and entertainment through a [...]

Key Points * In June 2023, a small group of congressional members introduced the American Farmers Feed the World Act, claiming their goal was to restore the original intent of [...]

Key Points * Public universities have embraced left-wing ideology under the banner of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' (DEI) through a variety of mechanisms. * Conservatives have begun to promote effective [...]

Introduction There are several official medium- and long-range economic and financial projections of various federal programs, economic sectors, and government budgets in the US. The Social Security and Medicare Trustees [...], In the official models used by the Treasury and the Social Security and Medicare Trustees for projections and policy analysis, many key variables--like interest rates--are assumed as a continuation of past trends. Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)--with a more sophisticated growth model--does not consider supply factors determining future health care costs. By contrast, in our model, these variables are simultaneously determined by supply and demand, based on logical functional forms and deep parameter estimates from the literature or empirical analysis. This approach provides projections which better reflect real economic relationships--like those that exist between health care spending, the federal budget, and investment in capital--and changing underlying conditions, especially demographics. Within the next ten years, we find the federal government budget deficit relative to national income will grow significantly beyond historical experience and should be regarded as unsustainable. We project that debt-to-GDP will be 136 percent in 2032 and 264 percent in 2052, compared to CBO's 112 percent and 177 percent, respectively. Real interest rates rise in the long run in a ratcheting cycle of higher interest payments and growing deficits and debt. Our projection of national health expenditures relative to GDP in 2072 is 31.4 percent, compared to 28.4 percent by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), used by the Medicare Trustees. These higher rates of health care inflation arise from labor shortage effects in an aging economy because health care is produced in a low productivity, labor-dependent sector. This rise in health care expenditures further deteriorates the federal budget and lowers consumer welfare. Acknowledgements: We appreciate helpful comments from and discussions with James Capretta, Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Jagadeesh Gokhale, Steve Robinson, and seminar participants at the American Enterprise Institute and the Savings and Retirement Foundation. All opinions expressed and mistakes made are our own and not theirs, nor our organizations'.

Health policy research in recent years has focused regularly on the spread between Medicare's and commercial insurance's payments for the same services and products. The comparisons are usually straightforward because [...], Medicare's rules specifying payments for covered services are among the most powerful levers in health care. Private insurers use the same codes and formulas as their starting points for payments to avoid reinventing the wheel even as they are forced to "plus up" the amounts to appease their affiliated providers. (Medicare's size allows the government to adopt take-it-or-leave-it terms.) While the differential between what Medicare and commercial plans pay is said to validate the benefits of price regulation, the empirical bases for the government's rates are not well understood. A partial review shows a pattern of combining dated, imprecise cost reports with idiosyncratic and opaque adjustments that were not constructed to guarantee the best outcomes for the dollars spent. Properly designed competitive pricing, with a focus on value and not just cost, could be used to tether more Medicare payments to the rates that will incentivize efficiency and innovation, leading to optimal patient care. As the debate over how to control health care costs without compromising quality continues, Medicare's regulated prices should not be given unquestioned status as the best available options.