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...

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,...

During the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, President Obama proposed cutting the annual cost of living adjustment for Social Security by switching to an index that would show a lower measured rate of inflation. This alternative index, the chained consumer price index (CCPI-U), shows...

This working paper argues that pension funds should adopt a funding principle that is consistent with a return on holdings conditional on the state of the stock market. As will be shown, the expected “conditional rate of return” used in making this assessment will vary depending on the...

Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market...

At the peak of both the stock and housing bubbles, there were extraordinary shifts in the statistical discrepancy between the national output and income accounts. The statistical discrepancy fell from its normal range of 0.5 – 1.0 percent of GDP to levels below -1.0 percent of GDP. The...

There is enormous public confusion (much of it deliberately cultivated) about the extent of Social Security’s projected shortfall. Many policymakers and analysts point out that projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Trustees show the program to be out of...

This joint report by CEPR and the Political Economy Research Institute (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) gives an estimate of $177-354 billion in revenue that could be raised by taxing financial transactions in the United States.

This report compares the ownership and rental costs in 100 major U.S. metropolitan areas. Extending the work from a previous CEPR/NLIHC paper, "The Cost of Maintaining Ownership in the Current Crisis: Comparisons in 20 Cities," this study, while demonstrating the wide diversity in housing...

This paper shows that wage inequality poses a much larger economic burden on most workers than any tax hikes that may be needed to keep Social Security solvent.