Strange tidings from the world of law enforcement. A recent survey of 700 American police agencies found that most – 56 percent – believe that the still-grinding recession is spurring an increase in domestic violence. (You can read the whole report by the Police Executive Research Forum here.) Seems logical. "When stresses in the home increase because of unemployment and other hardships, domestic violence increases," Camden, NJ police chief Scott Thomson told USA Today in discussing the survey. But what’s odd is that violent crime has been going consistently down, right ... Read More
Can We Make College Cheaper?
April 12, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Critics of American higher education have a set of theories to explain the ever-rising cost of college tuition. Schools are inefficient. They blow too much money on administrators, not enough on academics. The academics they do have spend their time on research, not students. And those students live in an increasingly plush world created by the arms race for prestige rankings: Best medium-sized college in the Midwest! Most wired campus in the country! Top-rated college for would-be aerospace engineers! “These people are going to say, ‘Ah! Colleges, they’ve turned themselves into ... Read More
Accepting Climate Change an Economic Luxury
March 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Environmentalists, scientists, and pollsters have devoted a lot of ink and energy over the last few years assessing a curious trend in perceptions about climate change. Several years ago, the American public appeared to start rejecting the idea of climate change: poll after poll showed concern over the problem tailing off and suspicion of the science behind it rising. What was going on here? Did opinion on climate reflect the partisan politics of the moment? Were people swayed by the weather outside, perhaps by that rash of crazy snowstorms in the winter of 2009-10? Were the dipping poll ... Read More
How Incumbents in Washington Hurt the Economy
March 1, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Conventional wisdom suggests that states are better-served in Washington by elected officials who can stay there long enough to accumulate power, get things done, and funnel home some of that government largesse. The longer an incumbent serves, the higher he or she rises in party ranks, and the more likely constituents will benefit. (The people of Maine, for instance, may be bigger losers than the GOP following the retirement announcement this week of long-serving and well-respected Senator Olympia Snowe.) There is new research, however, that suggests really powerful politicians may ... Read More
The Growth of Degrowth Economics
December 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
What if we promoted policies to shrink our economy, rather than grow it? What if government officials called for a recession, perhaps a depression, as the answer to humanity’s most intractable challenges? As heretical as they sound, such questions frame very real policy proposals debated by a growing legion of economists, activists, and government officials representing the so-called Degrowth movement. Degrowthists argue that only a contraction of the world’s developed economies can help reduce dependence on fossil fuel and other environmental resources, slow climate change, and ... Read More
Cash for Clunkers Was a Clunker
November 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
“Cash for clunkers” was wildly popular when the federal government instituted the vehicle trade-in program in the summer of 2009. Congress first earmarked $1 billion to lure drivers out of their old gas-guzzlers onto depressed car lots and into new fuel-efficient vehicles. Designed to run between late July and early November, the program burned through that money in a week. It ended less than a month later, after 678,359 new cars were purchased in exchange for $2.85 billion in government rebates. In the midst of the program, Barack Obama lauded the dealerships it was reviving, the fuel ... Read More
Law Without (As Many) Lawyers
August 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Why can’t lawyers be more like doctors? A form of that question — actually more like, ‘Why can’t the legal profession operate more like the medical profession?’ — is asked by law and economics professor Gillian K. Hadfield in this podcast. (Click below to listen or download.) [audio:http://www.psmag.com/wp-content/uploads/podcast/hadfield.mp3] The University of Southern California professor, whose Research Essay “Legal Services Wanted; Lawyers Need Not Apply” in the July-August edition of Miller-McCune magazine covered that question and others, argues that there’s a ... Read More
Legal Services Wanted; Lawyers Need Not Apply
June 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
"Law is too important to be left to lawyers." Paraphrasing the famous adage about war and generals, Mark Chandler, general counsel at Cisco Systems Inc., shared this observation with me in the spring of 2007. We were speaking over Cisco's stunning TelePresence video-conferencing system — he traveling on the East Coast, me on the West — while he grabbed a quick sandwich between meetings. Others had referred to Chandler as one of the most innovative senior lawyers in Silicon Valley, and I was picking his brain about the impact of law on innovation as part of the early phases of a research ... Read More
Obesity — Not Aging — Balloons Health Care Costs
June 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
"I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old." — Peter Gabriel Our rising life expectancy has been nice for those who like being alive, but it seems a bummer for society as a whole. Even if Social Security doesn’t go bust as baby boomers slowly saunter into the sunset, their massive Medicare costs seem likely to crush the economy. Not surprisingly, further major gains in longevity, which researchers on aging have recently achieved with drugs in animals, is about the last thing deficit-obsessed policymakers want to see happen. Accordingly, less than 0.5 percent of ... Read More
Next Economic Stimulus: Everything 20 Percent Off
April 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — aka the stimulus bill — was the first bold stroke of the Obama administration. Most economists agree that the act prevented the economy from plunging into a deeper recession, even a depression. But this wasn't the last recession the U.S. will face, nor will it be the last stimulus plan that Congress will pass. There will be future recessions, and future debates over what government can do to prime the economic pump. Which raises the question: What should the stimulus next time look like? The stimulus enacted by the administration was a ... Read More
