This policy brief will focus on the underlying causes of declining discretion in policy-making: specifically, the unsustainable growth of mandatory spending programs rooted in a rapidly aging population. We will discuss how this phenomenon will lead effectively to the end of policy-making in a...

Over the past three decades, more than a dozen developed nations have abandoned their wealth taxes. Yet the United States today finds itself in the midst of a political debate about implementing a wealth tax to partially fund the spending commitments of progressive presidential hopefuls. The...

In this policy brief, we review the literature on the debt-growth relationship since the publication of “Growth in a Time of Debt” to evaluate the claim that high government-debt-to-GDP ratios have negative or significant (or both) effects on the growth rate of an economy. In addition, we...

This paper reviews the empirical literature to determine which forms of fiscal consolidation successfully reduce debt-to-GDP ratios and impact economic performance. We perform a cross-country analysis of fiscal adjustments in 26 democracies for 1995–2018 and find that expenditure-based fiscal...

Four years into the deepest recession since World War II, the U.S. economy expanded at a rate of only 0.7 percent in the first half of 2011. This means that the economy is growing at a slower pace than the population and that capita output continues to fall. In response, the president has...

The term tax expenditure is commonly used to describe both tax privileges granted to politically favored special interests and also patches to the income tax system that address economic inefficiencies. This paper focuses on the difference between tax provisions that should be labeled as tax...

Despite decades of a war on poverty that came with proliferating programs and ballooning budgets, the official poverty rate in the United States has stubbornly refused to break from its narrow historical range. This failure stems largely from the methods used to pursue the alleviation of...

Ex-Im Bank advocates emphasize its importance to small businesses and economic growth. A new analysis of government data reveals that Ex-Im Bank's top 10 overseas buyers are large corporations that primarily purchase exports from multinational conglomerates. Ex-Im Bank's small business narrative...

The term quot;midnight regulationsquot; describes the dramatic spike in new regulations promulgated at the end of presidential terms, especially during transitions to an administration of the opposite party. While widely acknowledged as problematic due to lessened presidential accountability...

The Export-Import Bank of the United States is a government-owned bank that provides taxpayer-backed financing to private exporting corporations. Supporters of the bank argue that it is a critical tool to promote exports, create jobs, support small businesses, improve competitiveness, and...