The current fiscal crisis in Illinois affects all parts of the state’s budget. Infrastructure is no exception. For many years Illinois has spent more on highways than it has collected in highway-related revenue. One solution to this problem is to increase the state’s gasoline tax. This...

Illinois needs to prepare now for the coming changes associated with climate change, according to IGPA's Climate Change Policy Initiative. A new report, "Preparing for climate change in Illinois: An overview of expected impacts" (PDF), calls for a state-wide climate action plan to manage the...

This policy brief provides an overview of research on climate change and air pollution, and it discusses the implications for Illinois. The researchers first describe the effects of pollution and then look at trends in Illinois relative to the whole United States. They then describe estimates of...

This report estimates the revenue and distributional effects of increasing the state’s cigarette excise tax by $0.50 per pack from $1.98 to $2.48. After taking into account the behavioral responses of smokers, Reif estimates that the tax increase would raise up to $175 million per year and...

Although crop insurance was not designed to impact water resources, it may have unintended consequences for water use, because agriculture and water resources are tightly linked. In particular, crop production relies on water as an input, and irrigation for crop production is the largest user of...

We investigate the effect of teenage driving on mortality and risky behaviors in the United States using a regression discontinuity design. We estimate that motor vehicle fatalities rise by 40% at the minimum legal driving age cutoff, implying a mortality risk per additional mile driven 6-9...

Policies aimed at reducing the harmful effects of air pollution exposure typically focus on areas with high levels of pollution. However, if a population's vulnerability to air pollution is imperfectly correlated with current pollution levels, then this approach to air quality regulation may not...

The advent of cheap digital storage and powerful computer processing has driven an explosion of data collection and empirical research on topics ranging from public health initiatives to stock returns to climate policy. Think tanks such as the Brookings Institution and government entities such...

We develop a new framework for valuing health and longevity improvements that departs from conventional but unrealistic assumptions of full annuitization and deterministic health. Our framework can value the prevention of mortality and of illness, and it can quantify the effects of retirement...