The 2008-09 Great Recession has created an ongoing severe fiscal crisis for state and local governments throughout the United States. Republican leaders are now advancing an agenda to radically downsize state and local governments by cutting taxes, slashing wages and benefits for public workers,...

This paper incorporates costly migration into the empirical literature on the incidence on wages of states and local taxes. The responsiveness of pre-tax wages to changes in state and local taxes (including income, sales and property taxes) is shown to vary by age and education. Using repeated...

The impact of the great recession on inequality is unclear. Because the crises in the housing and stock markets and mass job loss affect incomes from across the entire distribution, the overall impact on inequality is difficult to determine. Early speculation using a variety of narrow measures...

Revised April 13, 2010The Governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and several other states have recently proposed employer tax credits as measures to fight high unemployment in their states. Such policies are also being considered at the federal level. In the Working Paper, Jeff...

Jeffrey Thompson presents evidence that investing in state infrastructure and building the skills of the current and future workforce are among the most effective ways to create jobs in New England. Prioritizing Approaches to Economic Development in New England provides ample evidence that...

This paper explores the interaction between the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the cost-of-living faced by single mothers. After the 1993 EITC expansion, we identify up to a 10 percentage point increase in labor force participation for single mothers in the lowest cost areas but no...

This paper uses US state panel data to explore the relationship between the share of income held by affluent households and the level of income received by low and middle-income households. A rising top share of income can potentially lead to increases in the incomes of low and middle-income...

In this chapter for an international study, "The Great Recession and the Distribution of Household Income," Jeffrey Thompson and Timothy Smeeding highlight the degree to which economic and social policies, such as the federal stimulus, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and Social Security...

In recent years, some states have responded to the collapse in tax revenue following the Great Recession by turning to tax increases targeted at high-income households. The revenue from such taxes can help sustain public spending on vital public services. Jeffrey Thompson looks at decades of...

Current federal policies to ‘make work pay’ leave the vast majority―88%―of low-income working families in the U.S. without the guarantee of a decent living standard, even with full-time work. In their new study, Jeannette Wicks-Lim and Jeffrey Thompson advance proposals to substantially...