Band 7, Heft 3

State pensions are in a terrible way. What should be done? In exchange for closing defined-benefit plans to new workers and enrolling all new workers in Social Security, a state should be allowed to issue tax-subsidized bonds for pension funding, according to Joshua Rauh of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern and Robert Novy-Marx at University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

How Congress can reduce future deficits while stimulating today's economy? University of Delaware economist Laurence Seidman argues that legislators should enact a budget that maintains balance under normal unemployment levels, and a fiscal stimulus package with a clause that phases out the package as the economy returns to full employment.

A carbon tax would improve fiscal sustainability in the United States according to William Nordhaus of Yale University. There is no better fiscal instrument to employ at this time, in this country, and given the fiscal constraints the government faces.

With America desperate for jobs, now is the worst time for the Federal Communications Commission to be imposing “net-neutrality” and potentially scaring away billions of dollars in telecommunications investment, according to Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation and Brookings Institution and Hal Singer of Navigant Economics.

At a time of public concern about rising national debt, we should consider adapting simple lessons from corporate finance to government finance. Mark J. Kamstra of York University and Robert J. Shiller of Yale University conclude that government financing tools should include a form of equity: shares in GDP.

Many advocate an end to stimulus and view unemployment as structural. J. Bradford DeLong of UC Berkeley challenges that view.