Daily Policy Digest

Week of May 28th, 2012

• Why France Has So Many 49-Employee Companies

  French labor laws are regulated by the 102-year-old Code du Travail, a 3,200-page rule book that dictates everything from job classifications to the ability to fire workers...

• Questioning Homeownership as a Public Policy Goal

  Since 1970 the homeownership rate has increased by only 2 percentage points, compared to a 20 percent increase from 1940 to 1970, despite extraordinary efforts to boost ownership rates...

• Finding Sources of Rare Earths beyond China

  In 2008, factories outside of China used nearly 60,000 tons of rare earths; in the past two years, however, China has limited exports to just 30,000 tons per year, driving up global prices, says H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis...

• Growth of Consumer-Directed Could Save Billions Annually

  In the next decade, consumer-directed health plan enrollment could total 50 percent of the total employer-sponsored enrollment, saving the nation $57.1 billion annually in health care expenditures...

• Do Schools Begin Too Early?

  A one-hour delay in school start time increases standardized test scores on both math and reading tests by roughly 3 percentile points...