Regulatory Policy

July 7, 2015

The Tax We Should Like

Among the least popular forms of taxation, property taxes are the most desirable because of their incentives, whom they target and their resilience.

June 22, 2015

An Unintended Consequence of Football Helmets

Regulation can have unintended consequences. With football helmets or seat belts or even financial regulation, protection can create more reckless behavior.

June 14, 2015

The Cost of the Squeegee Men

Through a cost and benefit approach to crime control, the limited money available for municipal spending can be spent most efficiently.

June 5, 2015

A Poaching Problem that Regulation Hasn’t Solved

The market solutions and regulatory approaches used to solve the problem of elephant poaching have not worked for wildlife conservation in Africa.

May 13, 2015

Why the Social Security Crisis Has Begun

Caused by aging baby boomers, expanded criteria and the remnants of the great recession, SSDI entitlement spending is approaching insolvency.

May 4, 2015

The Reversed Role of Chinese Deposit Insurance

While many nations have deposit Insurance and China will have theirs very soon, the quality and the confidence in different deposit insurance schemes vary.

April 27, 2015

When Your Ability to Pay Determines Your Punishment

In Finland, for some traffic violations, the rich have higher fines than those with less because of day fines that are similar to progressive taxation.

April 16, 2015

The Government Websites We Most Like (or Hate) to Visit

Website traffic can tell us the information we need from government and some clues about the federal budget.

April 13, 2015

A New Way to Rank the Worst Diseases

While death rates are a seemingly easy way to assess healthcare spending, other perspectives like DALYs could be better when we consider the tradeoffs.

March 27, 2015

The Dangerous Side of Economics

Because he revised his country's inaccurate deficit and received Eurostat approval, Greece's chief statistician might be prosecuted for "breach of faith."

March 19, 2015

Six Ways to Make Government Better

One of many examples in Peter Schuck's new book, the Social Security program shows how government can be successful and also why it "fails so often."

January 8, 2015

Understanding a New Tax Issue

With the House requiring dynamic scoring of tax legislation from the CBO, the bigger tax debate resurfaces on how much redistribution and spending.