How useful have monetary aggregates been in signaling the stance of monetary policy in real time?

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Based on a Manhattan Institute analysis of the HHS numbers, Obamacare will increase underlying insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97 to 99 percent, and for younger women by an average of 55 to 62 percent.

Trader Joe's recently announced it would drop its employee-sponsored health care for part-time employees and ask them instead to find healthcare on new health exchanges. Here are how the numbers work for a Trader Joe's employee.

We hear all the time  about the “golden age” of the 1950s and 1960s when America’s middle-class supposedly prospered like never before or since. But thanks to gradually rising incomes and falling real prices, you could make a pretty strong case that the “golden age” for the middle class is today. Consider, for instance, car ownership.

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 dioxide worldwide.As the discussion unfolds, I would urge everyone to keep four numbers in mind: 32, 1, 30 and 1/2. These are the numbers that explain why any transition away from our existing energy systems will be protracted and... More

If entitlement reform doesn't happen, then payroll tax increases may end up as a part of the solution. Here are several charts which illustrate why.

Are we correct to be worrying about an ageing population?

To demonstrate how free market capitalism and “the miracle of the marketplace” generate increased prosperity over time for average (and especially low-income) Americans, economist W. Michael Cox (currently the Director of the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business) has compared the purchases at different points in time from the income... More

The CBO's long-term budget outlook released this week made a lot of news because it appeared to paint a new and surprisingly bleak budget picture. But in reality, the budget outlook is little changed from CBO’s long-term budget outlook of last year or the year before. Indeed the long-term outlook is nearly identical to what CBO forecast in 2009.

Senator Mike Lee is proposing a richer child tax credit to help offset the cost of raising the next generation.

For  years the city of Detroit handed out pension bonuses, known as an annual "13th check," to city employees even as the financial position of the city's pension funds was declining and Detroit was borrowing money to finance them. But Detroit is not alone. So called "13th checks" to government retirees are paid out in other notable places whose finances are under duress. In some cases they are granted even when the... More

This week there have been headlines “rich taking a bigger slice of income than ever before,” based on new data from Emmanuel Saez. Meanwhile, Richard Burkhauser and other researchers at Cornell have been explaining why the data used by Saez and others is inadequate to make such claims about increasing income inequality.

New government accounting rules will more than double the pension debt reported by CalSTRS, the California state teachers' pension fund, boosting an “unfunded liability” that is now about $71 billion to a newly calculated “Net Pension Liability” of $166.9 billion. The CalSTRS board was told last week that it’s unclear whether the new liability figure will be reported by the state or spread among... More

A popular novelist adopts the idea that population growth is mankind's greatest threat. The numbers say something esle.

Should the rest of us care?

Small businesses have historically contributed disproportionately to employment growth. Research suggests that most of this modest advantage takes place during periods of relatively high unemployment. However, during the recent recession and recovery, that small business advantage eroded.

The U.S. economy has been no country for young men, or women, for many months.

The state and local workforce is now the same size it was in the fall of 2005 even though, as the chart shows, we're technically much richer.

The share of young people working — especially in their late teens, but up until their mid-20s too — is down pretty dramatically. There have been sizable (around 5 percent) reductions in the share of people ages 25 to 55 working. And older workers — especially women — are hanging onto their jobs for much longer than they did during boom times.

Federal officials are preparing to reduce the maximum size of home-mortgage loans eligible for backing by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a move that is likely to face resistance from some lawmakers in Congress and the real estate industry. The proposed move is designed to wean the mortgage market off government support and allow the market for non-government-guaranteed mortgages to take a bigger role.

Are Obamacare opponents wrong about its impact on the US labor market — or just early?

It’s well known that job growth has been lacking in this recovery. One reason for the disappointment is that small businesses aren’t adding workers like they used to.

What explains Pennsylvania, whose legislature is almost twice the size, and paid three times as much, as the national average? The issue is controversial in austere times.

The ACA includes both positive and negative tax rate effects, but nonetheless all provisions combined raise marginal tax rates in 2015 by 10 percentage points of total compensation, on average, for about half of the nonelderly adult population and zero percentage points for the rest.

Today, there are vastly more non-corporate businesses than traditional corporations and they now earn more net income than traditional corporations. These businesses face top marginal tax rates higher than 50 percent in some states.

Using a long state-year panel on the population of private-sector employers in the United States, we find that the minimum wage reduces net job growth, primarily through its effect on job creation by expanding establishments.

The School District of Philadelphia's financial woes have become a national story with the district's efforts to borrow $50 million to make up a significant funding shortfall that actually threatened the start of the school year. Although students are now back to school, research shows that the system faces a grim financial future in particular because of the burden that pensions will have on the system, a burden that will... More

The US economy grew at a revised 2.5% in the second quarter, up from the Commerce Department’s first take of 1.7%, thanks to greater-than-expected exports and fewer imports.

For many Americans, Labor Day has come to be more about end-of-summer barbeques than union rallies.