Business & Economics
Business & Economics
World Series policy lessons
Much of California and Texas are in a state of baseball euphoria. Either the San Francisco Giants or the Texas Rangers will win their first World Series title this week. (The Giants won it in 1954 but were a New York team then.) Unfortunately for Californians, the shared state of ...
Business & Economics
Scariest things on the ballot
While the rest of the nation is about to enjoy a much-needed corrective to President Barack Obama’s big-government fright fest, Californians can expect election results that range from disappointing to depressing. Perhaps it’s fitting that pre-election hysteria peaks right at Halloween. There are scary candidates on the ballot. We’ve got ...
Business & Economics
The government is paying people not to work
This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics went to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides for their work on “search theory,” especially as applied to labor markets. The irony is that their award-winning work provides peer-reviewed justification for a commonsense solution to high unemployment. Continuous extensions of unemployment benefits ...
Business & Economics
Proposition 23 and California Employment
Proposition 23, on next Tuesday’s ballot, would suspend the implementation of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) until the state unemployment rate, now 12.4 percent, declines to 5.5 percent for four quarters. A new study published by the Pacific Research Institute examines the employment implications of ...
Business & Economics
Costs and Consequences: Rate-of-Return Biases, Rate Suppression, and Market Incentives for Quality in Property/Casualty Insurance Regulation
The imposition of legal and regulatory constraints on market pricesprice controls, or rate suppression in the case of the property/casualty insurance marketis an important tool with which public officials can effect wealth transfers among groups and economic sectors. Rate suppression can take the form of allowed rates too low to ...
Business & Economics
California can’t mess with Texas
A study two years ago found that California substantially lagged behind Texas economically, based on the two states’ taxes, regulatory policies and government spending. That study, performed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, recently was updated. Not only does California continue to lag but, by comparison, it “has become even ...
Business & Economics
Memo to Candidates – Dire Economy Calls for Deep Reforms
California’s unemployment rate is 12.4 percent – third-highest in the country – but that statistic fails to tell the whole story of our economic woes. If marginal workers and those forced to work part-time are added to the base unemployment rate – what the Bureau of Labor Statistics refers to ...
Business & Economics
Public Pay Study Seems Bogus
The media have been providing serious reporting about a “UC Berkeley [2]” study showing that public employees earn a total salary and benefit package that’s about the same as those in the private sector. This counter-intuitive study is being championed by government advocates as a rebuttal to the public upset ...
Business & Economics
Pro-union study twists stats, takes public for saps
California’s public employee unions have taken the public for suckers for years, so it’s understandable they now think they can play us for fools. A study released Monday by a pro-union think tank purports to show that public employees receive less total compensation than their counterparts in the private sector. ...
Business & Economics
LaFaive: Give businesses freedom to create jobs
When the price of something goes up, the quantity demanded of it goes down. When government raises the price of creating jobs, investing and living in Michigan, we get less of those things. There’s plenty of evidence to back this common-sense truth. A March 2010 Federal Reserve Bank of St. ...
World Series policy lessons
Much of California and Texas are in a state of baseball euphoria. Either the San Francisco Giants or the Texas Rangers will win their first World Series title this week. (The Giants won it in 1954 but were a New York team then.) Unfortunately for Californians, the shared state of ...
Scariest things on the ballot
While the rest of the nation is about to enjoy a much-needed corrective to President Barack Obama’s big-government fright fest, Californians can expect election results that range from disappointing to depressing. Perhaps it’s fitting that pre-election hysteria peaks right at Halloween. There are scary candidates on the ballot. We’ve got ...
The government is paying people not to work
This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics went to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides for their work on “search theory,” especially as applied to labor markets. The irony is that their award-winning work provides peer-reviewed justification for a commonsense solution to high unemployment. Continuous extensions of unemployment benefits ...
Proposition 23 and California Employment
Proposition 23, on next Tuesday’s ballot, would suspend the implementation of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) until the state unemployment rate, now 12.4 percent, declines to 5.5 percent for four quarters. A new study published by the Pacific Research Institute examines the employment implications of ...
Costs and Consequences: Rate-of-Return Biases, Rate Suppression, and Market Incentives for Quality in Property/Casualty Insurance Regulation
The imposition of legal and regulatory constraints on market pricesprice controls, or rate suppression in the case of the property/casualty insurance marketis an important tool with which public officials can effect wealth transfers among groups and economic sectors. Rate suppression can take the form of allowed rates too low to ...
California can’t mess with Texas
A study two years ago found that California substantially lagged behind Texas economically, based on the two states’ taxes, regulatory policies and government spending. That study, performed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, recently was updated. Not only does California continue to lag but, by comparison, it “has become even ...
Memo to Candidates – Dire Economy Calls for Deep Reforms
California’s unemployment rate is 12.4 percent – third-highest in the country – but that statistic fails to tell the whole story of our economic woes. If marginal workers and those forced to work part-time are added to the base unemployment rate – what the Bureau of Labor Statistics refers to ...
Public Pay Study Seems Bogus
The media have been providing serious reporting about a “UC Berkeley [2]” study showing that public employees earn a total salary and benefit package that’s about the same as those in the private sector. This counter-intuitive study is being championed by government advocates as a rebuttal to the public upset ...
Pro-union study twists stats, takes public for saps
California’s public employee unions have taken the public for suckers for years, so it’s understandable they now think they can play us for fools. A study released Monday by a pro-union think tank purports to show that public employees receive less total compensation than their counterparts in the private sector. ...
LaFaive: Give businesses freedom to create jobs
When the price of something goes up, the quantity demanded of it goes down. When government raises the price of creating jobs, investing and living in Michigan, we get less of those things. There’s plenty of evidence to back this common-sense truth. A March 2010 Federal Reserve Bank of St. ...
