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Briefing
Incarceration's Life-Long Impact on Earnings and Employment
We estimate the impact of incarceration on individuals' earnings and employment prospects using a statistical model that controls for race, gender, education and other factors. The model reveals that first-time incarceration for black men with a high school diploma reduces expected lifetime earnings by 33 percent and employment by 22 percent. For high school educated white men, it reduces expected lifetime earnings by 43 percent and employment by 27 percent.
Briefing
COVID-19 over Time and across States: Predictions from a Statistical Model
We discuss a statistical time series model to capture and forecast the dynamics of COVID-19 in the fifty U.S. states and Washington, D.C. We design the model to replicate the typical pattern of infections during a pandemic. We rely on Bayesian methods, which provide a straightforward way to quantify the uncertainty surrounding our estimates and forecasts. In this brief, we focus on North Carolina and Washington, D.C., since they have experienced different trajectories of COVID-19 and may have different implications for the efficacy of our approach.
Briefing
MMT and Government Finance: You Can't Always Get What You Want
During the past 25 years, low interest rates and highly expansionary monetary policy with little apparent inflation have created the illusion that a government can simply print money to fund exorbitant deficit spending with no repercussions. This core tenet of so-called "modern monetary theory" ignores the fact that deficit spending is constrained in the long run by a government's ability to satisfy creditors.