The Great Recession has left tens of millions of families facing unemployment, underemployment and the threat of losing their home. However,concerns over the deficit threaten to derail efforts to turn around the economy and spur employment. This report attempts to correct many of the...

There is major national debate over the funding status of state and local pension funds. Many economists have argued that pension funds are being overly optimistic in assuming that pensions will be able to get 8 percent nominal returns on their invested funds. This calculation is based on the...

Opponents of the ACA have labeled the health care bill a jobs killer. It seems implausible that the bill could be expected to have much impact on employment except among the relatively small number of firms that are near the 50-worker cutoff. However the bill does provide a clear incentive to...

Americans pay far higher prices for prescription drugs than do people in other wealthy countries. The reason that other countries spend so much less on drugs is that their governments negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry. The United States government could adopt the same approach...

When Congress was debating the Medicare drug benefit in 2003, there were many who advocated that Medicare provide the benefit as part of the traditional hospital insurance program. This was expected to save money both due to lower administrative costs and also as result of Medicare’s ability...

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.

According to this report, many African American men will not be able to pass along to heirs the private accounts that they would receive under President Bush's Social Security plan because they would be required to turn them into annuities when they retired.

Hurricane Katrina left a wake of deadly destruction that will require an expensive clean-up. This paper examines how reconstruction could be funded by the windfall profits from oil companies.