In debating Massachusetts business tax policy, protagonists have cited many different indicators purporting to assess the fairness, adequacy, and competitiveness of the Commonwealth's business taxes. These statistics actually reveal very little about the degree to which Massachusetts business...

This paper compares states in terms of their relative fiscal capacity, fiscal need, fiscal comfort, and tax effort in state fiscal year 1999 (FY1999). It is the most recent in a series initiated by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) in 1962. As in previous...

Most states have exhausted their unemployment insurance (UI) trust fund and borrowed from the federal government at least once during the past 35 years. Under such circumstances, states are required by law to raise UI taxes to replenish their trust funds and to pay off their debts to the federal...

Comparisons among state unemployment insurance (UI) systems can be misleading. Frequently quoted indicators of benefit generosity, tax cost, and adherence to the experience-rating principle are influenced by the relative economic conditions of states. Such comparisons thereby obscure underlying...

Mid-sized companies--those with annual sales between $10 million and $250 million--produce a significant percentage of the nation's output; thus, any conditions impeding their performance should concern public policymakers. One such condition may be insufficient access to short-term credit at...

Economists devoted little attention to differences across banks in operational efficiency until about 15 years ago, when banks began to fail with increasing frequency. Some economists attributed the rising failure rate in part to intensified competitive pressures generated by deregulation and...

The 50 states differ sharply in the scope of public services their state and local governments must deliver and in the costs of providing them. The governments of many states, through no fault of their own, must work relatively hard to provide the services needed by those who reside, work,...

Are the losses recently incurred by New England’s banking industry symptomatic of chronic excess capacity that will depress the industry’s profitability even after the region’s economy recovers from its current recession? Or can the industry restore its profitability by ridding itself of...

Comparisons among state unemployment insurance systems can be misleading. Frequently quoted indicators of the generosity of their benefits, competitiveness, and adherence to the experience-rating principal are influenced by states' relative economic conditions, thereby obscuring underlying...