Jared Bernstein

A few weeks ago I was called upon to debate the idea of taxing big, high calorie soft drinks to help offset the high health costs of the American obesity epidemic. Since then, I been dipping a toe into this literature and finding it quite interesting. Given partisan gridlock, money...

I've very much enjoyed the recent debate over Bain Capital and the role of such private equity firms in the economy, not for partisan reasons, but because it's far too rare that we step back and ask about the societal costs and benefits of opaque mechanisms like PE.

I...

Whenever I do anything my 12-year-old daughter finds embarrassing -- which is pretty much whenever I do anything -- she says, "Really, Dad? Seriously???"

That was pretty much my reaction to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) letter to Speaker Boehner yesterday, wherein she mixed a very good idea with...

That fiscal cliff -- you know... the one everyone's all wound up about? Well, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released their analysis of its potential impact on the economy and it ain't pretty. Add up all the stuff that's scheduled to turn into fiscal pumpkins at midnight...

More out there today on the possibility of Greece leaving the Eurozone. The New York Times is a bit less pessimistic than the Washington Post, but if you're looking for something new to get nervous about, here you go. Better yet, I'll summarize: we don't know the outcome,...

In conversations and debates around the recent deceleration in job growth, when I've pointed out that we here in the U.S. have our own austerity programs going, I'm often met with disbelief. After all, we've got these huge federal budget deficits, right?!

Right, but what matters in terms of foot-on-the-accelerator...

I've been waiting to learn more about the big JP Morgan Chase loss -- $2 billion and probably growing when a derivative bet went bad -- before writing about it. So after perusing this AMs papers, here are some thoughts:

What happened?

The bank invested in corporate bonds, then bought...

Here are the facts of the economic case as I see them today:

- Much of Europe is in recession and the downturn is in no small part a function of austerity measures that, like bloodletting, are making things worse, not better. While the new French president is certainly making...

Update below.

This just in: AUSTERITY DOESN'T WORK!

It doesn't work here, it doesn't work in Europe, it doesn't work for state and local governments. I'm tempted to ask how many data points we need to recognize this crucial economic truth, but I'm afraid data points don't have much to...

Bruce Bartlett has a nice piece in the New York Times this week on the (non-)relationship between the tax wedge and employment rates across countries. The wedge is the gap between what employers pay and what employees receive after taxes come out. Reduce the wedge, the theory goes, and...

Allow me to point and link you to two pieces in Sunday's NYT. I don't have time to give them the treatment they deserve -- off to CA for the Milken Institute Global Conference where I'll be debating tax reform and the role of budget deficits...

If the economy were a person, here's how I'd describe his travails in recent years.

For far too long, he binged on junk food, with no regard for the impact of such dietary habits on his system. He gorged on sub-prime cuts of real estate and paid for it with...

Suppose you are going to repair your damaged home and your only tool on hand is a roll of duct tape. Your resourceful neighbor points out that you could probably also use a hammer, a drill, and a saw.

If you're the FHFA, you tell him, "I can do a...

I've been waiting for this.

It's the long-awaited, reader-friendly review by Chye-Ching Huang of the economic theory, evidence, and literature on the relationships -- or lack thereof -- between taxes on high-income households and their impact on growth, jobs, investment, and entrepreneurship.

CCH takes you -- pretty gently,...

When the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare programs release their annual reports, one of the first thing folks look for is whether the life of the trust funds that finance these retirement security programs have been extended or reduced.

Well, in Monday's release, the life of the...

This word "fairness" keeps coming up around tax day, particularly in discussions around the Buffett rule.

Many have questioned what I and others mean by "fair." I've got five answers. A fair tax system should be:

1. Progressive: those with more income pay a larger share of it in taxes;
2. One...

Had a rousing debate on inequality last night with Scott Winship from Brookings, moderated by Reihan Salam, both of whom lean conservative, and both of whom brought generally interesting and provocative views to the discussion.

The conservative take on the issue tends to fluctuate from mild denial (Winship, not Salam),...

A number of economists, myself included, have been talking for awhile about the underlying strength of the recovery in terms of "escape velocity." The idea we're trying to convey -- or at least the one I'm contemplating -- is a virtuous cycle of growth begetting jobs, which in turn generates...

I was struck by the juxtaposition of this unfortunate analysis of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget by New York Times columnist James Stewart and Paul Krugman's op-ed today.

The Stewart column begins by assuming that since both the president and the most strident right wingers are going...

Update, 10:34, 4/6/2012:

As mentioned earlier, we may be at the beginning of another downshift in job growth or March's disappointing report could be an anomalous blip down in a better underlying trend. There's some reason to hope for the latter -- I noted the seasonality issues caused by the...