Question A: California's insurance industry regulator issued statements shortly before and shortly after the recent wildfires started (on December 30, 2024, and January 9, 2025):
https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2024/release065-2024.cfm

https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2025/release005-2025.cfm

In the face of growing wildfire risks, price caps on insurance premiums have substantially reduced the viability of private property insurance markets in California.

Question B: A mandatory one-year moratorium on insurance non-renewals and cancellations would lead to a substantial longer-term reduction in the supply of private home insurance products and the number of households that are insured against catastrophic risk in areas of California affected by recent wildfires.

Question A: Doubling existing tariffs on imports from China of critical production components in solar energy manufacturing will provide a substantial boost to employment in the domestic 'cleantech' sector over the next five years.

Question B: Disruptions to global supply chains from new tariffs and trade wars will lead to measurably slower global growth over the next five years.

Given that much of the Department of Education's budget is allocated to postsecondary education (including Pell grants and student loans), closing the department would have no measurable effect on the average K to 12th grade school student.

Link: https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/USDeptOfEducation_2024_Appropriations.pdf

Question A: The Trustees of the U.S. Social Security system currently estimate that the OASI trust fund will be exhausted in 2033, after which substantial benefit cuts are mandated without a change in the law.

The response to the impending exhaustion of the OASI trust fund is likely to rely more on general government borrowing than on increases in social security taxes or reductions in social security benefits.

Question B: As in the most recent major change in Social Security finances (adopted in 1983), the most prudent way to address the impending exhaustion of the OASI trust fund would feature a balanced combination of payroll tax increases and reductions in the benefits received for any given retirement age.

Question A: The institutions of society - such as constitutions, laws, judiciaries, and property rights - substantially shape economic decisions, policies, and outcomes.

Question B: On average and over the long term, democracies deliver substantially better economic growth than other forms of government.

Question C: Countries where democracy and the rule of law are weakened are likely to experience measurable damage to their economic performance.

Question A: The Democrats and Republicans have floated the idea of a US sovereign wealth fund. For background, see here and here.

Establishing a domestic sovereign wealth fund to invest in infrastructure, emerging technologies, and/or strategic sectors would bring substantial benefits to the US economy over a ten-year horizon.

Question B: The typical advanced economy could substantially boost growth by establishing a sovereign wealth fund to invest in infrastructure, emerging technologies, and/or strategic sectors.

Question C: For a typical advanced economy, establishing a sovereign wealth fund would be substantially better for citizens relative to paying down the debt as a use for excess revenue.

Question A: Capping annual rent increases by corporate landlords at 5%, as proposed by President Biden, would make middle-income Americans substantially better off over the next ten years.

Question B: Capping annual rent increases at 5%, as proposed by President Biden, would substantially reduce the amount of available apartments for rent over the next ten years.

Question C: Capping annual rent increases at 5%, as proposed by President Biden, would substantially reduce US income inequality over the next ten years.

Question A: All else equal, making permanent the 2017 tax cuts that were set to expire at the end of 2025 would substantially increase federal deficits and the federal debt over the coming decade.

Question B: All else equal, making permanent the 2017 tax cuts that were set to expire at the end of 2025 would measurably increase the rate of US economic growth over the coming decade.

Question C: In the US, given Congressional budget scoring rules, temporary tax cuts generate sufficient pressure for extension as to be effectively permanent.

Question A: The lower willingness of private firms to go public, combined with the increased number of publicly traded firms being taken private over the last 25 years, is measurably net negative for economic growth.

Question B: All else equal, reducing regulatory barriers (including reporting requirements such as Sarbanes Oxley 404) to public listing would substantially increase the share of publicly traded firms in the economy.

Question C: The lack of transparency about unlisted private firms' financial performance substantially hinders the efficiency of the allocation of capital.

Question A: Antitrust investigations of the dominant firms in artificial intelligence are likely to lead to substantially lower prices of AI products and services for businesses and consumers.

Question B: Antitrust investigations of the dominant firms in artificial intelligence are likely to promote greater competition and innovation in AI.

Question C: Potential harms from artificial intelligence are better assessed by market deployment rather than seeking to slow the pace of AI research and implementation.

Question A: The proposed US tariffs on Chinese EVs would lead to measurably higher employment in the US automotive industry over the next five years.

Question B: The proposed US tariffs on Chinese EVs would lead to measurably higher prices of EVs in the US.

Question C: The proposed US tariffs on Chinese EVs would measurably slow the adoption of green technology by consumers.

Reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug would lead to measurably higher social welfare.

Question A: Tripling existing import taxes on Chinese steel and aluminum products would lead to measurably higher employment in the US steel industry over the next five years.

Question B: Tripling the tariffs would lead to measurably higher steel and aluminum prices for American producers and measurably higher finished-good prices for American consumers.

Question C: The gains for the American economy from tripling the tariffs would measurably outweigh the losses.

Universities that abandon temporary pandemic test-optional policies and return to requiring standardized test scores for admissions will create measurably enhanced opportunities for potentially high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds.

Question A: The FTC is opposed to Kroger’s proposed acquisition of Albertsons. Critics argue that with sufficient divestitures, the deal would be consistent with past FTC policies.

Kroger’s proposed acquisition of Albertsons would lead to substantially higher grocery prices and/or lower product quality/services for customers of the two companies in locations where both are present.

Question B: Kroger’s proposed acquisition of Albertsons would have a substantially negative effect on workers at the two companies in locations where both are present.

Question A: Allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies will lead to a substantial reduction in the costs of prescription drugs for US retirees.

Question B: Allowing imports of medicines from Canada will lead to a substantial reduction in the costs of prescription drugs for US consumers without compromising safety.

Question A: A tolling program for New York City is out for public consultation with proposed charges on vehicles entering the central business district of Manhattan summarized here: https://new.mta.info/document/129191

The proposed tolls on vehicles entering the central business district of Manhattan are likely to lead to a substantial reduction in traffic congestion in the targeted area.

Question B: The proposed tolls on vehicles entering Manhattan are likely to lead to a substantial increase in traffic congestion just outside the central business district, above 60th Street, in the outer boroughs and New Jersey.

Question A: The economic and financial sanctions against Russia are substantially limiting its ability to wage war on Ukraine.

Question B: In the absence of continuing flows of Western economic aid, Ukraine's wartime economy will be substantially compromised.

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.

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

If regulators had not approved mergers in the past decade between major networked airlines, travelers would be better off today.

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.

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).

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Question A:

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Question B:

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.