Number of results to display per page
Search Results
42. Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change
- Author:
- Edmund S. Phelps
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- In his most recent tome, Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economic Science, addresses a topic crucial to successful national capitalist systems: the dynamics of the innovation process. Phelps develops his thesis around three main themes: In part one, he explains the development of the modern economies as they form the core of early—19th century societies in the West; in part two, he explores the lure of socialism and corporatism as competing systems to modern capitalism; and, in part three, he reviews post-1960s evidence of decline in dynamism in Western capitalist countries.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
43. Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent
- Author:
- Michael Teitelbaum
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- In Washington, doomsday prophets tend to be effective motivational speakers. They successfully persuade the electorate that their cause is worthy and prompt Congress to take action. In his book Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent, Michael Teitelbaum takes on a particular brand of doomsday prophet: those who see impending shortages in the science and engineering workforce. Teitelbaum walks his readers through five postwar cycles of boom and bust in the science and engineering workforce, which eh argues have been driven to a large extend by political machinations set in motion by labor shortage claims (claims that have been almost universally rejected by economists studying the issue). The institutions that currently shape the science and engineering workforce are largely the product of policy responses to these booms and busts. As a result, Falling Behind? Is more than just a work of policy history. It is also a cogent analysis of contemporary R funding mechanisms, high-skill immigration policies, and PhD program structures.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- Washington and Soviet Union
44. Saving Congress from Itself: Emancipating the States Empowering Their People
- Author:
- James L. Buckley
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- “The United States faces two major problems today,” writes James L. Buckley: “runaway spending that threatens to bankrupt us and a Congress that appears unable to deal with long-term problems of any consequence.” Contributing significantly to both, he argues, are the more than 1,100 federal grants-in-aid programs Congress has enacted—federal grants to state and local governments, constituting 17 percent of the federal budget, the third-largest spending category after entitlements and defense, with costs that have risen from $24.1 billion in 1970 to $640.8 billion in fiscal 2015. His “modest proposal”? Do away with them entirely, thereby saving Congress from itself while emancipating the states and empowering their people. If that sounds like a program for revising constitutional federalism, it is.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- United States
45. The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending
- Author:
- Rebecca U. Thorpe
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- In The American Warfare State, Reecca Thrope attempts to answer what she calls “the fundamental puzzle” of American politics: “Why a nation founded on a severe distrust of standing armies and centralized power developed and maintained the most powerful military in history.”
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- America
46. Boom Towns: Restoring the Urban American Dream
- Author:
- Stephen J. K. Walters
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- The image of a boom town is commonly used to describe exceptional conditions through which a village suddenly becomes a city. Often such conditions are the discovery of mineral deposits that attracts industry and commerce. While in their booming condition, such towns are oases of societal flourishing relative to their preceding state. In Boom Towns, Stephen J.K. Walters, a professor of economics at Loyola University in Baltimore, explains that cities in general have the capacity perpetually to b forms of boom towns. Cities can serve as magnets to attract people and capital, thus promoting the human flourishing that has always been associated with cities at their best. It is different if cities are at their worst, as Walters explains in brining Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities into explanatory ambit. There are no natural obstacles to cities occupying the foreground of societal flourishing. There are obstacles to be sure, but these are man-made. Being man-made, they can also be overcome through human action, at least in principle even if doing so in practice might be difficult.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- America
47. China's Political-Economic Institutions and Development
- Author:
- Chenggang Xu
- Publication Date:
- 10-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- After more than three decades of economic reform, China has transformed from being one of the poorest economies in the world to being the second-largest economy measured by nominal exchange rates, or the largest economy measured by purchasing power. As such, it is important to elucidate the determinants of China’s future development. This article will focus on China’s institutions. I argue that although the size of China’s economy is extremely important in terms of its impact on the global economy, it is misleading to ignore political and economic institutions. Indeed, forecasts based on extrapolating past trends could be erroneous (see Pritchett and Summers 2014). China was the largest economy in the world before the end of the 19th century but then lost ground to Western nations that established the rule of law and free trade. To understand China’s past and future development, one has to examine its institutions.
- Topic:
- Economics, Reform, and Global Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
48. The Coasean Framework of the New York City Watershed Agreement
- Author:
- Geoffrey Black, D. Allan Dalton, Samia Islam, and Aaron Batteen
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Over 50 years ago, in "The Problem of Social Cost," Ronald Coase (1960) attempted to reorient the economics profession's treatment of externalities. He wanted to draw economists' attention away from the world of pure competition as a policy standard and investigate the consequences of transaction costs and property rights for the operation of markets. In 1991, he was awarded the Nobel prize in economics "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy" (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1991). The Academy cited both his 1960 article and his 1937 article "The Nature of the Firm."
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- New York
49. Marginal Tax Rates and U.S. Growth: Flaws in the 2012 CRS Study
- Author:
- Jason E. Taylor and Jerry L. Taylor
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- In September 2012, seven weeks before the presidential election—one in which top marginal tax rates were a major policy difference between the two major—party candidates-the Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a paper (Hungerford 2012) suggesting that there is no empirical evidence that top marginal tax rates impact U.S. economic growth. After all, top marginal tax rates were above 90 percent during the 1950s and early 1960s when the economy experienced rapid growth. Furthermore, marginal tax rate cuts in 2001 and 2003 were followed by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The CRS study was widely reported in blogs, newspapers such as the New York Times, and The Atlantic magazine. It was portrayed as evidence refuting Republican candidate Mitt Romney's position that cutting the top marginal tax rate from 35 to 28 percent would spur economic growth and supporting Democratic President Barack Obama's position that top marginal tax rates could be raised to 39.6 percent with no cost to economic growth (Leonhart 2012, Thompson 2012).
- Political Geography:
- United States
50. State Fiscal Policies for Budget Stabilization and Economic Growth: A Dynamic Scoring Analysis
- Author:
- John Merrifield and Barry W. Poulson
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Economic downturns expose unsustainable fiscal practices. Widespread fiscal crises create opportunities to compare policy options that address especially adverse circumstances, especially progrowth fiscal constraints that can stabilize state budgets over the business cycle. Our policy option assessments depart from the normal practice of assessing rules and policies independently. Our premise is that the fiscal policy mix determines its outcomes. We include dynamic scoring to provide a richer view of the policy interactions.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- California