Skip to main content

Research Archive

Welcome to Our Research Archive

Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword

July 2, 2025

Have You Heard the Good News?

A quick look at some recent headlines shows that we have problems. The nation sharply and angrily divided along political lines. Rioters in the streets of Los Angeles. A destructive…

June 5, 2025

The One Thing Both Parties Agree On: More Deficits and Debt

The House of Representatives recently passed by a single vote Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” that reflects President Donald Trump’s tax and spending agenda, and GOP senators are now working to put their…

May 7, 2025

Did ‘China Shock’ Throw Millions of Americans Out of Work?

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that “3.7 million Americans lost their jobs” due to the “China Shock”—the increased import competition occurring after China was granted membership…

April 24, 2025

Musk’s High-Tech Polygamy Is a Dead End

Elon Musk told a conference in Saudi Arabia last year that his listeners “should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem [we] need to solve. If you don’t make new humans,…

April 3, 2025

Trump’s Tariffs Are a Historic Tax Hike

If implemented, the tariffs announced yesterday by President Trump would constitute the largest tax increase since the 1968 levies to fund the Vietnam War. The details will matter, but my back-of-the-envelope calculation…

February 20, 2025

The American Dream Is Not a Coin Flip, and Wages Have Not Stagnated

In my last column, I showed that Americans’ assessments of the economy have tracked the official unemployment rate well over the long run. That is important because it suggests that both…

January 22, 2025

How the Trump Administration Can Hit Its Growth Target

By setting an ambitious 3% growth target, US Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent has provided the Trump administration a North Star to follow in devising its economic policies. The task…

January 16, 2025

Should We Believe the Economic Data or Americans’ “Lyin’” Eyes? The Answer Is Yes.

Many Americans are convinced the economy is ailing and that life is financially tougher today than a decade—or a generation—ago. Social media posts wax nostalgic for a long-lost era when…

December 20, 2024

Fixing Inflation, Right-Sizing the Federal Government

Thirty years ago next month, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before a joint session of the House and Senate Budget Committees with talk of deficit reduction in the…

December 17, 2024

Industrial Policy and Deficits: Dark Clouds for Democratic Capitalism

Democratic capitalism is a system that marries liberal democracy and free-market capitalism. This union creates tensions, and requires balancing competing aims. But this tension is healthy, not destructive — provided…