Daily Policy Digest
Economic Issues
| Policy Uncertainty Undermines Economic Recovery The average increase in policy uncertainty between 2006 and 2011 led to a 2.5 percent drop in industrial production and 2.4 million fewer jobs in the United States... |
| Diminishing Quality of Fiscal Institutions in the United States The debt-to-gross domestic product ratio increased from 55 percent in 2001 to 67 percent in 2007 to 107 percent in 2012... |
| Texas and the Recipe for Growth Following the financial crisis, when the overall job growth rate was 0.4 percent, Texas' job market grew by 2.4 percent, says Wendell Cox, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| The Job Market: Is College Overrated? Colleges have turned out more than a quarter of a million education degrees annually since 2000, despite estimates that only 539,100 teaching positions will be available between 2010 and 2020, says Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| Traffic Congestion Wastes Fuel and Time The total financial cost of congestion is $121 billion, of which $27 billion is wasted time and diesel fuel from trucks moving goods... |
| Five Percent of Credit Reports Contain Costly Mistakes The Federal Trade Commission says that 5 percent of U.S. consumers have an error on their credit report that could lead to them paying more for products such as auto loans and insurance... |
| The World's Most Expensive Cities Currency effects in Zurich drove expenses down 39 percent relative to New York, dropping the Swiss city from the world's most expensive a year ago to seventh place this year... |
| Questions Raised by the Congressional Budget Office Report Although the Congressional Budget Office's economic approach is typical among forecasters and historically unbiased, the economy's persistent failure to launch as predicted raises questions... |
| Can Money Buy Happiness After All? A 20 percent increase in income has the same effect on happiness for all people, meaning that it takes larger incremental increases at higher wages to improve the same amount of happiness as a lower-salaried person... |
| Ten Year Congressional Budget Outlook Predicts Slow Growth Provided current laws remain the same, the budget deficit is projected to shrink for a fourth year in a row in 2014 to an estimated $845 billion, which represents 5.3 percent of gross domestic product... |
