Free Republic

New research from Harvard Business School suggests that federal spending in states appears to cause local businesses to cut back rather than grow. A conversation with Joshua Coval. Key concepts include: * The average state experiences a 40 to 50 percent increase in earmark spending if its senator becomes chair of one of the top-three congressional committees. In the House, the average is around 20 percent. * For broader measures of spending, such as discretionary state-level federal transfers, the increase from being represented by a powerful senator is around 10 percent. * In the year that follows a congressman's ascendancy,...

An Action Plan for Economic Recovery by Roger Thompson Most books about the nation’s financial crisis tell us what happened. In his new book, HBS senior lecturer Robert Pozen tells us how to fix the system. A financial industry veteran and chairman of MFS Investment Management, a Boston firm that oversees more than $170 billion in pension and mutual funds, Pozen writes with authority and unusual clarity about complex issues in Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System (Wiley). Q: How does the government figure out which financial institutions are too big to fail? There are...