Hicks: Sometimes it’s about spending, not taxes
No matter the result of last week’s budget debate, we are in need of a serious discussion about tax and spending policy.
Economic Analysis
Articles
Hicks: We’ll spend more and more on health care
Like most Americans, I am confused by the ACA. I don’t have a spare couple of months to read it in its entirety, but am certain there are things about it I will like and some I will detest. On balance, though, it is increasingly clear that it will require Herculean fixes.
HICKS: Yellen understands the Fed’s conflicting roles
With Janet Yellen as the clear front runner for Federal Reserve chairwoman, rampant speculation regarding her approach to monetary policy fills blogs and editorials.
HICKS: Now is not the time to backtrack on school reforms
My local paper recently published an opinion piece criticizing virtually all recent education reform efforts, including those by the Bush, Obama, Daniels and Pence administrations. The piece was naively rich with irony.
Hicks: Incomes won’t rise until communities improve
Indiana has many fine communities with good schools and great local amenities. High-earning households are eager to live in these communities, and businesses flock there to obtain access to those workers and consumers. Indiana also has many poor communities with weak schools and few amenities. Households and businesses flee such places.
Hicks: Blame labor’s collapse on its own successes
The decline of the American labor movement is startling. In only 50 years, membership has dropped 80 percent. No mainstream American institution of note has dissipated at this pace before. Today, more Americans receive disability payments than belong to private-sector unions.
Hicks: Antitrust suit rests on decades of tradition
The attempt by the Department of Justice to block the merger of American Airlines and U.S. Airways offers a glimpse into one of the great public policy innovations of the past couple of centuries: American anti-trust law.
Hicks: Education debate shouldn’t matter to students
Higher education is undergoing a metamorphosis. Cost-saving measures such as online learning and the ubiquity of technology might seem to make today’s undergraduate experience vastly different from their forbears’. That is a mirage. The most essential elements of an education are unchanged.
Hicks: Two excellent choices for Bernanke successor
A great debate under way regarding the successor to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke seems to come down to economists Lawrence Summers or Janet Yellen. The debate is full of interesting insight but it’s the immediate challenges of the Fed that matter more.
Hicks: Stamp out mediocrity in education colleges
Over the past two years, Indiana has replaced licensing and compensation rules for public schoolteachers that required degrees exclusively from teachers colleges.
Economic growth better than expected in 2nd quarter
U.S. economic growth accelerated in the April-June quarter to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.7 percent. The Bureau of Economic Analysis said the rate released Wednesday was based on incomplete data and would be revised over the next month.
Hicks: China’s economy colliding into great wall
For more than three decades, China’s economy has dazzled observers, with annual growth frequently sneaking into double digits. But the wide-eyed narrative of boundless wealth that has accompanied this growth is suffering a couple of hiccups.
Hicks: ‘Real poverty’ is beating a retreat globally
Over the past 30 years, the number of people in the world living in “real poverty” has dropped from just under 2 billion to fewer than 1.1 billion. This is a drop from roughly 40 percent to 15 percent of the world’s population.
Hicks: Same-sex debate obscures larger family crisis
Same-sex marriage or household arrangements possess no economic consequences. However, the debate itself does have consequences because it crowds out honest deliberation on the real problems of collapsing families.
Hicks: The Austrian school is winning the fiscal debate
Political folklore has it that economists are infamously divided between Keynesian and classical explanations for the cause of the boom-and-bust cycle.
Hicks: A better immigration policy needed right now
Our immigration policy is broken. We could absorb many of the best-educated workers in the world, but we encumber them in decades of costly red tape or send them to boost the economies of Canada, Britain and Germany.
Hicks: Manufacturing turns out remarkably good news
I am always reluctant to fill this column with my recent research, but last week’s release of the annual Conexus Manufacturing Scorecard begs comment. Indiana did much better in the cost of worker benefits and continued to lead in the size of manufacturing and logistics. Indiana also ranked third in the pace of manufacturing recovery […]
Hicks: Attractive places help Indiana grow faster
I am often asked to explain why more and better local amenities matter to job creation. It is a simple concept, really. Families make choices about where to live based upon a variety of factors, including playgrounds, safe and attractive neighborhoods, and recreational activities. They will sacrifice to obtain these things, commute long distances and even forgo higher wages.
Hicks: Finding the good and the bad in TARP bailouts
The Congressional Budget Office’s most recent assessment of the cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in late May, occasioned far less thoughtful discussion of the role of government than it should have.
Hicks: International trade is the exact opposite of war
Among economists of all stripes, it is well understood that international trade increases wealth, reduces poverty and generally makes everyone better off in the long run. The only real question is whether the total economic benefits are immediately realized or take just a few years to mature.