David Beckworth

February 3, 2022 | Monetary Policy

The NGDP gap is important for two reasons. First, people make many economic decisions on the basis of forecasts of their nominal incomes. Examples include households’ decisions to take out mortgages and car loans or firms’ decisions to finance with debt and commit to multiyear contracts on plants, raw materials, and labor. Second, actual nominal incomes may turn out very different from what people expect and, as a result, may be disruptive for households and firms that are not able to adjust their economic plans quickly. These disruptions can be avoided by maintaining NGDP on the growth path expected by the public.

Brent Skorup

February 4, 2022 | Telecommunications & Broadband

One way to ensure robust and fair participation by all sizes and types of internet access providers is for the NTIA to authorize, and for state grantees to distribute, broadband vouchers to rural households. For instance, in two years of distributing broadband vouchers to rural households in the United Kingdom, nearly 90 percent of funding has gone to small providers. The BEAD program’s statutory language about use of broadband funds is broad and seems to permit vouchers to households. Such a voucher, if authorized, would operate much like the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program, a $30–$75 monthly benefit to low-income households.

Brian Knight

February 4, 2022 | Financial Regulation

Regulatory sandboxes were developed to achieve several important goals, including encouraging innovation, competition, and entry in highly regulated industries; providing regulators with greater insight and transparency into cutting-edge products and services; and furthering consumer protection by both helping innovators design their products to be compliant with the law and encouraging the introduction of products and services that will better serve consumer needs.

Jordan Lofthouse

January 31, 2022 | Healthcare

For many decades, Native Americans have experienced higher rates of health problems than the general American population and other racial minority groups. Today, the average Native American dies five and a half years sooner than the average American. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Native Americans faced the highest rates of infection, hospitalization, and death due to COVID-19 when compared with any other race or ethnicity in the United States.

James Broughel

January 31, 2022 | Healthcare

Pharmacists have been some of the unsung heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, retail pharmacies have administered and reported more than 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine since a vaccine has been available. This would not have been possible were it not for emergency actions taken by the FDA to authorize pharmacists, as well as pharmacy support staff members, to vaccinate for COVID-19. These changes should be made permanent.

Matthew D. Mitchell

February 1, 2022 | Healthcare

Hospital executives and policymakers often worry about what would happen in their state if their CON laws were repealed. They need not worry. And they need not speculate. They can look to the experiences of Americans in non-CON states to see what is likely to happen. These experiences, documented in dozens of careful studies, strongly suggest that patients in a state like West Virginia would gain greater access to higher-quality and lower-cost care if CON laws were to be eliminated.

Michael D. Farren

January 31, 2022 | Corporate Welfare

Despite megasubsidy deals being announced seemingly every day in recent weeks, there remains reason for optimism. Over the past few years, 15 states have introduced legislation to create an interstate compact that offers a path out of what has become an economic arms race. The ability of states to enact legislation to enter into a compact is enshrined in the US Constitution, and compacts provide a credible way for policymakers to commit to cooperation across state lines. The confidence such a commitment provides is critical because it removes the misapprehension that comes from a unilateral exit—even when the arms race leads to self-destruction, as each state keeps shooting itself in the foot over and over again.