The role of state regulatory agencies is to execute and enforce the statutes passed by state legislatures. Agencies do this by writing and implementing administrative rules that elaborate on unspecified details of requirements found in law. These rules themselves have the force and effect of law. In “A 50-State Review of Regulatory Procedures,” Brian Baugus, Feler Bose, and James Broughel find great diversity in rulemaking procedures across states. This diversity can influence business formation, economic growth, and individuals’ freedom to pursue their aspirations.
In response to the pandemic, which unfurled starting in March 2020 and raised unemployment dramatically, the FOMC adopted a highly expansionary monetary policy. The policy restored the activist policy of aggregate demand management that had characterized the 1970s. It did so in two respects. First, the FOMC rejected the prior Volcker-Greenspan policy of raising the funds rate preemptively to preserve price stability. Second, through quantitative easing, it created an enormous amount of money by monetizing government debt. In the 1970s, activist policy was destabilizing. Reflecting the “long and variable lags” phenomenon highlighted by Milton Friedman, a temporary reduction in unemployment from monetary stimulus gave way in time to a sustained increase in
inflation. In response, the succeeding Volcker-Greenspan FOMCs rejected an activist monetary policy in favor of a neutral policy. That policy concentrated on achieving low trend inflation and abandoned any attempt to lower unemployment by exploiting the inflation-unemployment trade-offs promised by the Phillips curve. The success or failure of the FOMC’s activist monetary policy offers yet another opportunity to learn about what kinds of monetary policies stabilize or destabilize the economy.
The nominal gross domestic product (NGDP) gap is a benchmark measure created by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to determine whether monetary policy is expansionary or contractionary. Setting this benchmark requires establishing a neutral level of NGDP (the level at which NGDP is neither expansionary nor contractionary), which involves averaging the forecasts of nominal income for a given quarter from the preceding 20 quarters. These forecast data come from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Survey of Professional Forecasters.
Maternal morbidity and mortality have nearly doubled over the past 25 years in the United States, largely owing to poor obstetrical access and quality of care. Supporting the wholistic healthcare model of nurse midwife deliveries in community birth centers would go a long way toward lowering the cost and improving the outcomes of low-risk pregnancies. Many pregnant women could safely deliver in an outpatient setting without expensive inpatient treatment.
In South Carolina, healthcare providers who wish to open or expand facilities must first obtain a certificate of need. They can acquire this only if they can prove to the satisfaction of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control that their community needs the service in question. The purpose of CON regulation is to limit spending by discouraging providers from acquiring unnecessary medical equipment. Unfortunately, in practice, the rules appear to protect incumbent providers from competition more than they protect patients from harm or payers from unnecessary costs.
