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Managing the Risks of the New Macro-Prudential Policy Regime
The pursuit of a new “macro-prudential” policy agenda has become a call to arms for many central banks and multilateral institutions. But it should only be employed during extreme circumstances. In...
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Four Numbers Say Wind and Solar Can’t Save Climate
This month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will begin releasing its fifth assessment report. Like earlier reports, it will undoubtedly lead to more calls to reduce emissions of carbon...
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Myths of the Obamacare Shutdown Soap Opera
There are a number of misperceptions of the internecine dispute taking place among conservatives, and within the Republican Party, around the effort by some to use the continuing resolution and the...
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The EPA’s Carbon-Capture Delusion
On Friday, the EPA finally unveiled its long-awaited rules for new coal-fired power plants. The agency’s administrator, Gina McCarthy, has claimed that the new rules “will provide certainty for the...
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Does the Housing Boom Signal the End of the Slow Recovery?
The recovery from the financial crisis of 2007‐2008 has been proceeding for 16 quarters, slower than every preceding recession with a financial crisis in U.S. history. Many have argued that the...
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Obamacare will Increase Health Spending by $7,450 for a Typical Family of Four
It was one of candidate Obama’s most vivid and concrete campaign promises. Forget about high minded (some might say high sounding) but gauzy promises of hope and change. This candidate solemnly pledged...
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No Glass Ceiling In Germany for Politicians
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel won 41.5 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections, the largest share of the electorate since Chancellor Helmut Kohl took German reunification to the country in 1990....
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Obamacare Bends the Cost Curve--Upward
Back in 2008, three eminent Harvard economists who were advising the Obama campaign—David Cutler, David Blumenthal, and Jeffrey Liebman—wrote a memo claiming that Senator Obama’s health-care plan could...
View ArticleThe FDA’s Misguided Regulation of Stem-Cell Procedures: How Administrative...
The current biomedical revolution has its most tangible application to ordinary people in the new cutting-edge techniques devised by individual physicians for the cure and palliation of chronic and...
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The Fed's Forward Guidance and Forecasting Inconsistencies
The Fed’s effort to manage market expectations and aggregate demand through forward guidance may generate as many inconsistencies and misinterpretations as benefits, particularly as the Fed constantly...
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Obamacare Will Leave Millions of Low-Income Americans Without Health Insurance
Although the stated objective of the Affordable Care Act -- Obamacare-- was universal health insurance, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projected in May that the number of uninsured will...
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Municipal Bonds: Past Performance No Longer a Guarantee of Future Results
The municipal bond market exhaled last week when the Federal Reserve announced that it was not planning to start scaling back its open-ended bond buying program anytime soon. State and local...
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Obamacare Will Increase Average Individual Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For...
For months now, we’ve been waiting to hear how much Obamacare will drive up the cost of health insurance for people who purchase coverage on their own. Last night, the U.S. Department of Health and...
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Senate Confirmation of the Fed Chair
Interest in the Fed Chair’s succession is now on par with that of the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. A public and Congress, capable of consideration of constitutional questions with regard to...
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Five Questions for Yellen
Janet Yellen’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday is as an opportunity to consider the appropriate boundaries for the Federal Reserve’s independent operational...
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Why We Have Federal Deficits
The federal deficit is a huge public policy problem that must be understood, confronted, and solved. Federal deficits run in these last five years dwarf any precedent in U.S. post-world-war history....
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Minimum Wage is Not One-Size-Fits-All
Last week, voters in New Jersey overwhelmingly approved an increase to their state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.25 an hour. The measure passed on a ballot initiative with 60 percent of the vote....
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Why We Have Federal Deficits
Today the Mercatus Center is releasing a study I completed earlier this year that comprehensively analyzes the policy decisions underlying federal deficits. Too often partisan advocates focus on a...
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Adam Smith's Lessons for Our Current Budget Impasse
The time has come, the politicians say, to talk of many things, including taxes and accelerated economic growth. That is, if we can get a conversation going. Which won’t be easy. “No new taxes,” chants...
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Entrepreneurship and the Soul of the American Economy
Economists have long understood that innovation is the force principally responsible for propelling economic growth. Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter pioneered the connection between...
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