Daily Policy Digest
| Are Corporate Bonds Worth a Look? The value of U.S. corporate bonds issued was $1.36 trillion in 2012, says Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| Public Policies, Prices and Productivity in American Higher Education The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that in the United States more than $25,000 is spent per student in higher education -- the highest among OECD countries and more than twice the OECD average... |
| Budget Proposal Seeks Home Health Care Copay The problem with the assumption that many people are using home health care that could instead seek outpatient care is that home health care prevents a lot of inpatient hospital stays... |
| Student Borrowers Delay Major Purchases as Debt Mounts In 2012, 22 percent of 30 year olds with a history of student debt had or previously had a mortgage, compared to 24 percent of 30 year olds who never had any student debt... |
| Obama's Budget Proposal Seeks to Cap Retirement Savings Limiting an individual's retirement savings account balance to $3 million would only save the federal government an estimated $9 billion over 10 years -- barely enough to cover the current deficit for a few days... |
| Teachers Unions Challenge Virtual Education Though the virtual education industry is attracting significant investment and more schools are offering hybrid or online classes, teachers unions may ultimately slow the growth of technology in education... |
| No Relationship between Patient Satisfaction and Surgical Quality The results of a new study show that there is little relationship between a hospital's patient satisfaction scores and quality ratings... |
| The Irrational Fear of Fracking Electricity production from natural gas is up 37 percent since 2007, while coal's share has plummeted 25 percent in the United States but risen in the rest of the world... |
| Climate Scientists Struggle to Explain Warming Slowdown The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035... |
| Seven Reasons the Economy Could Be Headed Into Recession Since the end of the recession in June 2009 the economy grew 2.4 percent in 2010, 1.8 percent in 2011 and 2.2 percent in 2012, with the fourth quarter sinking to a mere 0.4 percent... |
