Private Enterprise Research Center (PERC)

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The mission of the Private Enterprise Research Center (PERC) is to provide Texas A&M University, the state of Texas and the Nation with analysis of important policy issues. PERC actively supports academic research and market oriented solutions to public policy problems.

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Browsing Private Enterprise Research Center (PERC) by Type "Data Points"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    College Towns: Handle Data With Care
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2019-11-18) Jansen, Dennis W.; Navarro, Carlos I.; Wang, Yuanhang
    Although the term ‘college town’ may invoke idyllic images from our past, government statistics paint a different picture. College towns often appear as poverty – ridden, with unaffordable housing and low incomes. However, by their very nature college students are young, often have very little income, and usually have an ability to spend far more than their official income. In this paper, authors Dennis W. Jansen, Carlos I. Navarro and Yuanhang Wang show how government statistics for college towns can be misleading with respect to income, poverty, and housing affordability, as well as ways in which college towns are not so different from other areas with respect to statistics on crime or unemployment rates.
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    County-to-County Migration Based on Tax Return Data
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2021-09-17) Navarro, Carlos I.; Rettenmaier, Andrew J.
    The Internal Revenue Service has released updated county-to-county migration data based on matched household tax returns filed through 2019. In this issue of Data Points, authors Carlos Navarro and Andrew Rettenmaier compare changes in the average real adjusted gross income per person for immigrants, emigrants, and non-movers from 1995-2018 and the relationship between counties’ average migrant and non-migrant incomes for the year 2018. Additionally, the authors examine the lowest and highest adjusted gross income, as well as immigration and emigration ratios, for counties with populations over 250,000 residents.
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    "Forecasting" Deficit Spending in the United States: A Look at Projections from the Congressional Budget Office
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2017-10-01) Jansen, Dennis W.; Ross, Aaron
    The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, is the non-partisan government agency that provides projections of costs and revenues to Congress and the public. CBO projections are conditional forecasts of underlying economic drivers including GDP, potential GDP, and demographic variables. The CBO deficit projections, published semi-annually in the report, “The Budget and Economic Outlook� are then used by legislators to provide a framework for considering the future path of deficits without changes in current law, and subject to CBO projections of economic activity. However, when current law is constantly changing, the CBO deficit projections can be strikingly at variance with actual deficits. This article examines the 10-year deficit projections of the Congressional Budget Office from 2000 to 2017 and compares them to subsequent actual levels of deficit spending. Findings show that CBO projections have sometimes significantly underestimated the level and path of deficits, while they have not over this period significantly overestimated the level and path of deficits. Legislators and the public should take into account that CBO projections are, in this sense, an optimistic projection of future events.
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    Hydraulic Fracking: A Story of American Innovation
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2018-04-01) Jansen, Dennis W.; Sasso, John
    A regular misconception is that Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of energy from oil and natural gas. Despite massive oil production, Saudi Arabia produces less than 1% of total energy from oil and gas. The U.S. currently holds that distinction, producing over 49 quadrillion Btu of energy in 2016. How has the U.S. climbed to the top spot and reversed the long-run trend of decreasing production? Authors Dennis W. Jansen and John Sasso examine the history and technologies used in hydraulic fracking and analyze natural gas production from each state.
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    Japanese Government Debt: It's Not As Bad As You Might Think
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2019-12-02) Jansen, Dennis W.; Ye, Tong
    Japan, the third-largest economy in the world by GDP, is also the most heavily indebted of the highly developed countries. Its gross debt of 1,175.84 trillion yen is an eye-popping 213.7% of GDP. In this issue of Data Points, authors Dennis W. Jansen and Tong Ye present calculations of Japan's net debt-to-GDP ratio after adjusting for the substantial asset holdings of the government of Japan and for the large quantity of debt held by the Bank of Japan. They calculate a net debt-to-GDP ratio of a more manageable, if still high, 109%.
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    An Overview of the Economic Performance of States in the U.S. from 2010-2022
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2023-07-18) Jansen, Dennis W.; Kim, Joon Hwa
    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, and growth in per capita RGDP. The authors present information on trends in the performance of U.S. states over the recent 2010 - 2022 period, which followed the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession. During this period, some states with high RGDP growth and high population growth, like Texas, also had moderate levels of per capita RGDP growth. Other states, such as California, had high RGDP growth but moderate population growth, and yet had very high per capita RGDP growth. Additionally, states with higher levels of RGDP per capita tend to grow more slowly than states with lower levels of RGDP per capita. This tendency toward convergence is a prediction of the Solow Growth Model.
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    An Overview of the Economic Performance of Texas MSAs from 2010-2021
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2023-07-18) Jansen, Dennis W.; Kim, Joon Hwa
    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, and growth in per capita RGDP. The authors present information on trends in the performance of U.S. states over the recent 2010 - 2022 period, which followed the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession. During this period, some states with high RGDP growth and high population growth, like Texas, also had moderate levels of per capita RGDP growth. Other states, such as California, had high RGDP growth but moderate population growth, and yet had very high per capita RGDP growth. Additionally, states with higher levels of RGDP per capita tend to grow more slowly than states with lower levels of RGDP per capita. This tendency toward convergence is a prediction of the Solow Growth Model.
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    Revisionist Economic History? Potential GDP in the United States
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2018-03-01) Jansen, Dennis W.; Ross, Aaron
    U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has finally caught up with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates of potential GDP as of late 2017, even though the National Bureau of Economic Research dates the end of the Great Recession in 2009. This has been a widely recognized long slow recovery back to ‘full employment.’ What is less widely recognized is that this catch-up of actual GDP with potential GDP has occurred as much from CBO downward revisions of its estimates of potential GDP as from growth in actual GDP. Real time projections of potential and actual GDP given by the Congressional Budget Office to policymakers widely underestimated the severity of the recession and overestimated the U.S. economy’s ability to recover. These errors have real-time implications: policymakers used these estimates to assess the level of stimulus needed to boost the economy. This report examines CBO estimates of potential GDP, including estimates of historical values and forecasts of future values, and documents how the CBO continued to revise downward its potential GDP estimates for years after the end of the Great Recession. These CBO revisions were changes in both forecasts of future potential GDP values and estimates of past values of potential GDP. The authors also examine the behavior of factors contributing to the CBO revisions, including changes in the labor force participation rate.
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    Taxation in the Fifty States, With Special Attention on the Lone Star State
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2018-03-30) Jansen, Dennis W.; Neumann, Corbin J.
    State taxes have been in the news nationally due to changes in the deductibility of state income taxes on federal income tax returns, as well as locally, as citizens in Texas and other states protest rising property taxes. State and local taxes differ of course across state (and local) boundaries. Given the outcry about property taxes in particular, the authors look at state-level data to examine how various states collect tax revenue, paying particular attention to how each relies on personal income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes. This study illustrates the relative size of total tax collections by each state, with some state collecting a far higher percentage of their citizen’s personal income compared to other states. This study also looks at the intensity with which each of these various taxes are levied, examining how income taxes, property taxes, and sales tax vary relative to personal income across the fifty states.
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    Texas Movers - Migration and Income Along the Border
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2018-10-01) Navarro, Carlos I.
    Not only are Texas residents among the most mobile in the nation, but over a million Texans move from one county to another within the state. This brings important questions to the table regarding urban, education, healthcare, and security policy planning at the local and state level. In this report, author Carlos Navarro analyses the major migration links for outflows and inflows of households and individuals who live along the Texas-Mexico border, with special attention placed on the Rio Grande Valley and the El Paso commuting zones. A comparison of the average income of movers relative to non-movers is also presented.
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    Texas: Leading the Way on Wind Power
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2018-12-03) Iverson, Kyle; Jansen, Dennis W.
    Wind power is a growing source for electricity generation in the United States, and wind power now providing over 6% of our electricity. In Texas wind is responsible for 15% of electricity production, and Texas produces 25% of all the wind-generated electricity in the USA. In this issue of Data Points, authors Kyle Iverson and Dennis W. Jansen compare the largest producers of wind energy by state and by production source, as well as identify the benefits and challenges associated with the properties and process of wind energy generation.