This issue brief finds that a forecast by Oxford Economics suggesting that the United Kingdom’s living standards will exceed those of the U.S. in 2008 is misleading. CEPR found that the forecast relies on a basic misunderstanding of standard methods of comparing international standards of...

This paper looks at allegations against the government of Venezuela in Foreign Affairs' recently published article, "An Empty Revolution: The Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Chávez" (March/April 2008), in light of available data. It shows that some of the allegations are altogether wrong, and...

This paper shows that the Eastern lowland states of Bolivia that have recently held “autonomy” referenda also have the highest concentrations of land ownership, and receive disproportionate shares of natural gas revenues. These states also have a much smaller indigenous population than the...

This paper explores the potential impact of the Federal Reserve Board’s decision on interest rates on the budget deficit. The first part recounts the history of the 1990s surplus, correcting the widely held misunderstanding that this surplus was achieved by the Clinton administration’s tax...

There is a growing chorus of policy analysts and pundits telling the country that we could have millions more jobs in manufacturing, if only we had qualified workers. This claim has the interesting feature that it places responsibility for the lack of jobs on workers, not on the people who get...

One of the items that Congress added to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Obama’s stimulus package, was a first-time homebuyer tax credit. The tax credit gave people buying their first home, or who had not been homeowners for at least three years, a tax credit equal...

There are many economists who argue that temporary tax cuts, like those in the 2009 stimulus and the ones proposed by President Obama last week, have no impact on the economy. They argue that people will save a temporary tax credit rather than spend it. Stanford Economics Professor John Taylor,...