In a July paper, some Department of Agriculture economists looked at whether higher taxes on sugary drinks would reduce obesity. They find that a 20 percent tax would reduce body weight in adults by 3.8 pounds over a year and 4.5 pounds for children.
On June 25, Senator Charles Grassley released a staff study on the practice of drug companies hiring ghostwriters to draft articles for medical journals that are then published under the names of doctors and scientists.
An International Monetary Fund study released on June 23 says that when central governments channel health care spending through subnational governments (as we do for Medicaid), it tends to lead to higher spending than if spending is centralized.
Also on June 23, the Commonwealth Fund published a report comparing the U.S. health care system to 6 other major countries. Although our system is by far the most expensive, we rank last among the 7 countries in overall health care quality.
Conservatives have placed most of the blame for the housing bubble on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act. But in a June 21 commentary, columnist Ezra Klein fingers another culprit that fits the data better: the National Homeownership Strategy announced by Bill Clinton in 1995.
A Federal Reserve Board working paper released on June 18 looks at the conditions under which homeowners default on their mortgages. It finds that the threshold is very high; most people don’t default until their home equity falls by at least 50 percent.
A June 18 study by the Center for Responsible Lending examined home loan foreclosures by race and ethnicity. It finds that even after adjusting for income almost twice as many African American and Hispanic homeowners have suffered from foreclosures than whites (8 percent for the former and 4.5 percent for the latter).
On June 16, the Employee Benefit Research Institute released a fact sheet explaining why health savings accounts will never be sufficient to cover all retiree health costs.
A June study by the Private Equity Council, the trade association for the hedge fund industry, warned that raising taxes on hedge funds would reduce private equity investment and job creation.
● The Economist magazine criticized this study’s methodology in a June 9 post.
On May 30, economist Maurizio Bovi looked at the growth of tax evasion and the underground economy in heavily indebted European countries. He finds that they are positively correlated with high levels of government employment and low pay for such workers, perhaps because they encourage bribe-taking. Bovi suggests that governments may reduce tax evasion by reducing the number of government employees but improving pay for those remaining.
In a May paper, George Mason University economist Russell Roberts argues that government policies over the last three decades created the housing bubble, which was the prime source of the financial crisis when it collapsed. His primary goal is to rescue the free market from blame for the crisis.
A 2010 article in the Wake Forest Law Review argues that carried interest is not in fact analogous to long term capital gains. Therefore, there is no reason to give it the same tax treatment that applies to capital gains.
Bruce Bartlett is an American historian and columnist who focuses on the intersection between politics and economics. He blogs daily and writes a weekly column at The Fiscal Times. Read his most recent column here. Bartlett has written for Forbes Magazine and Creators Syndicate, and his work is informed by many years in government, including as a senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House. He is the author of seven books including the New York Times best-seller, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (Doubleday, 2006).
Previous posts:
July 8: Focus on State and Local Governments
July 7: Focus on Africa
July 6: Pensions and Aging
July 5: Energy Subsidies
