Joseph Coletti

Jonathan Gruber may not have the best reputation for open and honest policy-making because of his role in creating ObamaCare, but he continues to provide interesting economic analysis. His latest working paper finds that the mortgage interest deduction does little to promote home ownership. Instead, it induces people to…

A new Fiscal Research Division analysis finds that increasing the standard deduction in 2019  means 230,000 more people will not owe state income taxes than in 2012, before tax reform began. Compared to this year, 95,000 more people will have no tax liability.

Russ Roberts is one of the most thoughtful and articulate economists around, whether in rap videos, animated poems, novels, or his weekly EconTalk podcast. A recent conversation he had with Martha Nussbaum on Alexander Hamilton and the choice between service and power, eventually led to this well-phrased reminder on the meaning…

Oren Cass, writing in National Affairs, articulates some of  the difficulties in basing policy on evidence, and includes examples from the Oregon health insurance experiment, the stimulus effect on unemployment, and other challenges of deciding what counts as evidence. I learned some of these lessons while leading the NC Government…

Back in April, we looked at a report on the long-term impact of the Senate’s proposed tax cut and concluded that there was no budget crisis on the horizon. A new look at the budget over the next five years means we need to reiterate the same points. A…

What matters to poor people? H. Luke Schaeffer and Kathryn J. Edin took the unusual step of asking them. Schaeffer explained We ask families, “If we came back in a year and you were doing really well, what it would look like?” They say, “I’d be working in a…

History may often rhyme, but legislation lacks the imagination to do that, so it shows up with new names  for previously rejected programs. The North Carolina Rural Job Creation Fund is this year’s iteration of the New Markets Tax Credit, which Becki Gray noted at the time was simply crony capitalism. If…

Jon and Terry covered the major findings of a new paper by a team at University of Washington that included Jacob Vigdor, who previously spent 15 years at the Sanford School. If you read the New York Times story on the paper, you may have noticed…