Daily Policy Digest
Government Issues
| Principal-Agent Theory and the Welfare State In the United States, as many as 70 percent of voters can't name either of their state's senators... |
| Toward a Solvent U.S. Postal System Sixty-nine percent of Germany's formerly government-owned post office Deutsche Post is now privately owned... |
| Is the End Near for the Postal Service? From 2006 to 2010, overall United States Postal Service mail volume dropped by 20 percent, from 213 billion pieces of mail to 170 billion, incurring $20 billion in losses... |
| Elected Official Must Lead, Not Bend to Will of Public Governing by public opinion is admirable, but not when it's at the expense of sound policy... |
| Does Disease Cause Autocracy? The eradication of proliferating diseases correlates strongly with the rise of democratic institutions and liberal social norms such as individualism, gender egalitarianism and property rights... |
| The Postal Service’s Financial Plight In the first three quarters of fiscal year 2011, U.S. Postal Service volume is off 1.3 by percent and revenue is down by 2.4 percent compared to the same nine months last year... |
| Publication Practices for Transparent Government Government transparency is a widely agreed upon goal, but progress on achieving it has been very limited... |
| Jobs Bill Is a Bailout for States A 20 percentage-point increase in either the Democratic share of the state legislature or in the share of the public workforce that is unionized drives up interest rates by nearly a half a percentage point on a five-year security note... |
| The Government Shouldn't Guarantee Mortgages or Mortgage-Backed Securities The notion that the government should insure mortgages or mortgage-backed securities because eventually it will do so anyway is deeply flawed... |
| In Galveston, an Alternative to the "Ponzi Scheme" In 1983 three Texas counties opted out of Social Security for government employees and institute a private retirement plan that guarantees a minimum rate of return of 3.75 percent to 4 percent... |
