Live from Stockholm

Next week you can listen in on a Nobel symposium on growth and development and another conference on climate change.  For more information, click here.

Feldstein on the Romney Tax Plan

Marty runs some numbers.

Updates: The TPC responds to Marty, and Marty responds to his critics.

A Tax Level Cheat Sheet

A nice summary from Keith Hennessey:

Over the past 50 years federal taxes have averaged 18% of GDP.

Governor Romney proposes taxes “between 18 and 19 percent” of GDP.

The House-passed (“Ryan”) budget proposes long-term taxes of 19% of GDP.

President Obama’s budget proposes long-term taxes at 20% of GDP.

The Bowles-Simpson plan proposes long-term taxes at 21% of GDP.

More Competition

Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane have started a blog.

What is the best way to reduce the government's budget deficit?

New research by Alberto Alesina, Carlo Favero, and Francesco Giavazzi suggests an answer:

This paper studies whether fiscal corrections cause large output losses. We find that it matters crucially how the fiscal correction occurs. Adjustments based upon spending cuts are much less costly in terms of output losses than tax-based ones. Spending-based adjustments have been associated with mild and short-lived recessions, in many cases with no recession at all. Tax-based adjustments have been associated with prolonged and deep recessions.

I am number 88

...on the Amazon list of bestselling books.  I believe it is the first time one of my texts has made it into the top 100.

Monkeys reject unequal pay