Mercatus Year in Review

This Year at Mercatus features some of the Mercatus Center's top research and commentary from 2017. December 27, 2017

Top Features  State Fiscal Rankings  Eileen Norcross and Olivia Gonzalez The fiscal health of America’s states affects all its citizens. The 2017 edition of "Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition" calculates indicators of fiscal health for all 50 states, revealing that Florida ranks first as the most fiscally healthy state, while New Jersey ranks the lowest.   Keep Reading Tweet This Share This

FEDERAL FISCAL POLICY   Getting to True Tax Reform in 2017 Jason Fichtner, Adam Michel, Veronique de Rugy, and Angela Kuck Tax reform legislation recently passed through Congress. But what would the ideal tax reform bill look like according to Mercatus scholars? As policymakers laid out their visions for the recently-passed bill, Mercatus scholars outlined the key goals for successful tax reform: simplification, efficiency, equity, and predictability. Keep Reading HEALTH CARE   Anatomy and Atrophy of Medical Paternalism Robert Graboyes and Eric Topol Medical paternalism—the idea that patients should defer to the intrinsically superior knowledge of physicians in health-related matters—has been conventional wisdom for millennia. But now, new technologies are eroding the physician’s privileged role by democratizing medical knowledge. This research paper finds that these new technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to save lives, reduce sickness, and ease pain—if policymakers are willing to embrace them. Keep Reading TRADE AND IMMIGRATION   Reforming the US Immigration System to Promote Growth Daniel Griswold The US immigration system system fails to provide adequate opportunities for well-educated and highly skilled immigrants to join the US workforce to spur innovation, output, and job creation. This research paper provides a detailed comparison of US immigration policy to the employment-based immigration policies of Australia and Canada, two nations often held up as models for US policy. Following their example, the United States should welcome a significantly larger number of foreign-born workers in order to harness global talent flows. Keep Reading ACADEMIC AND STUDENT PROGRAMS   Applied Mainline Economics Matthew Mitchell and Peter Boettke In this book, Matthew Mitchell and Peter Boettke summarize the ideas of mainline economics. They begin with a puzzle that has vexed economists for more than 200 years: Why are some societies fabulously wealthy while others are miserably poor? They briefly survey the empirical tools that might answer this question, suggesting that the first place to start is with mainline economic theory. Throughout the discussion, Mitchell and Boettke offer the reader examples of how mainline economic theory has helped researchers and policy analysts bridge the gap between ideas and real-world problems. Keep Reading MONETARY POLICY   Macro Musings  David Beckworth | Macro Musings Hosted by Senior Research Fellow David Beckworth, Macro Musings is a weekly podcast that pulls back the curtain on the important macroeconomic issues of the past, present, and future. This year, David interviewed several top economists including Lawrence H. Summers, James Bullard, and Betsey Stevenson. The podcast will reach its hundredth episode in 2018! Listen Now TECHNOLOGY POLICY   Keeping the Internet Open Brent Skorup | National Review  Before the FCC voted to reverse the Obama-era Title II "net neutrality" rules on December 14, Research Fellow Brent Skorup weighed in on the open Internet debate in National Review. His article details the FCC's history of stifling free speech and argues that a truly open Internet would be free of burdensome FCC regulation.  Keep Reading GOVERNMENT FAVORITISM   Rule Reversal: How the Feds Can Challenge State Regulation Matthew Mitchell and Ryan Nunn | The Wall Street Journal  An oft-repeated observation is that government works best when it is closest to the people. But when local and state governments are unduly influenced by special interests, the people may benefit from the checks and balances of the federal government. This Wall Street Journal article discusses a much-needed new FTC initiative that will will combat excessive and anticompetitive occupational licensing regulations at the state and local levels.   Keep Reading FINANCIAL MARKETS   Violet Needs a Loan In 2016, the Mercatus Center hosted a conference in Starkville, Mississippi, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Uniform Small Loan Law of 1916. The conference discussion focused on the history, current state, and future of consumer credit. This illustrated recording uses insights from the conference to demonstrate the challenges a hypothetical consumer, Violet, would face in navigating the small-dollar loan landscape to secure an emergency loan.   Keep Reading REGULATION   QuantGov: A Platform for Open-Source Policy Analytics QuantGov—the new home for the Mercatus Center’s policy analytics products—expands the ways we can use the best tools of data science to pioneer new areas of economic research and policy analysis that were previously infeasible. QuantGov’s platform allows researchers to examine bodies of text quicker and more effectively than ever before using some of the latest advances in data science. Think about it in terms of a hyper-powerful Google search that not only finds specific content within mass quantities of text, but also finds patterns or groupings, and can even make predictions about what is in a document. To learn more about how it works, click here.  Keep Reading MARGINAL REVOLUTION UNIVERSITY   The Complacent Class Tyler Cowen | Marginal Revolution University  Restlessness has long been seen as a signature trait of what it means to be American. We've been willing to cross great distances, take big risks, and adapt to change in way that has produced a dynamic economy. From Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs, innovation has been firmly rooted in American DNA. But what if that is no longer true? This video series from Marginal Revolution University offers an accessible introduction to the economic patterns that Tyler Cowen details in his book The Complacent Class.   Watch Now

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