Research

Could policy changes boost economic growth enough and at a low enough cost to meaningfully reduce federal budget deficits? We assess seven areas of economic policy: immigration of high-skilled workers, housing regulation, safety net programs, regulation of electricity transmission, government support for research and development, tax policy related to business investment, and permitting of infrastructure construction. We find that growth-enhancing policies almost certainly cannot stabilize federal debt on their own, but that such policies can reduce the explicit tax hikes, spending cuts, or both that are needed to stabilize debt. We also find a dearth of research on the likely impacts of potential growth-enhancing policies and on ways to design such policies to restrain federal debt, and we offer suggestions for ways to build a larger base of evidence.

The child mental health crisis has been described as the "defining public health crisis of our time." This article addresses three myths about the crisis: (i) the idea that the crisis is new; (ii) the belief that increases in youth suicide mainly reflect deterioration in children's underlying mental health; and (iii) the myth that investments in children have little impact on children's mental health. In fact, the crisis has existed for decades, youth suicides vary asynchronously with other mental health measures and are impacted by external factors such as firearms legislation, and investments can improve child mental health and prevent suicide.

This cohort study assesses the association of implementation and reversal of Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) work requirements with SNAP enrollment.

What are the welfare gains from upgrading electric vehicle infrastructure? This paper develops a model of electric vehicle charging location decisions incorporating the transportation network structure, allocation of travel, and the effect on electric vehicle demand. We estimate the model with rich data on vehicle registrations, road segments, cell phone tracks, and charging locations and characteristics. We examine a counterfactual that adds level 3 (direct current fast) chargers optimally in the Connecticut transportation network. We find that adding chargers yields significant time savings and consumer welfare gains, while electric vehicle market shares are only modestly affected.

Increasing use of biofuels increases the demand for agricultural land. Credible empirical evidence supports the common-sense judgment that this will lead to the conversion of forests and other habitats to generate more cropland, particularly in the tropics, where land conversion is cheapest. However, when analyzing the effects of biofuels on land use, governments frequently use a particular class of economic models, including the popular “GTAP” model, to justify a finding that biofuels will cause little additional land conversion. We argue that the GTAP model does not provide a credible scientific basis for this conclusion because it lacks an econometric basis for its economic parameters, generates physically impossible results by a wide margin, and incorporates several unsupported assumptions that guarantee little land use change, such as constraints on international trade and a failure to account for unmanaged forests.

We analyze the economic consequences of rising US health care prices. By increasing the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance, rising prices serve as a de facto payroll tax on labor. Using exposure to hospital mergers as an instrument, we estimate that a 1% increase in health care prices lowers payroll and employment at non-health-care employers by 0.4%. At the county level, a 1% increase in health care prices reduces labor income by 0.27%, increases flows into unemployment by 1%, and lowers federal income tax receipts by 0.4%. The disemployment effects of rising prices are concentrated among lower- and middle-income workers.