public-finance

Shares in the fund manager rise as company says its will boost quarterly buybacks to $550 million

The work summarized here was presented as the Arnold Zellner Memorial Keynote Address at the 46th International Symposium on Forecasting in Montreal, June 2026. Generative AI was used as an editing tool and helped with references and literature review. I thank Martín (Tincho) Almuzara for ongoing discussions on the topics in this paper. The views…

Earnings inequality among college graduates has grown, and returns to a bachelor’s degree (BA) vary substantially across colleges. We experimentally evaluate a program that shifted high-achieving, low-income students into higher-quality colleges. Students randomly offered a guarantee of four years of tuition and fees at the University of Michigan were 21 percentage points more likely to…

Thursday, February 12, 2026 GAO Stands Out in its Ability to Answer the Tough Questions. Here’s How We Do it. Before Congress makes tough policy decisions, it often comes to GAO for information. This episode looks at some of the toughest questions Congress has asked GAO to answer, and how we did it. We’ll learn…

I am extremely grateful to David S. Lee for his tremendous guidance and support on this project. I thank Alexandre Mas, Henry Farber, Felix Koenig, and the participants at the Industrial Relations Section labor seminar for their many helpful comments and suggestions. I also benefited from feedback by Stephen Trejo, Rob Metcalfe, and the audiences…

Tuesday, February 24, 2026 Gene L. Dodaro, the 8th Comptroller General of the United States and Head of GAO For nearly two decades, the U.S. Government Accountability Office was led by Gene L. Dodaro, an auditor who came up-through the ranks of the agency and was sworn in as 8th Comptroller General of the United…

The original promise of development cooperation was to help countries overcome poverty, build productive economies, and reduce their dependence on external resources. That has not happened, and ongoing reviews of development cooperation, which focus on donor countries’ needs and priorities, are unlikely to change this. NAIROBI—In an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, governments across the developed…

Next week, Andy Burnham, the left-leaning former mayor of Manchester, will replace Keir Starmer as the United Kingdom’s prime minister. He will do so not only at a time when the UK’s politics is coming to resemble that of Italy as underlined by the fact that he will be the sixth UK prime minister in…

Netflix is still a Wall Street favorite — and a target for government regulators

Thursday, March 12, 2026 Efforts to Stop the Sale of Thousands of Unauthorized E-Cigarette Products New tobacco product must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before being sold in the United States. Despite this requirement, there are thousands of unapproved e-cigarette products and devices being sold. We learn about this issue…