Governing Without Money: Long Term Trends in State Finances

Norton Francis is a Senior Research Associate with the Urban Institute State and Local Finance Initiative and is an expert in state and local tax policy. He was the Director of Revenue Estimation for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer in the District of Columbia from 2009 to 2012 and the Chief Economist for the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee from 2005 to 2009. He has written about and presented on revenue estimation and tax policy.

A disconnect exists between the long term trends of revenue and expenditures that is causing fiscal crises for states. Revenue growth for both sales and income taxes, the two major state sources of revenue, has been decelerating for over a decade. Expenditures, particularly for health care and pensions, have been accelerating. Mr. Francis will discuss how these trends, which existed before the recession, may be exacerbated by responses from state lawmakers to the recession’s devastating effect on state finances.

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Joseph Rosenberg

“Distributional Analysis of Tax Policy:  Theory and Practice”

UPDATE: the presentation can be downloaded here.

Joseph Rosenberg is a Senior Research Associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. His research focuses primarily on issues of federal taxation, including business and corporate taxation, broad-based consumption taxes, tax expenditures, and tax incentives for charitable giving. He also develops and maintains the TPC’s microsimulation model of the federal tax system, which is regularly used to produce analyses of the revenue and distributional impacts of federal tax policy that are broadly cited by policymakers and the press. Prior to joining the Tax Policy Center, he was a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has also worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, DC.

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Unbundling Democracy: Tilly Trumps Schumpeter

Roger R. Betancourt is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. He received a B.A. in Economics from Georgetown University (Washington DC) and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He has broad interests within economics. While originally trained as an applied econometrician, his research interests currently lie in the area of applied microeconomics and economic development. His main consultancies include international organizations as well as business firms.

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How Do Federal Changes to SNAP and TANF Affect the District?

Kate Coventry is a Policy Analyst at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, focusing on a range of issues affecting low-income residents of DC, particularly TANF, Interim Disability Assistance (IDA), and homelessness. Her professional background is rooted in working with community-based organizations in the Washington area. She received a BA in sociology from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and a Master of Public Policy degree from George Washington University.

Kate will discuss how recent federal changes to the SNAP program (commonly known as food stamps) have affected DC residents, in addition to legislative proposals currently being considered by Congress. She will also examine how federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) policies intersect with the District’s recent TANF redesign effort.

The lunch is 12:00 noon to 1:30pm at Chinatown Garden, 618 H St NW Washington, DC. Metro stop: Gallery Place. The cost is $16 for members and affiliates, and $25 for non-members. This luncheon is a joint event with the National Economists Club.

To register for the lunch, please go to the National Economists Club.

Press: Please email info@national-economists.org with your attendance status and the date of attendance. It will be assumed that lunch is NOT requested. If lunch is requested, please contact in advance, prior to the date of the event, for registration and payment instructions at the member rate.

We hope to see you at lunch!

Net Worth Impacts of the Great Recession

Richard Fry and Paul Taylor examined the impact of the Great Recession on household net worth and discovered a recovery period characterized by uneven impacts. Using the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation and net worth data from the Federal Reserve, the research suggests that the net worth for the wealthiest Americans has grown substantially, while the rest of the country experienced notable declines in the 2009-2011 period. Dr. Fry will address the impact of the recession on household wealth. The basis for this talk is a report he authored in April of this year: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/04/23/a-rise-in-wealth-for-the-wealthydeclines-for-the-lower-93/

Richard Fry is a senior economist at the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project. He is an expert on school and college enrollment in the United States, as well as the returns to education in the labor market, marriage market, and its connection to household economic well-being such as net worth. Fry’s analyses are largely empirical, as he has extensive expertise analyzing U.S. Census Bureau and other federal data collections. Before joining the Pew Research Center in 2002, he was a senior economist at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). Fry received his doctorate in economics from The University of Michigan. Fry regularly documents U.S. educational and enrollment milestones, analyzes the role of student debt in financing college education, and examines the changing relationship between education and marriage and cohabitation. He has also contributed to the Pew Research Center’s analyses of the economic well-being of the nation’s young adults.

The lunch is 12:00 noon to 1:30pm at Chinatown Garden, 618 H St NW Washington, DC. Metro stop: Gallery Place. The cost is $16 for members and affiliates, and $25 for non-members. This luncheon is a joint event with the National Economists Club.

To register for the lunch, please go to the National Economists Club.

Press: Please email info@national-economists.org with your attendance status and the date of attendance. It will be assumed that lunch is NOT requested. If lunch is requested, please contact in advance, prior to the date of the event, for registration and payment instructions at the member rate.

We hope to see you at lunch!