The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9...

Participatory Democracy is a process of collective decision making that combines elements from both Direct and Representative Democracy: Citizens have the power to decide on policy and politicians assume the role of policy implementation. The aim of this paper is to understand how Participatory...

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of additional unrestricted grant financing on local public spending, public service provision, schooling, literacy, and income at the community (município) level in Brazil. Additional transfers increased local public...

Does additional government spending improve the electoral chances of incumbent political parties? This paper provides the first quasi-experimental evidence on this question. Our research design exploits discontinuities in federal funding to local governments in Brazil around several population...

This paper provides regression discontinuity evidence on long-run and intergenerational education impacts of a temporary increase in federal transfers to local governments in Brazil. Revenues and expenditures of the communities benefiting from extra transfers temporarily increased by about 20%...

As state governments face budget gaps of tens of billions of dollars in FY2009 and FY2010, this issue brief calculates the potential detrimental effects of state budget cuts on unemployment. While Congress considers a national economic recovery package, this issue brief highlights the fact that...

Some economic observers argue “structural unemployment” has increased in the wake of the Great Recession, but in this paper we find little support for either of two arguments that suggest that structural unemployment has been on the rise. The first argument focuses on the large increase in...

Representative Paul Ryan's proposed 2012 budget has been lauded as a path to prosperity, with much attetion given to his overhaul of the medicare system. Using data from the CBO analysis of the Ryan plan, this issue brief demonstrates that any savings to the government under the revamped...

Representative Ryan’s proposal to replace the current Medicare systemwith a system of vouchers or premium supports has been widely described as shifting costs from the government to beneficiaries. However, the size of this shift is actually small relative to the projected increase in costs...

Recently governments, economists, and international financial institutions have been debating the merits of further fiscal stimulus to combat the Great Recession versus fiscal austerity or “adjustment” – that is, higher taxes and/or lower government spending – to combat budget deficits....