Search

The Great Recession led to a large decline in economic activity throughout the entire United States with significant variation in its severity across regions. Our paper examines the role of economic freedom in explaining these differences at the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level. We use the Stansel (2013; 2019) MSA-level economic freedom index to analyze the relationship between institutional quality and economic outcomes throughout the crisis period. Using a panel dataset of 382 MSAs from 2002 to 2012, we find that economic freedom is associated with enhanced economic outcomes – lower unemployment rates, more employment per 100 persons, and higher income per capita. This holds true even when examining a cross-section of MSAs using data from the crisis period alone. We supplement these findings with a matching analysis where we find that MSAs that experienced meaningful increases in economic freedom in the five-year period before the Great Recession (2002–2007) had quicker recoveries – in terms of unemployment rates and income – than their matched counterfactuals from 2007 to 2012. Overall, our findings suggest that economic freedom did "lighten the blow" from the Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flooding is the most frequent disaster type among all severe weather events in the United States. Over the 20‐year period from 1996 to 2015, a total of 107,743 floods resulted in 1563 fatalities and over $167 billion in damages. Climate models suggest that the risk of major flooding will increase in the coming years. In this article, we provide new analysis of the life‐saving role of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) using county‐level data for the United States over the years 1996–2015. The integrated view of the physical, social, economic, and political elements of disaster vulnerability guides the empirical analysis. Our analysis indicates that people most affected by floods are those who have weaker economic and social bases; lower education levels and poor housing quality increase flood vulnerability. We also find that local government spending on public safety and welfare significantly reduces overall flood vulnerability. Importantly, our estimates present new evidence that ex ante floodplain management and mitigation efforts required for participation in the NFIP have played a vital role in reducing flood‐related fatalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atomistic, individual-oriented economic models of criminal behavior fail to capture critical scale-dependent behaviors that characterize criminal enterprises as cultural artifacts. Public policies based on such models have contributed materially to the practice of mass incarceration in the USA. A survey of similar policing strategies in other venues suggests that such policies almost inevitably lead to exacerbation of organized violence. Adapting a Black–Scholes methodology, it is possible to characterize the ‘regulatory investment’ needed to manage criminal enterprise under conditions of uncertainty at a scale and level of organization that avoids an atomistic fallacy. The model illuminates how public policy that might seem rational on an individual scale can trigger ecosystem resilience transitions to long-lasting or permanent modes of institutionalized hyperviolence. The homicide waves associated with the planned shrinkage program in New York City that was directed at dispersing minority voting blocks carry implications for national patterns of social disruption in which mass incarceration is an ecological keystone. Continuing large-scale socioeconomic decay, in the specific context of that keystone, greatly increases the probability of persistent, large-scale, organized hyperviolence, as has been the experience in Naples, Sicily, Mexico, and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the recent evolution of thinking and evidence regarding the effectiveness of activist fiscal policy, including how policy multipliers might vary with respect to economic conditions. Like many other countries that were hit by the ' Great Recession,' the USA responded initially with active fiscal policy measures. But a more positive view of fiscal intervention appears to have developed earlier in the decade, and estimated decision rules confirm that there was an increase in policy activism. While this positive view has been tested by the unclear effects of fiscal policy during the Great Recession, recent evidence does suggest that fiscal policy may be especially effective in recession. Fiscal policy activism has also been tempered by recent concerns about growing government debt, a development which potentially might also undercut the effectiveness of expansionary fiscal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tax competition and tax exportation have contrary implications for the efficiency of capital taxation. We provide a simple condition for the dominance of either force, which depends on the mobility of foreign investment. We use this condition to evaluate the relative importance of both forces in the US and in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]