Salim Furth, Ph.D., researches and explains how public policy affects economic growth as a research fellow in macroeconomics at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. Read his research.
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The federal regulatory apparatus has made Americans poorer and less safe, and it has eliminated hundreds of jobs by shutting down 41 bus companies in… Read More
Journalists should check with both sides before committing pen to paper, especially those at respectable outlets like The Washington Post. It would have served Post… Read More
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) spent eight minutes berating me at a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday. He disliked the facts I presented on austerity, so… Read More
Last Thursday’s revisions to the first-quarter growth estimates showed little change: Gross domestic product (GDP) had grown at a 2.4 percent rate, not 2.5 percent… Read More
After dreadfully low growth in the last quarter of 2012—just 0.4 percent—gross domestic product (GDP) returned to a healthier rate of growth of 2.5 percent… Read More
Scott Winship’s recent piece in National Affairs, “Overstating the Costs of Inequality,” elevates the national debate over the role that income inequality plays in economic… Read More
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On their respective blogs, economists Mike Konczal and Paul Krugman criticize the widely cited finding that a nation’s debt above 90 percent of its gross… Read More
Economic scholars have recently shown how high government debt has a negative effect on long-term economic growth. Government debt crowds out private investment, slowing the… Read More
The Department of Commerce made news Wednesday by announcing the first quarterly decline in gross domestic product (GDP) since the recession ended in 2009. As… Read More
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) stirred controversy last year when it released a study claiming that tax rates do not influence economic growth. Predictably, those… Read More
Did you notice how your paycheck shrank in January? The expiration of temporary payroll tax cuts boosted marginal tax rates about two percentage points for… Read More
Too often, government policies designed to ameliorate a general problem merely benefit a special interest. A case in point, highlighted by Binyamin Applebaum on the… Read More
Menzie Chinn took to the blog Econbrowser last Thursday to accuse conservative economists in general – and The Heritage Foundation in particular – of being… Read More
Thousands of people are not starving to death in Michigan. This shocking development comes despite one of the worst harvests in memory. With little produce… Read More
On Friday, Representative Pete Sessions (R–TX) and House Speaker John Boehner (R–OH) ran afoul of Glenn Kessler’s “Fact Checker” blog regarding a study of President… Read More
According to Friday’s Washington Post, the Administration is considering a new, short-term tax cut. Should conservatives cheer? As a matter of principle, there are at… Read More
On Thursday, the Department of Commerce revised its second quarter estimate of economic growth (in terms of real gross domestic product, or GDP) down to… Read More
Francois Hollande won election to the French presidency by promising that more government spending would lead to quick economic growth. He sharply criticized the “austerity”—i.e.,… Read More
In a new Backgrounder, “How Contagious Is Europe’s Economic Crisis?”, we discuss several channels through which a European crisis could be transmitted to the U.S…. Read More
Wednesday’s warning by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that the fiscal cliff is likely to push the economy back into recession should bring things sharply… Read More
In the midst of one of the most severe droughts on record, Washington’s ethanol mandate is making the corn shortage even worse. Markets have responded… Read More
Following the news that the U.S. national debt has increased by $1 trillion for the fifth year in a row and that Greece’s debt crisis… Read More
Speaking this week at the Western Economic Association International, economic forecaster Allen Sinai talked about the damage the “fiscal cliff” of 2013 will cause the… Read More
How did Greece get into its fiscal situation? It’s best explained in a parable. Helen is an elegant, if somewhat faded, woman of a certain… Read More
The stock market rose Wednesday in anticipation of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke’s remarks Thursday. Traders sold Treasury bonds and bought stocks, hoping Bernanke… Read More
