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Estimating the “Liberty Bloc” in Each State, Part 1
This post is the first part of a Nate Silver-esque miniseries of posts reporting the results of statistical analysis on a macropolitics topic: the size of the “liberty constituency” in each state....
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Estimating the “Liberty Bloc” in Each State, Part 3
In the third and final installment of this series (part 1 here, part 2 here), I investigate the truth of that hackneyed Margaret Mead quotation, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed...
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What Caused the State Budget Gaps? UPDATED
Clearly, the recession caused state revenues to fall short of projections, opening up budget deficits. However, some states dealt with more serious fiscal problems than others. California’s, New...
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Taxation, Regulation, and Migration
At the NY Times‘ Economix blog, Ed Glaeser takes up explanations for the relative population growth enjoyed by Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, compared to relative decline in New York,...
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More on Voting with Feet
At Volokh, Ilya Somin presents the evidence that people vote for economic freedom with their feet internationally and domestically. Pileus on inter-state migration here. Update: Somin has more on this...
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More Unionized States Have Higher Taxes
One of the purposes of “right to work” legislation, currently being debated in Indiana, New Hampshire, and other states, is to reduce the percentage of the workforce covered by collective bargaining...
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Unionization and Taxes, Part Two
At The Monkey Cage, Andrew Gelman takes issue with my post on union density and tax collections by state. I argued that states with higher percentages of workers covered by collective-bargaining...
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Interposition:Part Five: Assuming Powers from National Bank to Seditious Libel
Not long after the ratification of the Constitution, Madison came to have serious doubts about his former Federalist friends. Particularly, he came to suspect the sincerity of many who had asserted...
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Freedom in the 50 States
I’ve just gotten back from a Cato Institute event discussing the new study, Freedom in the 50 States, with my coauthor William Ruger, John Samples, and Michael Barone. I’ll post the video when it’s...
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How Do Libgressives Define Freedom?
Matt Yglesias throws some scorn the way of Freedom in the 50 States 2011: Reasonable people can disagree as to whether there’s more freedom in Los Angeles or Brooklyn, and there may be good reasons to...
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How Do Conservative Paternalists Define Freedom?
Having taken on left-liberals in my last post, it’s only fair to take a shot at the right too. Here‘s the Deseret News editorializing on why our recommendations for Utah are wrong: The report’s authors...
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Do Politicians Regulate When They Can’t Spend?
Noel Johnson, Matt Mitchell, and Steve Yamarik have a new working paper answering that question in the affirmative. They look at state fiscal and regulatory policies and find that Democrats generally...
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Land-Use Regulation and Growth
I want to piggy-back here on Mark’s great post on urban planning and the poor. I’ve been playing around with some state-level data on local land-use regulations and cost of living. The last decade in...
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Who Killed Local Autonomy in the U.S.?
Once upon a time, local governments accounted for the lion’s share of economic policy-making in the United States. Before World War I, not only was the federal government’s economic policy-making...
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IJ Releases Occupational Licensing Study
The Institute for Justice has just released a new study of occupational licensing requirements in the 50 states and D.C. These requirements disproportionately harm low- and moderate-income people who...
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CEOs vs. Small Business Owners on Which Policies Make for a Business-Friendly...
Which public policies make an economy better for business? One way to answer this question is to ask businesspeople. Two recent surveys ask businesspeople to rank the American states on their...
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Pieces Worthy of Your Attention
1. I’m not a big fan of CNN but it occasionally produces an interesting piece. This one on a surrogate who rescued a baby with birth defects from the natural parents (or so she thought!) who wanted...
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Freedom in the 50 States Teaser #3: Weighting the Variables
The new, book-length edition of Freedom in the 50 States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom will be released on March 28 by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In the days leading up...
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Understanding the Impact of Holder’s Asset Forfeiture Announcement
Last week Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would be suspending its adoption of state civil forfeiture cases through its “Equitable Sharing” program. To review,...
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Research Questions for Economics Graduate Students
Are you an economics graduate student casting about for dissertation topics? I have a few ideas for you. As part of the rewriting of Freedom in the 50 States, I’ve been reviewing the economic...
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