Assuming two types of regions that differ only in the discount rate, Huber and Runkel (2008) show that optimal federal redistribution is from impatient to patient regions, and optimal local public debt is higher in impatient ...

It has been established in the literature that, under the assumption of risk-neutral contestants, it is usually optimal for an effort maximizing contest organizer with a fixed prize budget to award everything to a single ...

Questions about economic performance are some of the most frequently asked questions posed to economists. This paper illustrates the relative performance of states over 2010-2022 in terms of RGDP growth, population growth, ...

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, developed world governments engaged in unprecedented spending. Federal Reserve securities holdings were an astounding 36.5% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product after two pandemic years. ...

How does Texas’ response to the coronavirus pandemic compare to that of other states? In this issue of PERCspectives on Policy, Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro, and Andrew J. Rettenmaier discuss which states, and ...

Despite strong demand for attending high schools with better peers, there is mixed evidence on whether doing so improves academic outcomes. The authors estimate the cognitive returns to high school quality using administrative ...

The absence of same gender role models in STEM fields has been shown to discourage female student participation in STEM fields of study. In PERC Working Paper 1706, Persistent Effects of Teacher-Student Gender Matches, ...

Whereas the majority of economists interpret risk as dispersion or variation in an outcome variable, many everyday decision makers tend to associate risk with the outcome failing to meet a certain “safety� level. In ...

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a ‘war on poverty.’ Since then, the U.S. poverty rate declined from 19% to 11.6% in 2021, but one may wonder why it has not dropped further. In this issue of PERCspectives ...