Mercatus Policy Download

Welcome to the Bridge Policy Download produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Today, we’re bringing you a conversation between Alden Abbott , Senior Research Fellow here at Mercatus, and Daniel Spulber , Professor of International Business, Strategy, and Law at Northwestern University. They take a deep dive into Professor Spulber’s latest book, The Case for Patents, they discus...

Welcome to the Bridge Policy Download produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Today, we're bringing you a conversation between Matthew Mitchell , Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Equity Initiative here at Mercatus, and Dr. Bruce Yandle , Distinguished Adjunct Fellow at Mercatus. They discuss Bruce's  latest economic situation report for March 2021, the latest COV...

Welcome to the Bridge Policy Download produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Today, we’re bringing you the audio from a recent virtual congressional briefing we held on the best arguments for and against paid federal leave. It is often noted that the United States is the only industrialized country without a federal paid leave program. While true, Dr. Veronique de Rugy points...

Today, we're bringing you a conversation between Matthew Mitchell, Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Equity Initiative at Mercatus, and Dr. Bruce Yandle, Distinguished Adjunct Fellow at Mercatus. They discuss Bruce's latest economic situation report for December 2020, new life in the coronavirus economy, and much more.  Check out The Legacy of Bruce Yandle edited by Donald J. Boudrea...

Welcome to the Bridge Policy Download produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Today, we’re bringing you the audio from a recent webinar we held on the future of innovation policy. Adam Thierer promotes his research and perspectives on technology and innovation policy alongside one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the subject, Matt Ridley . If you’d like to contact a scholar...

Welcome to the Bridge Policy Download produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Today, we’re bringing you the audio from a recent webinar we held on social security and progressive reforms. In a new research paper, “An Analytical Framework for Strengthening Social Security,” leading expert  Charles P. Blahous details a number of problems facing Social Security and how they c...

Welcome to The Bridge Policy Download produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.  Today we're bringing you part 2 of our most recent webinar on regulatory reform. If you missed part 1, you can listen to that episode here .  Our speakers today are James Broughel , Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, Matthew D. Mitchell , Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus C...

Welcome to the Bridge Policy Download produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Today, we’re bringing you the audio from a recent webinar we held on why states should undertake regulatory reform. This is the first of a two-part series on state regulatory reform. The second part, on how states can implement reforms, will release next week. Our speakers today are James Broughel , S...

Regulations advance product safety, environmental quality, and sound business practices, but the consequences of poorly designed and implemented rules are more severe than previously thought. Regulatory accumulation has a disproportionately negative impact on the poorest and most vulnerable Americans. From increased poverty and income inequality to reduced entrepreneurialism and upward mobility, t...

The US economy is currently operating along a bumpy path defined more by the coronavirus and reactions to it than by the inherent dynamics of the economy itself. Yet while the path is bumpy and GDP growth puny, America still has a large and active economy. Has the US economy reached a turning point?  This week, we're very happy to be able to connect our listeners once again with Dr. Bruce Yan...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a great deal of economic uncertainty at the state and local levels. Whether or not the virus is contained in the near future, local governments must provide flexibility in housing, zoning, and transit policies to help their communities recover. Karen Czarnecki , Vice President of Outreach at the Mercatus Center is joined by Emily Hamilton , Research Fellow and Co-D...

The COVID-19 pandemic is precipitating an unprecedented economic downturn, and small businesses are likely to bear the brunt. Mandatory shutdowns and social distancing forced many small businesses to shut their doors. Even as governments begin lifting social distancing restrictions, the residual effects of unemployment and disrupted business operations will complicate the economic recovery of smal...

On today's episode, Shruti Rajagopalan , Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, chats with Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman about their latest book, Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy . The three of them discuss the impact that behavioral economics, rationality, and paternalism have on public policy including, nudge paternalism, sin taxes, default rules, true p...

After what may have seemed like an eternity to all who have suffered coronavirus pain and death, with June at hand, America has witnessed 19 brutal weeks since its first coronavirus case was identified on January 22. But while these 19 weeks may seem like an eon, it is still the case that owing to high social media speed, actions taken to contain the virus have occurred in record time. This week,...

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters a preliminary phase of economic recovery, questions about how we respond is of concern to lawmakers, economists, and others.  Veronique de Rugy  and  Michael Strain  are experts at understanding “big picture” economic implications of different policy options. They will review the three best and three worst ideas that have been put forward for eco...

Attempting to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels are suspending or rescinding laws and regulations that hinder timely, sensible responses to the pandemic. The temporary departure from these rules is causing many to question the need to reinstate them post-crisis. A diverse cross-section of scholars has written on why this is an important time to e...

Welcome back! On today’s episode, Mercatus scholar Matthew Mitchell and Mercatus Distinguished Adjunct Fellow, Bruce Yandle , discuss the recent hot button topics flooding the current news headlines and their influence heading into the 2020 presidential election. What will be the economic impacts of the trade wars and Trump's tariffs? Who's really losing when it comes to paying for these tariffs?...

We're back to bring you a special episode on CDA Section 230 or, as one of our guests put it “the 26 words that created the Internet." This law paved the way for the explosion of Facebook, YouTube, and numerous other internet companies by protecting them from being held liable for what users say and do on their platforms. This also allowed each platform the freedom to develop its own content moder...

Few words are more politically and emotionally charged in Washington than “healthcare.” Just as the Affordable Care Act was hitting a decade or so of nearly continuous debate, so-called Medicare for All proposals have become the latest battleground for healthcare policy wonks. Even beneath those big picture headline debates, other, smaller questions swirl around the healthcare world, including iss...

While it sometimes feels like a lifetime ago, it was just back in August of 2011 that Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating from AAA to AA+. Since then, concerns about US federal debt have gotten less and less attention with each passing year even as debt itself continued to rise. For context, we think the number the last time we checked was just north of $22 trillion,...

Deference is one of those magical words in the world of regulatory policy. Different types of deference play a huge role in how courts and federal agencies interact when it comes to deciding cases, and those cases in turn help shape federal policy on everything from healthcare to financial markets to environmental protection. We say that upfront, because we’re about to dip our toes in the waters o...

At any given time in an economy, you generally have two groups of people: some who have extra money and want to find a way to put it to use, and others who have ideas for how to use that money. The various products, services, and institutions that work to connect those two groups of people are collectively known as “capital markets,” and they’re a vital part of making the economy work, from provid...

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Mercatus Policy Download.   This week, we're very happy to be able to connect our listeners with Dr. Bruce Yandle , Distinguished Adjunct Fellow at Mercatus, Dean Emeritus at Clemson University, and author of the now-famous “Bootleggers and Baptists” model for understanding unlikely political alliances.   Long-time Mercatus fans will know that Br...

Today’s episode is part two in our resiliency series. Last time we talked housing and the Financial Crisis, and we’re not straying too far from that today. We’re going to be talking banking resiliency. For a long time, banks have been viewed as big, secure buildings where we keep our money and go to get a mortgage. Events like the financial crisis, however, tend to force people in the broader econ...

Today we start a special miniseries on the idea of economic resiliency. Over the course of several weeks, we’ll be diving into three distinct policy areas to talk about ways policymakers can help make consumers, specific markets, and the entire economy better able to withstand shocks and crises. To help guide us through the series, we'll be joined by a special co-host, Brian Knight . Brian is a sc...