How Complete Are Federal Agencies’ Regulatory Analyses?
A report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office will likely get spun to imply that federal agencies are doing a pretty good job of assessing the benefits and costs of their proposed...
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An interesting development in state regulation of wine shipment
Can one state enforce another state’s laws that prohibit direct-to-consumer wine shipment from out-of-state retailers while allowing it by in-state retailers? That’s the question posed in a recent...
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Local land-use restrictions harm everyone
In a recent NBER working paper, authors Enrico Moretti and Chang-Tai Hsieh analyze how the growth of cities determines the growth of nations. They use data on 220 MSAs from 1964 – 2009 to estimate the...
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Rent control: A bad policy that just won’t die
The city council of Richmond, CA is thinking about implementing rent control in their city. Richmond is located north of Berkeley and Oakland on the San Francisco Bay in an area that has some of the...
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Education, Innovation, and Urban Growth
One of the strongest predictors of urban growth since the start of the 20th century is the skill level of a city’s population. Cities that have a highly skilled population, usually measured as the...
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Rent control, housing supply, and home values in Seattle and Houston
In my recent op-ed about rent control I point out that Houston, TX permitted more home and apartment building than Seattle, WA from 2005 to 2014. The graph below shows the magnitude of this...
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Can historic districts dampen urban renewal?
Struggling cities in the Northeast and Midwest have been trying to revitalize their downtown neighborhoods for years. City officials have used taxpayer money to build stadiums, construct river walks,...
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City population dynamics since 1850
The reason why some cities grow and some cities shrink is a heavily debated topic in economics, sociology, urban planning, and public administration. In truth, there is no single reason why a city...
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A $15 minimum wage will excessively harm California’s poorest counties
Lawmakers in California are thinking about increasing the state minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2022. If it occurs it will be the latest in a series of increases in the minimum wage across the country,...
View ArticleStates with lower minimum wages will feel the impact of California’s experiment
California governor Jerry Brown recently signed a law raising California’s minimum wage to $15/hour by 2022. This ill-advised increase in the minimum wage will banish the least productive workers of...
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Northern Cities Need To Be Bold If They Want To Grow
Geography and climate have played a significant role in U.S. population growth since 1970 (see here, here, here, and here). The figure below shows the correlation between county-level natural amenities...
View ArticleWashington’s Legitimacy Crisis Presents an Opportunity for the States
You’ve heard it before. Americans are deeply unhappy with Washington, DC. Sixty-five percent say the country is on the wrong track. Confidence in institutions is near all-time lows. Congress’s approval...
View ArticleThinking like an Economist Means Thinking about Tradeoffs
This week, I’ve written two articles about different types of tradeoffs that economists think about when they evaluate the likely effectiveness of proposed public policies. One type of tradeoff relates...
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More competition can lead to less inequality
Wealth inequality in the United States and many European countries, especially between the richest and the rest, has been a popular topic since Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century was...
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More labor market freedom means more labor force participation
The U.S. labor force participation (LFP) rate has yet to bounce back to its pre-recession level. Some of the decline is due to retiring baby-boomers but even the prime-age LFP rate, which only counts...
View ArticleToday’s public policies exacerbate our differences
The evidence that land-use regulations harm potential migrants keeps piling up. A recent paper in the Journal of Urban Economics finds that young workers (age 22 – 26) of average ability who enter the...
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Why the lack of labor mobility in the U.S. is a problem and how we can fix it
Many researchers have found evidence that mobility in the U.S. is declining. More specifically, it doesn’t appear that people move from places with weaker economies to places with stronger economies as...
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Why Do We Get So Much Regulation?
Over the past 60 or 70 years, levels of regulation in the United States have been on the rise by almost any measure. As evidence, in the year 1950 there were only 9,745 pages in the US Code of Federal...
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Innovation and economic growth in the early 20th century and lessons for today
Economic growth is vital for improving our lives and the primary long-run determinant of economic growth is innovation. More innovation means better products, more choices for consumers and a higher...
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Many working-age males aren’t working: What should be done?
The steady disappearance of prime-age males (age 25-54) from the labor force has been occurring for decades and has recently become popular in policy circles. The prime-age male labor force...
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