Voting History

Behavioral Economics

Insights from psychology about individual behavior – examples of which include limited rationality, low self-control, or a taste for fairness – predict several important types of observed market outcomes that fully-rational economic models do not.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	deciding which of these phenomena are consistently and pervasively relevant across settings is much harder, lots of free parameters	Strongly Agree	8

Refugees in Germany

The influx of refugees into Germany beginning in the summer of 2015 will generate net economic benefits for German citizens over the succeeding decade.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1	low skills and lack of language will make assimilation challenging, but by the end of the decade they will probably be net contributors	Uncertain	5

Robots and Artificial Intelligence

Question A: Holding labor market institutions and job training fixed, rising use of robots and artificial intelligence is likely to increase substantially the number of workers in advanced countries who are unemployed for long periods.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	they will destroy a lot of jobs and will create many too. hard to know if the net, long-term effect will be substantial	Uncertain	5

Question B: Rising use of robots and artificial intelligence in advanced countries is likely to create benefits large enough that they could be used to compensate those workers who are substantially negatively affected for their lost wages.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	But i am skeptical this will be pursued much in the US, witness the program on trade adjustment assistance	Agree	7

Inflation Target

Question A: If the Fed changed its inflation target from 2% to 4%, the long-run costs of inflation for households would be essentially unchanged.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	3	big retirement planning mistakes from nominal illusion would become more common&empirical regularity of more volatile inflation possible too	Disagree	5

Question B: Raising the inflation target to 4% would make it possible for the Fed to lower rates by a greater amount in a future recession.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1	assumes they are on or close to target when the recession comes.	Agree	5

Deficits

If the US reduced its fiscal deficit, then its trade deficit would also shrink.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Uncertain	5

Infrastructure Spending

Question A: The US should increase spending now on roads, railways, bridges and airports (including new projects, maintenance or both).

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	we have to do it and might as well start now. only hesitation is potential horse trades in congress to make it happen.	Agree	7

Question B: The advisability of increasing federal spending on roads, railways, bridges and airports is independent of whether the US also enacts tax cuts that substantially lower revenues.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	3	big deficit financing means Fed will likely raise rates faster. looser fiscal policy several years ago would have been helpful, less so now	Disagree	6

Baumol’s Cost Disease

Because labor markets across different sectors are connected, rising productivity in manufacturing leads the cost of labor-intensive services — such as education and health care — to rise.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	An example of something that is probably not obvious to non-economists but has been demonstrated to be true	Agree	8

Tax Reforms

Question A: Since 1980, whenever substantial growth effects have been required to make a tax reform plan revenue neutral, the actual outcome has invariably been a fall in tax revenue as a share of GDP.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Maybe when marginal rates are 90%+ you can cut them and have them self fund, but not true in the more recent era	Agree	7

Question B: The tax reform plan proposed by President Trump this week would likely pay for itself through higher economic growth.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	9	see Larry Summers on this -see background information here	Strongly Disagree	8

Border Adjustment Tax

Question A: Implementing a "destination based cash flow tax (including border adjustment)" of the type advocated by Speaker Ryan would substantially reduce the US trade deficit within the next few years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Currency offset is unlikely to be one for one, so some trade effects are likely. Magnitude would depend on the size of the tax.	Disagree	4

Question B: Implementing a “destination based cash flow tax (including border adjustment)” of the type advocated by Speaker Ryan would substantially raise prices for US consumers.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1	Magnitude hard to judge but lobbying by Walmart is not an accident, some pass through into prices likely.	Disagree	5

The CBO

Question A: Forecasting the effects of complex legislative actions is hard, so even competent, non-ideological and non-partisan projections could differ substantially from outcomes.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	disclosure, i was an unpaid cbo advisor for many years. part of the reason to serve is to help, but the job is very challenging.	Strongly Agree	9

Question B: Adjusting for legal restrictions on what the CBO can assume about future legislation and events, the CBO has historically issued credible forecasts of the effects of both Democratic and Republican legislative proposals.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	the clause is important, they are restricted to use current law to project, even when that is going to create errors. see disclosure	Agree	7

High-Skilled Immigrant Visas

Question A: If the US significantly lowers the number of H-1B visas now, expected US tax revenues will rise materially over the next four years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5	some jobs (and tax revenue) likely to shift overseas for the short run, hard to see how a material increase in taxes would be possible	Disagree	7

Question B: If the US significantly lowers the number of H-1B visas now, employment for American workers will rise materially over the next four years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5	eventually perhaps some americans get hired, but seems more likely that there are shortages and activity moves in the short run	Disagree	6

Sports Stadiums

Providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Full public financing of stadiums is mostly a transfer to the owners	Agree	5

Trump and Share Prices

Question A: US share prices have risen since Donald Trump’s election victory at least partly because the policies he seems poised to implement are likely to increase US after-tax corporate profits.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	Can't be proven one way or another, this is plausible but no way to know for sure	Agree	6

Question B: US share prices have risen since Donald Trump’s election victory at least partly because the policies he seems poised to implement are likely to increase US real GDP growth.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	7	also impossible to know and the horizon that matters for stocks is longer term growth and after tax earnings	Disagree	5

Economic Policy Advice

The Council of Economic Advisors is likely to give the US president better policy advice if the Chair and Members of the CEA have published peer-reviewed economics research.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Junk arguments abound in economics. Research experience helps prevent them getting to the President.	Agree	7

100-Day Plan

Question A: If all of the “Seven actions to protect American workers” in President-elect Trump’s 100-day plan (see link) are enacted, it will more likely than not improve the economic prospects of middle-class Americans over the next decade.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	5	shutting down trade will be bad for most people, the jobs are not coming back, the infrastructure gains might be good	Strongly Disagree	6

Question B: If all of the “Seven actions to protect American workers” in President-elect Trump’s 100-day plan are enacted, it will more likely than not improve the economic prospects of low-skilled Americans over the next decade.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	if lower quality imports are restricted probably hurts the poor more, but as with the first question there are offsetting effects	Strongly Disagree	6

AT&T and Time Warner

A merger of AT&T and Time Warner would likely increase consumer surplus over the ensuing decade.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion			Disagree	4

Taxes and Mandatory Spending

Long run fiscal sustainability in the US will require some combination of cuts in currently promised Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits and/or tax increases that include higher taxes on households with incomes below $250,000.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	6

Import Duties

Adding new or higher import duties on products such as air conditioners, cars, and cookies — to encourage producers to make them in the US — would be a good idea.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	7		Strongly Disagree	7

Science, Technology and Immigration

Question A: Allowing US-based employers to hire many more immigrants with advanced degrees in science or engineering would lower (at least temporarily) the premium earned by current American workers with similar degrees.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3		Agree	6

Question B: Allowing US-based employers to hire many more immigrants with advanced degrees in science or engineering would raise per capita income in the US over time.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7		Agree	7

Brexit II

Question A: Because of the Brexit vote's outcome, the UK's real per-capita income level is likely to be lower a decade from now.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	Voter anger trumps econ considerations, but slowdown is underway and City of London is likely to shrink necessitating higher taxes -see background information here -see background information here -see background information here	Agree	5

Question B: Because of the Brexit vote's outcome, the rest of the EU's real per-capita income level is likely to be lower a decade from now.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Stability of rest of the EU much more in doubt. If anyone else leaves big transition costs for everyone. The politics around this are bad. -see background information here	Agree	5

Universal Basic Income

Granting every American citizen over 21-years old a universal basic income of $13,000 a year — financed by eliminating all transfer programs (including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing subsidies, household welfare payments, and farm and corporate subsidies) — would be a better policy than the status quo.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion		Lots of conflicting incentives that can discourage work in the existing rules. I have no idea if scrapping the whole system would be better -see background information here	Disagree	6

Inequality and Monetary Policy

The ratio of the 90th to the 10th percentile of the US income distribution has been unaffected by the Federal Reserve's unconventional monetary policies since the financial crisis.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Probably helped the bottom a bit, but monetary policy would be way, way down on the list of factors affecting inequality.	Uncertain	4

Cadillac Tax

The “Cadillac tax” on expensive employer-provided health insurance plans will reduce costly distortions in US health care if it is allowed to take effect as scheduled in 2018.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	1	Depends on what happens to the rest of the Obamcare mandates and side payments that are still be litigated	Agree	7

Breaking Up Banks

Question A: The four largest domestic US banks currently have around 40% of the industry’s domestic assets (an average of 10% each).  In early 1998, before Glass-Steagall ended and before Citicorp merged with Travelers, they held 13.2% (an average of 3.3% each). Thirty years ago, before interstate branching was fully permitted, that combined share was around 8% (an average of 2% each).

Capping US banks’ size so that no single bank could be larger than 4% of the sector's domestic assets would lower systemic risk in the US.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	shadow banking risks would grow substantially if we go this route and we already saw that they were at the heart of the last crisis	Uncertain	5

Question B: The US financial system would contribute more to the average American's welfare if the size of US banks were capped so that none could be larger than 4% of the sector's domestic assets.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	I think there are probably some economies of scale that consumers benefit from, but hard to know how much would be lost from downsizing.	Uncertain	4

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Question A: By providing important measures of US economic performance — including employment, consumer prices, wages, job openings, time allocation in households, and productivity — the Bureau of Labor Statistics creates social benefits that exceed its annual cost of roughly $610 million.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	we badly under-invest in measuring what happens in the economy & it sometimes hampers policy decisions. see Bernanke's memoir for an example	Strongly Agree	8

Question B: Cuts in BLS spending would likely involve net social costs because potential declines in the quality of data, and thus their usefulness to researchers and decision makers, would exceed any budget savings.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9		Strongly Agree	7

Trade and Toughness

An important reason why many workers in Michigan and Ohio have lost jobs in recent years is because US presidential administrations over the past 30 years have not been tough enough in trade negotiations.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	7	Lots of caveats re the benefits of trade, but failure to bargain hard enough is NOT very relevant. We are protectionist in some cases too	Disagree	6

Primary Voting

Question A: There is no perfect voting system. That is, no voting system can ensure that the winner will be the person who best represents voters’ wishes, including how intensely they favor or disfavor each candidate.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Ken Arrow actually has proved a theorem to this effect (that holds under pretty general conditions).	Strongly Agree	8

Question B: One clear defect of a winner-take-all election with 3 or more candidates, and with each voter choosing only one candidate, is that a candidate who is strongly disliked by a majority, but strongly liked by a minority, can beat a candidate who is liked by a majority and disliked by relatively few.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	Nonetheless, this does not absolve the U.S. citizens if we elect Trump!	Agree	8

Oil Price Speculation

Large movements in monthly oil prices, either up or down, are driven primarily by speculators, as opposed to changes in the current (and planned) supply or demand for oil.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	Expectations about the future are critical and big monthly moves are not because of chance or "speculators" -- changing fundamentals matter. -see background information here	Disagree	7

Brexit

Question A: If the UK opts to withdraw from the European Union, and assuming Scotland stays in the UK, the level of the UK's real per-capita income a decade later will be lower than if it remains part of the EU.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	big transition costs to renegotiate various treaties even if Scotland stays in UK. but Scotland wld likely leave UK => even worse for both.	Uncertain	5

Question B: If the UK exits the EU, then it substantially increases the chances that some other current region of the EU will also exit within the following decade.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Scotland would be very likely to go and resolving the legal ambiguities will embolden separatists elsewhere such as Catalonia	Agree	6

China’s Growth

China’s growth model, specifically the unusually high investment rate and low consumption rate, is unsustainable.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	They've talked about rotating demand forever, looks like the markets have lost faith and are worried about bridges to nowhere, etc.	Agree	6

Christmas Spending

An annual December spending surge on parties, gift-giving and personal travel delivers net social benefits.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	No obvious failures of the welfare theorems, people have leisure complementarities and some prices are actually lower for shoppers -see background information here	Agree	6

US Interest Rates

Question A: The Fed should raise its target interest rate when it meets in mid-December.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	As Mike Mussa once famously said "if not now, when?".	Uncertain	5

Question B: The Fed should have raised interest rates sooner, rather than leaving them near zero for this long.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	certainly would have voted to raise in september, there are always excuses to delay, time to put two way risk back into the bond market	Disagree	6

Quarterly Earnings

Question A:

Letting publicly traded US firms report earnings annually rather than quarterly would lead their executives to place more weight on long-term issues in their investments and other decisions.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	It would relieve short term pressure, but not clear that they would necessarily become patient long-term oriented.	Uncertain	5

Question B: A switch from quarterly to annual earnings reports would, on net, benefit shareholders.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	Very hard to know the net effects, for instance it would become easier to hide bad decisions for longer periods.	Uncertain	5

Standardized Tests

Comparing their students’ average gains on standardized tests over the school year makes it easier to predict which teachers — all else equal — are more likely to improve their student’s long-term life outcomes.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	I think that is what Chetty and others find, though "easier" is in the eye of the beholder -see background information here	Agree	5

Poverty and Measurement

Question A: The association between health and economic growth in poor countries primarily involves faster growth generating better health, rather than the other way around.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	3	seems plausible that other factors ("institutions") could be driving both	Uncertain	5

Question B: The decline in the fraction of people with incomes under, say, $1 per day is a good measure of whether well-being is improving among low-income populations.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5		Uncertain	5

Health Insurance Subsidies

Question A:

Expanding health insurance to more people through the ACA’s public subsidies and Medicaid expansion will reduce total healthcare spending in the economy.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7		Disagree	6

Question B: Expanding health insurance to more people through the ACA’s public subsidies and Medicaid expansion will generate gains in the health and well-being of the newly insured that exceed the costs.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3		Agree	6

$15 Minimum Wage

Question A: If the federal minimum wage is raised gradually to $15-per-hour by 2020, the employment rate for low-wage US workers will be substantially lower than it would be under the status quo.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	5	In rural areas this will have a significant effect, but in many cities it would not matter much. Teenager employment likely to drop too.	Uncertain	5

Question B: Increasing the federal minimum wage gradually to $15-per-hour by 2020 would substantially increase aggregate output in the US economy.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	1	Given ambiguous employment effects and the aggregate share of people getting raises, I doubt you get "substantially" more output.	Disagree	5

Greece’s Referendum

The median Greek citizen will be better off if there is a “yes” vote in the July 5 referendum on whether to accept the terms of the bailout package offered by Greece's creditors.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	Neither option is great. see my blog post for more complete analysis -see background information here	Uncertain	5

Currency Manipulation

Question A: Economic analysis can identify whether countries are using their exchange rates to benefit their own people at the expense of their trading partners’ welfare.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	Like the Volcker rule, the devil is in the details and most of the time it is very difficult to determine; rule very, very hard to write.	Uncertain	5

Question B: Bank of Japan monetary policies that result in a weaker yen make Americans generally worse off.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5	Will be good for us if japan grows and avoids a crisis. loose monetary policy one example of why a rule is so difficult	Disagree	5

Nash Equilibrium

Behavior in many complex and seemingly intractable strategic settings can be understood more clearly by working out what each party in the game will choose to do if they realize that the other parties will be solving the same problem. This insight has helped us understand behavior as diverse as military conflicts, price setting by competing firms and penalty kicking in soccer.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Nash created a whole new way to look at many problems, not always perfect, but a great starting point and benchmark	Strongly Agree	8

US Median Income

The 9% cumulative increase in real US median household income since 1980 substantially understates how much better off people in the median American household are now economically, compared with 35 years ago.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	No one I know would rather face the 1980 bundle of goods (at 1980 prices) than current bundle, at anywhere near the same incomes.	Agree	7

California’s Drought

Californians would be better off on average if all final users in the state paid the same price for water — adjusted for quality, place and time — even if, as a result, some food prices rose sharply and some farms failed.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3		Agree	7

Raising Interest Rates

The Fed should wait until its preferred measure of inflation (Core PCE) is clearly rising — and not just forecast to rise — before it begins hiking interest rates.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	7	Models focusing on uncertainty about labor mkt slack and the real rate might imply this; financial stability concerns can cut the other way -see background information here	Uncertain	5

Local Tax Incentives

Question A: Giving tax incentives to specific firms to locate operations in a city or state typically generates local benefits that outweigh the costs to the city and/or state providing the incentives.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	3	Of cours deals differ but usually the taxpayers get fleeced for a limited number of jobs that get relocated	Uncertain	5

Question B: The US as a whole benefits when cities or states compete with each other by giving tax incentives to firms to locate operations in their jurisdictions.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	5	This is almost entirely zero sum, with the companies gaining and the taxpayers losing.	Disagree	5

Vaccines

Question A:

Declining to be vaccinated against contagious diseases such as measles imposes costs on other people, which is a negative externality.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Costs grow as the number declining rises which the doubters do not seem to appreciate	Strongly Agree	9

Question B: Considering the costs of restricting free choice, and the share of people in the US who choose not to vaccinate their children for measles, the social benefit of mandating measles vaccines for all Americans (except those with compelling medical reasons) would exceed the social cost.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Measels had been eliminated, it is a shame that it is back. But we should be careful about mandates in general.	Agree	7

Greece

In 10 years, per capita purchasing power in Greece will be higher if — rather than continuing to service its debts over the next decade and complying with the budget rules currently in place — it refuses to accept a continuation of its current troika program and explicitly defaults on its debt held by the official sector.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	2	They will never repay all that is promised anyway & at some point the pain of avoiding default is too much. Exit will be awful in the SR.	Uncertain	5

Dynamic Scoring

Question A: Changing federal income tax rates, or the income bases to which those rates apply, can affect federal tax revenues partly by altering people’s behavior, and thus their actual or reported incomes.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	8	some tax changes more salient than others, but people do respond when the stakes are important	Strongly Agree	9

Question B: To the extent that a given tax change might affect revenues partly by affecting national-income growth, existing research provides enough guidance to generate informative bounds on the size of any growth-driven revenue effect.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	3	don't think we know for many types of changes	Uncertain	6

Question C: For large proposed changes in tax rates or the tax base, official revenue forecasts provided to Congress would probably be more accurate if the CBO and JCT tried to estimate fully how the proposed tax changes would affect growth-driven revenue.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	We know the direction and for certain types of changes might have some decent estimates. But politics could corrupt the process too	Uncertain	5

Textbook Prices

Question A: Most college professors who assign textbooks would not be able to guess, within 10% of the actual figure, the retail price that their students pay for new copies of those books.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Based on asking a few people what they thought a basic principles book costs. Most shocked to learn it is well over $200	Agree	5

Question B: Since students can resell college textbooks or rent electronic versions, the net burden on students is substantially lower than retail prices for new textbook purchases would suggest.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	5	These factors help, but some students would like to be able to keep their books and that cost is much higher now	Agree	7

Question C:

Even though the professors who select textbooks are different form the people who pay for them, the price of new edition college textbooks reflect classic forces of supply and demand.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion		I don't have a good story for where the market failure or market power comes from, but the relative price has gone way up.	Disagree	5

Oil Prices

The recent decline in oil prices will promote higher real GDP in the US over the next couple of years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	For the average household this will be a like a tax cut, of course oil producing states suffer a bit, but overall this good news for the US	Agree	7

Economists and Conventions

A US city hosting a big convention will enjoy a higher boost to incremental spending — holding the number of visitors and their average incomes fixed — if those visitors are auto dealers rather than economists.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	we are lengendary cheap skates. this is why we can't hold the aea convention on a weekend in las veags -- we don't spend enough!	Agree	6

Trade Balances

A typical country can increase its citizens’ welfare by enacting policies that would increase its trade surplus (or decrease its trade deficit).

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	10	crazy assertion but plenty of people seem to believe this. to see the fallacy, note that banning imports would do it and would crush welfare	Disagree	6

Repatriated Profits

Question A: Lowering the effective marginal tax rate on US corporations’ repatriated profits for a year would boost US capital investment significantly.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	1	Might pull a little spending forward, but doubt it would genuinely increase it.	Disagree	5

Question B: Permanently lowering the effective marginal tax rate on US corporations’ repatriated profits, such as by moving to a territorial-based tax system, would boost US capital investment significantly.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	1	not aware of any definitive evidence on this.	Uncertain	5

Fast-Track Authority

Question A: By lowering bargaining costs, fast-track negotiating authority for the president makes it more likely that the U.S. can conclude major trade deals.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7		Agree	7

Question B: Past major trade deals have benefited most Americans.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Trade deals are about expanding consumption choices not about jobs. Ross Perot's giant sucking sound is a myth	Agree	7

Amazon and Market Power

Question A: Amazon has monopsony power in the market for books that is significantly reducing the supply of books.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	1		Disagree	5

Question B:

Amazon has sufficient monopsony power that regulatory intervention is likely to make consumers of books better off, taking into account implementation costs and the effect of intervention on incentives.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion			Disagree	5

Piketty on Inequality

The most powerful force pushing towards greater wealth inequality in the US since the 1970s is the gap between the after-tax return on capital and the economic growth rate.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	Argument nicely destroyed by Justin Wolfers (and many others). Too bad for the t-shirt makers -see background information here	Disagree	6

Taxi Competition

Letting car services such as Uber or Lyft compete with taxi firms on equal footing regarding genuine safety and insurance requirements, but without restrictions on prices or routes, raises consumer welfare.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	They innovate: e.g.knowing the rating of the driver who will come and haivng an easy way to find a lost phone after you take the ride.	Strongly Agree	8

Scottish Independence

Although there are many issues for Scotland’s voters to consider, one consequence of separating from the rest of the UK would be greater macroeconomic instability for Scotland for many years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	Splitting = extreme economic pain: sharp budget adjustment needed, big monetary challenges, big financial risks, they're "better together".	Agree	5

Infrastructure (revisited)

Question A: Because the US has underspent on new projects, maintenance, or both, the federal government has an opportunity to increase average incomes by spending more on roads, railways, bridges and airports. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on May 23, 2013. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	6

Question B: Past experience of public spending and political economy suggests that if the government spent more on roads, railways, bridges and airports, many of the projects would have low or negative returns. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on May 23, 2013. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Depends on what many means, but the perpetual repaving of roads in Chicago is not that atypical of many public projects.	Uncertain	5

U.S. State Budgets (revisited)

Question A: By discounting pension liabilities at high interest rates under government accounting standards, many U.S. state and local governments understate their pension liabilities and the costs of providing pensions to public-sector workers. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on October 1, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	see Novy Marx and Rauh for a very clear explanation of the problems -see background information here	Agree	7

Question B: During the next two decades some U.S. states, unless they substantially increase taxes, cut spending, and/or change public-sector pensions, will require a combination of severe austerity budgets, a federal bailout, and/or default. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on October 1, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Illinois is doing its best to be the first to have to face these choices.	Agree	6

Fracking (revisited)

New technology for fracking natural gas, by lowering energy costs in the United States, will make US industrial firms more cost competitive and thus significantly stimulate the growth of US merchandise exports. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on May 23, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	I have learned that this energy source will mainly produce local gains & US manufacturers probably will benefit. Magnitudes still uncertain	Uncertain	5

Economic Stimulus (revisited)

Question A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on February 15, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	This is a very low bar	Agree	7

Question B: Taking into account all of the ARRA’s economic consequences — including the economic costs of raising taxes to pay for the spending, its effects on future spending, and any other likely future effects — the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on February 15, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	Probably was worth it, but the political economy costs of the poor marketing and the fact that is was poorly designed have dogged it.	Agree	6

Congress and Monetary Policy

Legislation introduced in Congress would require the Federal Reserve to "submit to the appropriate congressional committees…a Directive Policy Rule", which shall "describe the strategy or rule of the Federal Open Market Committee for the systematic quantitative adjustment of the Policy Instrument Target to respond to a change in the Intermediate Policy Inputs." Should the Fed deviate from the rule, the Fed Chair would have to "testify before the appropriate congressional committees as to why the [rule]…is not in compliance." Enacting this provision would improve monetary policy outcomes in the U.S.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	7	Data revisions alone cast doubt on this. Instead let's raise the qualifications and pay of who we appoint. Read this bill, very quirky. -see background information here	Disagree	7

Patents

Question A: All else equal, Patent Assertion Entities — which specialize in acquiring and asserting patents and are popularly known as “patent trolls" — promote innovation in the U.S.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5		Disagree	5

Question B: Within the software industry, the US patent system makes consumers better off than they would be in the absence of patents.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion			Uncertain	6

Liquidity

There is a social value to having institutions that issue liquid liabilities that are backed by illiquid assets.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	That is why narrow banking is a mistake. If we ban this, it will move to the shadow banking system. -see background information here -see background information here	Agree	8

Gary Becker

Question A: Employers that discriminate in hiring will be at a competitive disadvantage, if their customers do not care about their mix of employees, compared with firms that do not discriminate.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	6

Question B: Rising market wages are an important reason — over and above any changes in medical technology, social norms or preferences — why family sizes have fallen over the past century in rich countries.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5		Agree	6

Net Neutrality II

Considering both distributional effects and changes in efficiency, it is a good idea to let companies that send video or other content to consumers pay more to Internet service providers for the right to send that traffic using faster or higher quality service.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	Presumably creates strong incentives for vertical integration. Not clear if that is good or not.	Uncertain	5

European Debt

The recent oversubscribed debt issues of Greece and Portugal suggest that sovereign default by any euro area country is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	7	Greece's debt is still unsustainable & Europe's banks are undercapitalized. Until that changes risks remain. -see background information here	Uncertain	6

College Athletes

If the NCAA let colleges pay athletes with more than scholarships (which currently may cover tuition, books, room and board), then top colleges in men’s basketball and football would pay most athletes substantial sums beyond full scholarships.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Players get few rents now. That would change for sure	Agree	7

Russia Sanctions

Past experience suggests that economic sanctions do little to deter the target countries from their course of action.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	Hard to design & sustain in a way that ends up only harming the offender. Better to boycott the world cup in Russia +embarass FIFA too!	Uncertain	5

Supplying Kidneys

A market that allows payment for human kidneys should be established on a trial basis to help extend the lives of patients with kidney disease.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Uncertain	7

Robots

Question A: Advancing automation has not historically reduced employment in the United States.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	7

Question B: Information technology and automation are a central reason why median wages have been stagnant in the US over the past decade, despite rising productivity.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion			Uncertain	6

Innovation and Growth

Future innovations worldwide will not be transformational enough to promote sustained per-capita economic growth rates in the U.S. and western Europe over the next century as high as those over the past 150 years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	8	We would have never forecast most the past breakthroughs, no reason to think we are any better at doing so now. No way this is knowable.	Uncertain	6

Chairman Bernanke

Informed postmortems of Ben Bernanke’s Fed chairmanship will judge favorably the Fed's creative and aggressive policy initiatives from autumn 2008 through early 2009.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Public may not appreciate this, but Bernanke's Fed helped stave off Depression 2.0. Record before and after will be more controversial.	Agree	7

Surge Pricing

Using surge pricing to allocate transportation services — such as Uber does with its cars — raises consumer welfare through various potential channels, such as increasing the supply of those services, allocating them to people who desire them the most, and reducing search and queuing costs.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	The alternative is standing in the rain or waiting forever at rush hour, sometimes paying the premium is just much better	Agree	8

Bah, Humbug

Giving specific presents as holiday gifts is inefficient, because recipients could satisfy their preferences much better with cash.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Motivation for the present has to be non-monetary -- but try giving your spouse cash!	Disagree	7

Low-Skilled Immigrants

Question A: The average US citizen would be better off if a larger number of low-skilled foreign workers were legally allowed to enter the US each year.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5		Agree	5

Question B: Unless they were compensated by others, many low-skilled American workers would be substantially worse off if a larger number of low-skilled foreign workers were legally allowed to enter the US each year.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	I believe the evidence show that some low-skilled natives suffer, but whether many suffer substantially not clear given what I know on this	Agree	6

Diversification

In general, absent any inside information, an equity investor can expect to do better by choosing a well-diversified, low-cost index fund than by picking a few stocks.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Almost everyone should be investing in this way and ignoring tips from friends and experts on particular stocks.	Strongly Agree	9

Fed Policy

Question A: Enactment of the Senate bill to subject the Federal Reserve's monetary policy and discount window decisions to an audit by the Comptroller General of the U.S. would improve the Fed's legitimacy without hurting its decision making.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	9	The point of this bill is to dial back central independence. Abundant evidence suggests worse monetary policy will follow if it is enacted.	Strongly Disagree	7

Question B: The Fed should not reduce its purchases of mortgage-backed securities and treasurys until there is clearer evidence of strong and sustained employment growth.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	3	Benefits of more QE now seems small. QE won't cause inflation, but the forward guidance cum QE is creating some financial stability risk. -see background information here	Agree	5

Net Neutrality

Allowing Internet service providers to charge content companies for access to the ISPs' customers would provide net benefits to consumers.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion		curious to see what the IO mavens say about this.	Disagree	5

US Fiscal Risks

Question A: If the United States fails to make scheduled interest or principal payments on government debt securities, even as an unintended consequence of political brinksmanship, US families and businesses are likely to suffer severe economic harm.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	this would put our status as reserve currency in play; there would probably be forced selling. All bad.	Agree	6

Question B: With or without a default, current uncertainty over future taxing and spending policies of the US government is likely to depress private investment and hiring by enough to reduce GDP growth by at least a quarter of a percentage point over the next 12 months.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	magnitude is unsure but the direction is surely correct and my guess is that the magnitude is above 0.25.	Uncertain	5

Capital Outflows

Experience over the past 30 years shows that for the typical emerging market nation facing rapid capital outflows, spending foreign currency reserves to defend its currency is a better policy for its citizens than not doing so.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5	Depends on the particulars, but it is usually better to fix the problem that is causing the reversal.	Disagree	4

Student Credit Risk

Conventional economic reasoning suggests that it would be a good policy to enact the recent Senate bill that would let undergraduate students borrow through the government Stafford program at interest rates equivalent to the primary credit rates offered to banks through the Federal Reserve's discount window.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	7	Discount window loans are secured and only made to solvent banks. Student loans historically have high default rates. Very bad idea!	Uncertain	5

Savings Behavior

An effective way to increase savings rates of employees whose firms have defined contribution plans is to combine automatic enrollment in those plans and periodic automatic increases in their contributions (with the ability to opt out of either).

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	-see background information here	Agree	7

Fiscal Policy and Savings

Sustained tax and spending policies that boost consumption in ways that reduce the saving rate are likely to lower long-run living standards.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	7

Fogel on Slavery

Slavery in the United States was eradicated because of social and political events, not because it was an unprofitable institution for slaveholders.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Time on a Cross was very convincing -- and so disturbing to my sister-in-law that she decided not to be an econ major after reading it!	Agree	7

LNG Exports

Restricting US exports of liquefied natural gas would have adverse effects on the US economy.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3		Agree	6

Infrastructure

Question A: Because the US has underspent on new projects, maintenance, or both, the federal government has an opportunity to increase average incomes by spending more on roads, railways, bridges and airports.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	Repairing bridges & roads would have been good to do over the last 5 years; the problem is nothing is really shovel ready so it takes time	Agree	6

Question B: Past experience of public spending and political economy suggests that if the government spent more on roads, railways, bridges and airports, many of the projects would have low or negative returns.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	Depends on what "many" means, but dollar weighted we do overpay too often. See Calif high speed train	Uncertain	5

Charitable Deductions

Reducing the income-tax deductibility of charitable gifts is a less distortionary way to raise new revenue than raising the same amount of revenue through a proportional increase in all marginal tax rates.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5		Agree	6

Bitcoin

A bitcoin's value derives solely from the belief that others will want to use it for trade, which implies that its purchasing power is likely to fluctuate over time to a degree that will limit its usefulness.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	It is already trading like a speculative asset and no reason why that will cease.	Agree	6

High-Debt Countries

Countries that let their debt loads get high risk losing control of their own fiscal sustainability, through an adverse feedback loop in which doubts by lenders lead to higher government bond rates, which in turn make debt problems more severe.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	The only question is when the tipping point kicks in. Japan will face trouble after Europe is sorted out, as might the UK and maybe then US -see background information here	Agree	7

Trade Deals

Refusing to liberalize trade unless partner countries adopt new labor or environmental rules is a bad policy, because even if the new standards would reduce distortions on some dimensions, such a policy involves threatening to maintain large distortions in the form of restricted trade.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	OK to threaten it, but losing a deal over this would be bad policy; this reasoning seems to make it much harder to reach deals.	Uncertain	5

Early Education

Using government funds to guarantee preschool education for four-year olds would yield a much lower social return than the ones achieved by the most highly touted targeted preschool initiatives.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion		Too far from my expertise to say.	Uncertain	4

Minimum Wage

Question A:

Raising the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour would make it noticeably harder for low-skilled workers to find employment.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	For some it will definitely reduce opportunities, but in other places it will not even be binding Net effect is hard to tell	Uncertain	5

Question B:

The distortionary costs of raising the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour and indexing it to inflation are sufficiently small compared with the benefits to low-skilled workers who can find employment that this would be a desirable policy.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	Total effects are hard to tell, plus there are other policies like the EITC that might be more effective.	Uncertain	5

High-Skilled Immigrants

The average US citizen would be better off if a larger number of highly educated foreign workers were legally allowed to immigrate to the US each year.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	7

Japan’s Deflation

The persistent deflation in Japan since 1997 could have been avoided had the Bank of Japan followed different monetary policies.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Fed actions prove that hitting the zero bound on rates need not imply deflation. BoJ could have stopped this and should be held accountable -see background information here	Agree	6

Debt Ceiling

Because all federal spending and taxes must be approved by both houses of Congress and the executive branch, a separate debt ceiling that has to be increased periodically creates unneeded uncertainty and can potentially lead to worse fiscal outcomes.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Deciding whether or not to pay the debts incurred to fund the previously approved tax and spending is nuts.	Agree	7

Small Firms

The federal government would make the average U.S. citizen better off by using policies that directly focus more on increasing small business growth than growth of economic output overall.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	Small biz create and destroy lots of jobs, there is no reason to favor them at the expense of others -see background information here	Disagree	6

Indexing

The annual indexing of Social Security benefits to increases in the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (the CPI-W) leads to higher benefits than would be required to compensate recipients for genuine cost-of-living increases.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Directionally almost has to be true, but the magnitude is uncertain.	Uncertain	6

Carbon Taxes II

The Brookings Institution recently described a US carbon tax of $20 per ton, increasing at 4% per year, which would raise an estimated $150 billion per year in federal revenues over the next decade. Given the negative externalities created by carbon dioxide emissions, a federal carbon tax at this rate would involve fewer harmful net distortions to the US economy than a tax increase that generated the same revenue by raising marginal tax rates on labor income across the board.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1		Agree	7

Ten-Year Budgets

Question A: Because federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid will continue to grow under current policy beyond the 10-year window of most political budget debates, it is easy for a politician to devise a budget plan that would reduce federal deficits over the next decade without really making the U.S. fiscally sustainable.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7		Agree	7

Question B: Comparing two plans that would reduce federal budget deficits by identical amounts in each of the next 10 years, one that did so partly by reducing significantly the long-term growth rate of Medicare and Medicaid spending would do more to make the U.S. budget fiscally sustainable than one that did not lower the growth of these spending programs.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Medicare and Medicaid are (along with growth) the key factors for long term sustainability. We never paid for the Bush plan, let alone ACA.	Agree	7

Bailouts: Banks and Automakers

Question A: Taking into account all of the economic consequences — including the incentives of banks to ensure their own liquidity and solvency in the future — the benefits of bailing out U.S. banks in 2008 will end up exceeding the costs.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	10	Bankruptcy and liquidation would have been worse, but could have nationalized a couple of the weakest ones, especially Citi. -see background information here	Agree	6

Question B: Because GM and Chrysler were bailed out in 2008-09, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would it have been if Congress and the executive branch had not intervened.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	But traditional bankruptcy and restructuring was an option too. Challenges for financial and non-financial firms are totally different. -see background information here	Agree	6

Question C: Taking into account all of the economic consequences — including effects on corporate managers' incentives and on creditors' expectations of how their claims will be treated in future bankruptcies — the benefits of bailing out GM and Chrysler will end up exceeding the costs.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	7	Costs will appear in the next crisis; the precedent for a bailout is now set. Reduced incentives for the private sector to hold dry powder.	Uncertain	6

Big Banks

Question A: The U.S government should make further efforts to shrink the size of the country's largest banks — such as by capping the size of their liabilities or penalizing large banks more heavily through taxes or other means — because the existing regulations do not require the biggest banks to internalize enough of the "too-big-to-fail" risks that they pose.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	7	Many ways to use derivatives and other regulatory loopholes to avoid these penalties. So we could make things less safe. Details matter.	Agree	6

Question B:

The economic benefits to the U.S. of having a handful of banks with balance sheets greater than $1 trillion are small.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1	US firms are big in all industries and balance sheet size is an imperfect measure. But evidence on scale and scope efficiences is weak.	Agree	5

Manufacturing

Question A: The federal government would make the average U.S. citizen better off by using policies that directly focus more on increasing manufacturing employment than employment in other sectors.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5	Memo to Romney and Obama: there is nothing per se special about manufacturing (except maybe nostalgia).	Disagree	6

Question B: Because firms and inventors do not capture the full returns from research and development, the government would increase the average well-being of Americans (and potentially of others too) by favoring R&D using the tax code.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion		Not sure of the magnitudes of the distortions once we account for patents and other R&D policies	Agree	6

Medicare

Question A: Consider one of two proposals for restraining future Medicare spending, each by the same amount: The method that President Obama enacted in the Affordable Care Act — reducing Medicare-related payments to private insurers and altering the payment system for doctors and hospitals — imposes risks on future Medicare patients because over time the supply of doctors, hospitals and insurers willing to offer them health services may decline in response to restrained payments.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Assuming that they actually hold the line on payments.	Agree	6

Question B: Consider the other of two proposals for restraining future Medicare spending, each by the same amount: The method that Governor Romney advocates — giving future seniors a fixed payment for premiums and letting private insurers compete with Medicare — imposes risks on future Medicare patients because competition may not be powerful to enough to offer future seniors the same quality of care that is currently promised without supplementing their premium support.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Also risky assuming premium support is limited; some cherry picking could also cause problems for traditional Medicare	Agree	6

Presidents and Jobs

Claims by incumbent presidents and challengers about how many private-sector jobs can be created in a four-year period by sector-level or other targeted policies should be viewed as rough guesses, because overall macroeconomic conditions drive aggregate employment in ways that dominate any net effects of polices that focus on specific industries or households.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	POTUS macro choices matter somewhat but most sexy attempts to pander to get votes are inconsequental & shocks they can't control are big.	Agree	8

Taxing Capital and Labor

Question A: One drawback of taxing capital income at a lower rate than labor income is that it gives people incentives to relabel income that policymakers find hard to categorize as "capital" rather than labor".

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	don't know how successful they are, but the incentives are clear	Agree	7

Question B: Despite relabeling concerns, taxing capital income at a permanently lower rate than labor income would result in higher average long-term prosperity, relative to an alternative that generated the same amount of tax revenue by permanently taxing capital and labor income at equal rates instead.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1	But the levels of rates matter and just getting the rate capital down might have no meaningful effects.	Uncertain	5

Question C: Although they do not always agree about the precise likely effects of different tax policies, another reason why economists often give disparate advice on tax policy is because they hold differing views about choices between raising average prosperity and redistributing income.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	This is a powerful factor that is often overlooked: the efficiency vs equity debate is still alive, even if sometimes hidden.	Agree	7

U.S. State Budgets

Question A: By discounting pension liabilities at high interest rates under government accounting standards, many U.S. state and local governments understate their pension liabilities and the costs of providing pensions to public-sector workers.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Its outrageous that this is permitted. See Novy-Marx and Rauh's IGM funded research to see the massive degree of understatement. -see background information here	Agree	7

Question B: During the next two decades some U.S. states, unless they substantially increase taxes, cut spending, and/or change public-sector pensions, will require a combination of severe austerity budgets, a federal bailout, and/or default.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Current path is unsustainable; the longer we wait the worse the eventual adjustment, but for OH and IL at least things already look bad. -see background information here	Agree	7

QE3

Question A: Even if the third round of quantitative easing that the Fed recently announced increases real GDP growth over the next two years, the increase will be inconsequential.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Too many other negative pressures around the world (europe, fiscal cliff, china) for the Fed's policy to make much difference	Uncertain	5

Question B: Even if the third round of quantitative easing that the Fed recently announced increases annual consumer price inflation over the next five years, the increase will be inconsequential.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Only way this is incorrect is if the Fed ignores lots of warnings. Given current FOMC membership that risk is small.	Uncertain	5

Question C:

Even if inflationary pressures rise substantially as a result of quantitative easing and low interest rates, the Federal Reserve has ample tools to rein inflation back in if it chooses to do so.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Lots of ways to tighten and failure to do so would have to be an active choice.	Agree	5

Ethanol

Question A: Ethanol content requirements and protectionism against imported ethanol (which includes fuel from sugarcane) raise food prices without significantly reducing carbon-dioxide emissions.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3		Agree	7

Question B: A direct disincentive to emit carbon-dioxide, for example through a carbon tax or an emissions permit market, is more efficient than requiring the use of corn-based ethanol fuels.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Strongly Agree	8

European Debt

Question A: Even if all the official-sector funding that Greece received from 2010 through August 2012 is written off, propping up Greece to buy time for the rest of Europe to prepare for Greek default has been better for citizens of the Eurozone outside of Greece than a policy that would have cut off funding sooner.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5	Better to have backstopped all the banks and let Greece default in early 2010 -- contagion was manageable then if the banks were supported	Uncertain	5

Question B: A substantial sovereign-debt default by some combination of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain is a necessary condition for the euro area as a whole to grow at its pre-crisis trend rate over the next three years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	ECB could inflate things away (and maybe the OMT is the first step) which is another form of default.	Disagree	5

Question C: Unless there is a substantial default by some combination of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain on their sovereign debt and commercial bank debt, plus credible reforms to prevent excessive borrowing in the future, the euro area is headed for a costly financial meltdown and a prolonged recession.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	3	Again inflating is the alternative -- a clean restructuring is probably better, but inflation may be the path of least resistance.	Uncertain	4

Trade Barriers for Sugar

The current trade barriers in the U.S. sugar industry raise the profits of sugar producers and make the typical U.S. consumer pay more for sugar and goods that use sugar as an input.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5		Agree	7

Student Loans

Question A: Loans to students attending for-profit colleges are especially risky because students attending them have had default rates that greatly exceed those for comparable students attending public and non-profit private institutions.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Uncertain	5

Question B: Rules that tie each college's eligibility for federal student loans to its students' graduation rates and post-schooling employment outcomes would better protect taxpayers from losses on student loans.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1	Depends on not forbearing, or picking up costs of past bad private loans. Will the government really put lots of people in debtors prison?	Agree	5

Money Market Funds

Question A: The way in which money market funds normally trade – at one dollar per share, even though the per-share value of the assets backing them varies over time – made them vulnerable to a run in 2008 before they received taxpayer guarantees.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	The current structure of MMMFs makes them susceptible to runs. So an ugly blow up in Europe could spread to the US via the MMMFs. -see background information here -see background information here	Agree	8

Question B: Taxpayers would be better protected if each money market fund in the U.S. were instead required to trade at its floating net asset value.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Floating NAV definitely ends the risk of a run. Only caveat is what happens to the money that MIGHT migrate. Could be a whack a mole issue	Uncertain	7

Question C: In the absence of floating net asset values, taxpayers would be better protected if each money market fund in the U.S. were required to set aside capital to protect against losses while holding back a portion of shareholders' cash for a time when they seek to withdraw all of their money.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	SEC has a chance to require this and it would help. This probably leads to more migration than floating NAV.	Uncertain	5

Obesity and Soft Drinks

Taxes or bans on large bottles of soft drinks containing sugar are not likely to have a significant effect on obesity rates because people will substitute towards consuming excessive calories in other ways.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3		Uncertain	5

Online Sales Taxes

Subjecting online sales from out-of-state vendors to the same retail sales taxes imposed on in-state sales would raise more tax revenue in the states making this change while reducing the pro-online bias of current policy.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Leveling the playing field & raising money is good policy; rationalizing the many jurisdictions & various tax rates would be good too.	Agree	7

Cable-Satellite TV Fees

Consumers would not necessarily be better off if cable and satellite TV firms were required to offer a la carte pricing for individual channels, because the networks' programming charges and the satellite-and-cable fees could adjust in response to this rule.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	A la carte unfortunately is not a panacea.	Agree	5

Healthcare and Taxes

Long run fiscal sustainability in the U.S. will require cuts in currently promised Medicare and Medicaid benefits and/or tax increases that include higher taxes on households with incomes below $250,000.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Can't escape doing something about medical spending and even if we do, we will need more taxes on everyone -see background information here	Agree	8

Europe

Question A:

Assuming that Germany eventually agrees to backstop the debt of southern European countries, the eurozone as a whole will be better off if that bailout is unconditional, rather than accompanied by the labor market reforms and future budget controls that Germany is demanding of countries in return.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	7	Without the structural reforms these countries medium term outlook is grim.	Disagree	6

Question B: If Germany fails to bail out the southern tier of Europe, its own economy will be hurt more — because of output and asset losses — than it would be by an unconditional bailout.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	7	Too many factors about the details of a break up and the policies followed under a bailout need to be specified to answer this.	Uncertain	5

Question C: The main reason other eurozone countries need to worry about Greek banks losing access to ECB support is because the ensuing chaos in Greece could trigger bank runs in peripheral countries.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Greece is doomed absent a complete bailout. But then how do Port, Italy, Spain not get the same deal? When Greece collapses watch for runs	Agree	6

Laffer Curve

Question A: A cut in federal income tax rates in the US right now would lead to higher GDP within five years than without the tax cut.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	Lots of distorting effects of taxes. Costs of higher deficits probably modest at the 5 year horizon; eventually can't just keep borrowing.	Uncertain	5

Question B: A cut in federal income tax rates in the US right now would raise taxable income enough so that the annual total tax revenue would be higher within five years than without the tax cut.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	May look plausible on a cocktail napkin (or at a cocktail party), but not true empirically in the US.	Strongly Disagree	7

China-US Trade

Question A: Trade with China makes most Americans better off because, among other advantages, they can buy goods that are made or assembled more cheaply in China.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Failure to understand this is one of biggest common misperceptions by politicians and the general public	Agree	8

Question B: Some Americans who work in the production of competing goods, such as clothing and furniture, are made worse off by trade with China.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1	Over the medium run there should be some adjustment and if China were not in the picture some other country probably would be.	Agree	8

College Tuition

An important reason why private college and university tuition has risen faster than the CPI during the past few decades is because competition for faculty members — whose potential earnings in other sectors have steadily improved — has driven up their pay faster than their productivity.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
No Opinion		too many competing hypotheses and I don't know enough about the evidence to pick between them	Uncertain	5

Fiscal Cliff

If the fiscal changes that are planned under current US law take place next year — including Bush era tax cuts expiring, Medicare payment rates to doctors being cut, the AMT applying to many more taxpayers, and automatic cuts in defense and non-defense discretionary spending kicking in — then US real GDP growth in 2013 will be lower than it would be under the CBO's alternative fiscal scenario, in which the above changes do not occur.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Short run contraction for sure. But long run costs of NOT acting are growing; entitlement reform and some revenue increases are needed.	Agree	7

Fracking

New technology for fracking natural gas, by lowering energy costs in the United States, will make US industrial firms more cost competitive and thus significantly stimulate the growth of US merchandise exports.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5	3 uncertain steps. Natural gas prices might fall, but cost savings might be minimal, & share of energy costs may be too small to matter.	Disagree	5

Cuba’s Economy

Cuba’s low per-capita income growth — 1.2 percent per year since 1960 —has more to do with Cuba’s own economic policies than with the U.S. embargo on trade and tourism.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Gravity model suggests adverse effects from the embargo, but destroying the price system and using command and control instead hurts more.	Agree	6

French Labor Policies

Question A: Reducing the minimum retirement age in France from 62 back to age 60, permanently, would reduce long-term French economic growth and substantially raise French debt relative to GDP over time.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	5	Lower labor supply reduces growth. Increasing life expectancy makes this expensive, if anything retirement age should be hiked further.	Agree	7

Question B: France’s overall employment is higher today because of the 35 hour work week than it would be without a limit on weekly hours.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	Sold on these grounds, but evidence suggested it backfired. -see background information here	Disagree	6

Price Gouging

Connecticut should pass its Senate Bill 60, which states that during a “severe weather event emergency, no person within the chain of distribution of consumer goods and services shall sell or offer to sell consumer goods or services for a price that is unconscionably excessive.”

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	5	Seems like pandering, "post-storm cleanup or repair services" are included. It seems like those prices could reasonably soar after a storm.	Disagree	6

Security Screening

The former head of the Transportation Security Administration is correct in arguing that randomizing airport “security procedures encountered by passengers (additional upper-torso pat-downs, a thorough bag search, a swab test of carry-ons, etc.), while not subjecting everyone to the full gamut" would make it "much harder for terrorists to learn how to evade security procedures."

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1	Predictability does seem unwise, but I am uncertain about the most efficient ways to deliver safety.	Uncertain	5

Ticket Resale

Laws that limit the resale of tickets for entertainment and sports events make potential audience members for those events worse off on average.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	7

Fannie and Freddie

Prior to the crisis, the benefits from the funding advantage that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had by virtue of perceived government support mostly went to their shareholders, rather than into substantially lower interest rates on residential mortgages.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	Well documented by Greenspan in 2004! Sadly the F & F losses was one part of the crisis that was foreseen and Congress refused to act. -see background information here	Uncertain	5

School Vouchers

Question A: If public school students had the option of taking the government money (local, state, federal) currently being spent on their own education and turning that money into vouchers that they could use towards covering the costs of any private school or public school of their choice (e.g. charter schools), most would be better off.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Competitive pressure on bad schools to improve and the ability for some students to escape them would be valuable.	Uncertain	6

Question B: The main drawback to allowing all public school students to take the government money (local, state, federal) currently being spent on their own education and turning that money into vouchers that they could use towards covering the costs of any private school or public school of their choice (e.g. charter schools) would be that some students would not make an active choice and would be left with much worse peers and a weaker school.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	5	I see this as the main cost; it is not clear how long people would be trapped, but initially at least some undoubtedly would be worse off.	Agree	5

Too Big to Fail

Question A: The average size of the 19 financial firms that just completed the Federal Reserve stress tests (i.e. the CCAR) would be substantially smaller if they did not have implicit government support.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	7	There are efficiency reasons for size & there is the implicit support. Regulatory burden is now higher. No telling how much they'd shrink.	Uncertain	5

Question B: The 19 financial firms that just completed the Federal Reserve stress tests (i.e. the CCAR) are big primarily because of economies of scale and scope, rather than because of implicit government support.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	7	Very uncertain about the size of either the efficiency advantages or the net subsidy. US firms usually are large relative global peers.	Uncertain	5

Gasoline Prices

Changes in U.S. gasoline prices over the past 10 years have predominantly been due to market factors rather than U.S. federal economic or energy policies.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	8

Free Trade

Question A: Freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any effects on employment.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	9	Description of the gains is right, and long run employment might be higher too. We can try to compensate short run job losers.	Agree	8

Question B: On average, citizens of the U.S. have been better off with the North American Free Trade Agreement than they would have been if the trade rules for the U.S., Canada and Mexico prior to NAFTA had remained in place.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	6

Bank Bailouts

Because the U.S. Treasury bailed out and backstopped banks (by injecting equity into them in late 2008, and later committing to provide public capital to any banks that failed the stress tests and could not raise private capital), the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without these measures.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	They could have been tougher on pay and dividends, but just look across the pond to see a much worse alternative way of proceeding.	Agree	6

Health-Care Licensing

Loosening current licensing restrictions on the range of services that nurses, physician assistants, dental hygienists and pharmacists are permitted to perform would help patients on balance, because the additional safety risks would be small compared to the decreased costs in waiting time and fees.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Everywhere else in the world people without the title "doctor" seem to be able to do more, seems like we should move in this way too.	Agree	6

Short Selling

Bans on the short selling of financial securities, such as stocks and government bonds, lead to prices that are further, on average, from their fundamental values.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	This desperate policy does not work. See Geanakoplos for the dangers of leverage and the inability to short in producing instability.	Agree	5

Economic Stimulus

Question A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	But this is an incredibly low bar.	Agree	7

Question B:

Taking into account all of the ARRA’s economic consequences — including the economic costs of raising taxes to pay for the spending, its effects on future spending, and any other likely future effects — the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	7	Payoffs to special interests (& associated political costs that paralyzed other efforts) made it far less effective than it could have been	Uncertain	6

Rent Control

Local ordinances that limit rent increases for some rental housing units, such as in New York and San Francisco, have had a positive impact over the past three decades on the amount and quality of broadly affordable rental housing in cities that have used them.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	3		Disagree	6

Executive Pay

Question A:

The typical chief executive officer of a publicly traded corporation in the U.S. is paid more than his or her marginal contribution to the firm's value.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	3	Commonly asserted but it is very hard to tell. The fact that CEO pay fell during the 2000s is not widely known. -see background information here	Uncertain	4

Question B:

Mandating that U.S. publicly listed corporations must allow shareholders to cast a non-binding vote on executive compensation was a good idea. 

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	5	We know that it does not seemed to have changed outcomes much so far. Does take up some resources, but the threat might wind up being ok.	Uncertain	5

Inequality and Skills

One of the leading reasons for rising U.S. income inequality over the past three decades is that technological change has affected workers with some skill sets differently than others.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Hard to quantify the exact contribution, but it is undoubtedly big. Also tricky in that it partially interacts with education and trade.	Agree	7

Gold Standard

Question A:

If the US replaced its discretionary monetary policy regime with a gold standard, defining a "dollar" as a specific number of ounces of gold, the price-stability and employment outcomes would be better for the average American.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	10	A gold standard regime would be a disaster for any large advanced economy. Love of the G.S. implies macroeconomic illiteracy.	Strongly Disagree	8

Question B: There are many factors besides US inflation risk that influence the current dollar price of gold.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Go see a dentist.	Strongly Agree	9

Congestion Pricing

In general, using more congestion charges in crowded transportation networks — such as higher tolls during peak travel times in cities, and peak fees for airplane takeoff and landing slots — and using the proceeds to lower other taxes would make citizens on average better off.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3		Strongly Agree	8

Carbon Tax

A tax on the carbon content of fuels would be a less expensive way to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions than would a collection of policies such as “corporate average fuel economy” requirements for automobiles.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	2		Strongly Agree	7

Drug Use Policies

Question A: All else equal, making drugs illegal raises street prices for those drugs because suppliers require extra compensation for the risk of incarceration and other punishments.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	Basic micro economics	Agree	8

Question B: The Netherlands restrictions on “soft drugs” combined with a moderate tax aimed at deterring their consumption would have lower social costs than continuing to prohibit use of those drugs as in the US. (Click here for a summary of the Netherlands restrictions.)

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Have to trade off the costs of the likely extra usage against savings from wasted resources trying to stop the inevitable.	Agree	5

Italy’s Debt

Question A:

Credible assumptions for inflation, GDP growth and primary budget deficits in Italy imply that either the Debt-to-GDP ratio in Italy would increase sharply if Italian interest rates on 10-year government debt remained at the November 30 level of around 7 percent or Italy would lose access to the bond market.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Basic arithmetic of debt dynamics shows that this constellation cannot persist.	Agree	6

Question B:

Absent outside help to deal with runs, such as a pledge of fiscal support from Germany or an unlimited commitment by the ECB to buy bonds, there is no spending-and-tax plan Italy can announce that would be credible enough to hold its interest rates low enough to stabilize its Debt-to-GDP ratio.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	Hard call, you can't say the country is insolvent -- but how will Italy roll all of its debt if there is no outside support?	Uncertain	5

Healthcare

There are no consequential distortions created by the tax preference that favors obtaining health insurance through employers.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	5	Lock in is inefficient and there is no good reason to use the tax code to subsidize health insurance purchases.	Strongly Disagree	8

Buy American

Federal mandates that government purchases should be “buy American” unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, have a significant positive impact on U.S. manufacturing employment.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	1		Disagree	5

Tax Reform

Question A: Eliminating tax deductions for non-investment personal interest expenses (e.g., on mortgages), with reductions in personal tax rates that are both budget neutral and keep the burden of taxes by income group the same, would lead to more efficient financing decisions by individuals.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7	There is no good reason for using the tax system to subsidize home purchases. Lower rates and a broader tax base are the way to go.	Agree	7

Question B: Reducing the deductibility of interest expenses for non-financial businesses to equalize the overall tax cost of debt and equity financing, while using the extra revenue to reduce personal and corporate tax rates in a budget neutral fashion that also keeps the burden of taxes the same, would lead to more efficient financing decisions by firms.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	7

Stock Prices

Question A: Unless they have inside information, very few investors, if any, can consistently make accurate predictions about whether the price of an individual stock will rise or fall on a given day.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	Everyone should have to read Ken French's Presidential Address to the American Finance Association on the perils of active investing. -see background information here	Strongly Agree	8

Question B: Plausible expectations of future dividends, discounted using a plausible risk-adjusted interest rate, explain well the level of stock prices for recently listed internet businesses in 1999.  

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	Never could figure out how pets.com, webvan and various other dotcoms could have ever made money.	Disagree	7

Exchange Rates

The Chinese government pursues policies that keep the renminbi's exchange rate vis à vis the dollar lower than it would be if the currency floated without those policies.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	The same policies are creating big imbalances in China by thwarting price signals. The eventual adjustment for China could be ugly. -see background information here	Agree	6

Education

Public school students would receive a higher quality education if they all had the option of taking the government money (local, state, federal) currently being spent on their own education and turning that money into vouchers that they could use towards covering the costs of any private school or public school of their choice (e.g. charter schools).

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	3	Hard to know what the equilibrium will be, but so many kids are trapped now eventually most of them would have better choices.	Uncertain	6

Taxes

Question A: All else equal, permanently raising the federal marginal tax rate on ordinary income by 1 percentage point for those in the top (i.e., currently 35%) tax bracket would increase federal tax revenue over the next 10 years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	7		Agree	8

Question B:

The cumulative budget shortfalls in the US over the next 10 years can be reduced by half (or more) purely by increasing the federal marginal tax rate on ordinary income for those in the top tax bracket.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	7	Too many ways to shift income. If the rate becomes very high labor supply will probably fall. Everyone will have to pay to cut the deficits	Disagree	7

Monetary Policy

All else equal, the Fed's new plan to increase the maturity of its Treasury holdings will boost expected real GDP growth for calendar year 2012 by at least one percentage point.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree	10	The gains will be tiny. Monetary policy is a poor tool for what ails the economy. The mandate says try it, but political risks are real.	Disagree	4