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11. Housing and American Recessions

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
A weak housing sector has accompanied every American recession since 1965, but not every episode of housing weakness has accompanied a recession. An annual drop in the growth rate of residential investment (a good measure of homebuilding activity) of more than 10 percent has coincided with a recession five of the seven times it has occurred since 1965. (In 1967 and in 1995, declines in residential investment occurred without a recession.) A significant drop in residential investment therefore appears to be a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition, for a U.S. recession.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States and America

12. Two Cheers for Welfare Reform

Author:
Douglas J. Besharov
Publication Date:
08-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
It has been nearly ten years since President Bill Clinton signed the landmark 1996 welfare reform law. The anniversary has been the occasion for various news stories and opinion pieces, most of them praising the law's success in reducing welfare dependency. And it is true: welfare caseloads have fallen an astounding 60 percent since reform efforts began. But even as a strong supporter of welfare reform, I find it difficult to muster unqualified enthusiasm for the law and how it has been implemented.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Economics, and Human Welfare

13. Striking a Balance: Drug Labeling and the FDA

Author:
John E. Calfee
Publication Date:
02-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
With the fourth Vioxx lawsuit currently under way, a fourth jury is in the thick of trying to determine whether Merck is indeed liable for any injuries that may or may not have arisen from the use of its blockbuster arthritis drug. The trials have highlighted bad tort bar science in all its dubious glory—from questionable pathology reports to seriously exaggerated claims about the dangers of Vioxx—but they also raise a deeper issue. Every drug presents patients and doctors with a trade-off between benefits and risks. But how can physicians and drug companies strike a balance in the age of a hyperactive litigation? Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) weighed in on that question when it published a long-awaited rule to simplify drug labels. Up to now, extensive, cringe-inducing lists of every imaginable side effect of a medicine were a drug company's best hope of immunizing itself from lawsuits down the road. The FDA wants to simplify those impenetrable reams of fine print by preempting state-court lawsuits claiming that an FDA-approved label failed to warn patients of a potential danger.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Health, and Human Welfare

14. A Plan to Replace the Welfare State

Author:
Charles Murray
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
This much is certain: the welfare state as we know it cannot survive. No serious student of entitlements thinks that we can let federal spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid rise from its current 9 percent of GDP to the 28 percent of GDP that it will consume in 2050 if past growth rates continue. The problems facing transfer programs for the poor are less dramatic but, in the long term, no less daunting; the falling value of a strong back and the rising value of brains will eventually create a class society making a mockery of America's ideals unless we come up with some- thing more creative than anything that the cur- rent welfare system has to offer. So major change is inevitable—and Congress seems utterly unwilling to face up to it. Witness the Social Security debate of last year, a case study in political timidity. Like it or not, we have several years to think before Congress can no longer postpone action. Let's use this time to start thinking outside the narrow proposals for benefit cuts and tax increases that will be Congress's path of least resistance.
Topic:
Civil Society, Economics, Health, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
America

15. Katrina and the Environment

Author:
Steven F. Hayward
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The New Orleans flood is shaping up to take its place alongside the Cuyahoga River fire and the Santa Barbara and Exxon Valdez oil spills as one of the major environmental catastrophes of modern times. The issue of hurricanes and climate change—a linkage not established in current climate science—distracts from the most significant environmental lessons of the Katrina disaster. The rebuilding of New Orleans offers an opportunity to begin reversing the long-term Gulf Coast erosion that contributed to the magnitude of the disaster.
Topic:
Development, Environment, Human Welfare, and Politics

16. Rediscovering the Underclass

Author:
Charles Murray
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible—Democrats who are rediscovering poverty and blaming it on George W. Bush, or Republicans who are rediscovering poverty and claiming that the government can fix it. Both sides are unwilling to face reality: We have not rediscovered poverty, we have rediscovered the underclass. The underclass has been growing during all the years that people were ignoring it, including the Clinton years; and the pro- grams politicians tout as solutions are a mismatch for the people who constitute the problem. We have rediscovered the underclass. Newspapers and television understandably prefer to feature low-income people who are trying hard—the middle-aged man working two jobs, the mother worrying about how to get her children into school in a strange city. These people are rightly the objects of an outpouring of help from around the country, but their troubles are relatively easy to resolve. Tell the man where a job is, and he will take it. Tell the mother where a school is, and she will get her children into it. Other images show us the face of the hard problem: those of the looters and thugs, and those of inert women doing nothing to help themselves or their children. They are the underclass.
Topic:
Civil Society, Economics, Government, and Human Welfare

17. Junk Science Reigns

Author:
John E. Calfee
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
If we know anything about the American tort liability system, we know that it works badly when it gets infected by junk science. The recent Vioxx verdict in Angleton, Texas, is a case in point. The jury awarded $253 million to the widow of a man who died after taking the now-infamous pain reliever. The award will almost certainly be reduced to something like $5 million or $10 million because it ignored statutory limits on punitive damages, and it may eventually get thrown out because of mistakes by the judge. But even at “only” $10 million a case, a string of adverse Vioxx decisions would prove an expensive example of the triumph of the junk lawsuit over science. Most press accounts portray the jury's decision as simply a reflection of medical science, which supposedly has indicted and convicted Vioxx of causing excess heart attacks. This view prevailed in the four months after September 30, 2004, when Merck voluntarily pulled Vioxx from the market. Those months saw vituperous debate and criticism of both Merck and the Food and Drug Administration in leading medical journals. A renegade FDA staffer testified at congressional hearings along with other critics.
Topic:
Development, Government, Human Welfare, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
America

18. Small Leaps or Giant Leaps

Author:
Scott Gottlieb
Publication Date:
07-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
There are seldom eureka moments in health care. Few new drugs or medical devices save scores of lives or cure diseases when they first hit the market. New technologies rarely translate into immediate life expectancy gains, and it is uncommon that results of a single study will transform how medicine is practiced. Medical progress is not magic, and sudden discoveries do not lead to dramatic cures, although a new book by Marcia Angell, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, would lead you to think all of our gains in health have been achieved from just a handful of the most potent new medicines. Instead, medical breakthroughs unfold over time, and gains in life expectancy and health are realized only after a series of small technological advances are collected into new ways of practicing medicine or attacking a disease. The practice of medicine unfolds not in a series of certainties, but in a series of doubts.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Human Welfare, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
England

19. The Great Shift to Specialty Drugs

Author:
Scott Gottlieb
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
When drug maker GlaxoSmithKline held a showcase day for investors late last year, the company bragged about its burgeoning pipeline of new medicines, but also a fruitful restructuring it undertook a few years ago. Glaxo broke its sprawling research shop into smaller units focused on a dozen or so disease areas. In was an emphasis on major health problems, such as cancer, heart disease, and brain disorders like Alzheimer's dis- ease. Gone were the same concerted efforts to focus the majority of its research on more routine medical problems such as sniffles, sore muscles, and nicotine addiction. Like a lot of other drug makers, Glaxo is moving its research upstream into weighty maladies that have remained unsolved by modern medicine and away from primary-care problems.
Topic:
Civil Society, Economics, Emerging Markets, and Human Welfare

20. Analyzing the Kerry and Bush Health Proposals

Author:
Joseph Antos, Roland (Guy) King, Donald Muse, Wildsmith. Tom, and Judy Xanthopoulos
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The number of Americans without health insurance remains high. According to the latest Census Bureau figures, 45 million people were uninsured during 2003, an increase of almost 1.4 million from the year before. About 15.6 percent of the population did not have health insurance last year. That is the highest rate of non-coverage since 1998, when 16.3 percent were uninsured.
Topic:
Government, Human Welfare, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States