Articles by Kevin Hassett
Little Guys Get Some Love
The analyst industry in the U.S. is undergoing a dramatic reorganization. First, in response to a settlement driven by Eliot Spitzer, millions of dollars are pouring in from the big Wall Street houses to independent research firms. Second, Nasdaq and...
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19th Century Taxes in the 21st Century Economy
Over the past few decades, economists have spent a great deal of effort understanding the optimal design of the tax code. One undisputed result is that the government should try not to play favorites, taxing one activity much heavier than...
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Tax Reform 101
While economic policy makers focus their attentions on Social Security, President Bush's Tax Reform Commission is quietly going about its work and receiving almost no notice. But it is only a couple of months until the commissioners are required to...
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Study: Price Controls Harm Patients
Yesterday, the Department of Commerce released a detailed and shocking study of the impact of the drug purchasing practices of our OECD trading partners on U.S. citizens. While academic economists always seem to be wishy-washy about making conclusions on...
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Pro-Growth or Pro-Pork?
There have hardly ever been tax bills in Congress that received press as bad as the latest international tax bill. The New York Times wrote that this bill "gave something to almost everyone." The Washington Post noted that the...
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Terror, Technology and Financial Markets
The news that Al Qaeda terrorists have been casing U.S. financial institutions comes as little surprise to economists. The financial sector is widely recognized as the heart of the U.S. economy. Business activity requires enormous flows of cash, and...
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The Reform Term
As expected, President Bush sketched his second term agenda in his acceptance speech last night at the Republican convention in New York. The two most ambitious commitments that he made were to the reform of Social Security and fundamental...
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Getting Recent Economic History Right
NEW YORK --Yesterday at the convention, Vice President Dick Cheney affirmed the Republicans' view of recent economic history. President Bush inherited a recession and acted decisively to end it. But critics argue that the Bush tax cuts were poorly...
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Compassionate Concerns
NEW YORK -- One of today's thematic focuses here at the GOP convention is a celebration of America's "compassion." The theme is hardly new. President Bush introduced the idea of the compassionate conservative more than four years ago. But...
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A Presidential Agenda
NEW YORK -- Most of the coverage of the recent Democratic convention concluded that the Democrats put on a royal snoozefest in Boston. The major television networks cut the coverage of the convention back sharply, with only three hours...
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