The opponents of financial transactions taxes (FTTs) have argued that the imposition of such taxes will slow economic growth by raising the cost of capital. The argument is that if the cost of buying and selling stock and other financial assets is higher, then it makes it more expensive for...

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...

Debates over economic policy tend to be enormously confused. It is often the case that even high-level officials and well-known economists seem ignorant of basic accounting identities. This leads them to make claims that literally do not add up. This seems to be especially common in the case of...

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...

This paper considers the case for and against 'the treasury view' - the idea that in a downturn, government spending has no effect on economic activity or unemployment. The report covers three areas: the evidence for expansionary fiscal contraction – the idea that somehow cutting budget...

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.

One outcome of the TARP and other bank rescue efforts following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September of 2008 is that the United States has essentially formalized a commitment to a “too big to fail” (TBTF) policy for major banks. This paper uses data from the FDIC on the relative cost...

The unemployment rate is expected to average 10.2 percent for 2010, 9.1 percent for 2011, and 7.3 percent for 2012. With this in mind, this Issue Brief describes a job sharing tax credit, designed to provide a quick and substantial boost to the economy. It would use tax dollars to pay firms to...