The Dodd-Frank Act's provisions to protect municipal issuers lowered interest costs in the muni market by a significant amount, according to research released Tuesday. "I estimate that for an average bond issue, Dodd-Frank resulted in about $600,000 in interest...
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Paul on The Marc Steiner Show – America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights
Inequality lies at the heart of contemporary American politics—from the dizzying power of corporations and the billionaire class to the racialized and gendered dimensions of wealth and income disparities. Yet the question of economic justice, as well as the struggle...
‘Not a perfect process’: How did the two versions of NJ’s budget differ?
As the process to craft New Jersey's state budget came to a chaotic close last month, rumors swirled about what needed to be done to ensure that the spending plan was final and complete by the time it made it to the governor’s desk. In each chamber of the Legislature,...
The impossible paradox of car ownership
Arizona State University Professor David King and two colleagues, Michael Manville at UCLA and Michael Smart at Rutgers, decided to look at the falling socioeconomic status of carless people in the United States. In a paper published in 2019, they found that the...
Paul on America’s Other Freedom
Today, Americans need not just freedom from. We need freedom to. And it starts with an economic bill of rights. For many—perhaps most—Americans, the meaning of freedom can be found in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, our hallowed Bill of Rights....
Stamato Commentary: Equal opportunity, after the Supreme Court killed affirmative action
Policy Fellow Linda Stamato discusses the potential implications of a recent Supreme Court decision on equal opportunity, highlighting the significance of the ruling and its impact on various aspects of society, including education, employment, and civil rights. She...
4 Situations That Make You Tip More In a Restaurant
The general concept of tipping, or paying a little bit extra for especially great or speedy service, was actually imported from Europe in the 19th century. Ironically, most Americans were incredibly skeptical of the practice at first. For example, six U.S. states...
‘Secretive’ N.J. governments would be even less transparent under proposed laws, some say
Tucked in desk drawers and filed away in email inboxes in every local and county office in New Jersey are government secrets. To find them, news reporters, attorneys and even local gadflies, using access laws like the Open Public Records Act, sift through the...
150+ economists and experts call on Paris Summit leaders to redirect trillions from fossils, debt, and the 1%
PARIS, France — Today, ahead of the June 22-23 “Summit for a New Global Financial Pact” in Paris, 150+ economists and policy experts including Jason Hickel, Olúfémi O. Táíwò, Nader Habibi, Alyssa Battistoni, and Yanis Varoufakis sent an open...
Shapiro Opinion: Threats to Administrative Competence
Civil servants report that the Trump Administration posed an existential threat to expertise in the federal bureaucracy. The question of the proper role of unelected officials in policymaking in a representative democracy goes back as far as representative democracy...