Search Results
Journal Article
Reduced defense purchasing: anticipating the impact on state and industry employment
Despite Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, budgetary pressures in the United States make significant cuts in defense purchasing seem inevitable. Lori L. Taylor analyzes the employment consequences of cutting billions of dollars in defense purchasing. She finds that while certain industries and areas would experience some economic difficulties, job losses would be negligible nationwide. ; Taylor estimates the near-term and long-term effects of a 10-percent cut in real defense purchasing. Using input-output analysis, she determines which industries are defense dependent and identifies the impact on ...
Journal Article
Does the United States still overinvest in housing?
Savvy investors allocate their resources across different types of investments to maximize their returns; savvy societies do likewise. Just as with the private sector, society maximizes the return on its investments when risk-adjusted social rates of return equalize across all types of investments. Unfortunately, whereas market arbitrage ensures that risk-adjusted private rates of return equalize, no similar mechanism exists to guarantee that risk-adjusted social rates of return are also equalized. Thus, society may invest relatively too much in some types of capital and relatively too little ...
Working Paper
Variations in Texas school quality
Working Paper
Measuring the value of school quality
Journal Article
Government's role in primary and secondary education
Traditionally, economists offer three broad rationales for government participation in education--market failure, externalities, and altruism. In this article, Lori Taylor describes the three rationales, discusses the economic evidence in their support, and examines their major implications for the role of government in primary and secondary education. She concludes that there is a significant public interest in education. However, the government's role is clearly a subordinate one; families should remain the primary educational decision makers--and the primary educational financiers. ...
Working Paper
The policy sensitivity of industries and regions
Journal Article
The evidence on government competition
Society clearly benefits when businesses compete. The social benefits of government competition are still being debated, however. A large economics literature has sprung up to explore the premise that governments facing intense competitive pressure behave differently than do governments facing little or no competition. Lori Taylor examines the literature on government size, service quality, and productivity. She concludes that an ill-defined market for government, together with inconsistent and potentially inappropriate measuring sticks, raises the strong possibility that competition has ...
Journal Article
The uneven distribution of health insurance
Working Paper
On competition and school efficiency