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  The Policy Barriers to Marijuana Banking

  Peter Conti-Brown

  Although cannabis-related businesses have thrived in the localities that have legalized marijuana as a consumer product, the industry has suffered from crippling uncertainty, in the form of limited access to the banking system. The cannabis industry thus has been forced to operate in a cash-intensive “gray market,” which is a problem. An entire industry conducting all of its business in cash cannot be fairly taxed or regulated and, historically, has been associated with lawlessness—everything from security concerns, transportation and currency problems, money laundering, and cash hoarding. This brief reviews and analyzes the issues that surround marijuana banking and offers several policy options for addressing the tension between federal enforcement and state sovereignty as it related to marijuana banking.

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  Cryptocurrency Competition and the U.S. Monetary System

  Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde

  Advocates of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin believe that having currency competition will help achieve the economic objective of price stability. This Issue Brief summarizes research that explores whether competition among privately issued fiat currencies can actually produce price stability. The research finds that in most cases, a system of private monies does not deliver price stability. And even when it does, it always is subject to self-fulfilling inflationary episodes, and it supplies a suboptimal amount of money. Although there is no economic reason to curb the use of cryptocurrencies at the moment, it is important to review key regulatory issues that policymakers need to consider now, before the use of cryptocurrencies becomes even more widespread.

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  The Policy Trajectories of Autonomous Vehicles

  John Paul MacDuffie

  Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology promises to dramatically reduce deaths and economic losses from crashes caused by human error, increase mobility for those with disabilities, and revolutionize the auto industry. Yet legislation to facilitate oversight of the development and deployment of AVs is stalling in Congress. Professor John Paul MacDuffie offers a primer on AV technology policy, and discusses strategies for addressing safety and other public concerns while still facilitating AV innovation in the private sector.

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  The Other Side of a Merger: Labor Market Power, Wage Suppression, and Finding Recourse in Antitrust Law

  Ioana Marinescu

  Labor market concentration can worsen after a merger takes place, and this heightened concentration can negatively affect wages. The focus of antitrust analysis, however, has been on the prices of consumer products, not the wages of laborers. New research indicates that, on average, labor markets are highly concentrated, and that higher concentration is associated with significantly lower posted wages for new jobs. This brief uses existing economic tools to develop a model for evaluating labor market concentration and its effects, to determine if a merger will run the risk of anticompetitively suppressing wages, employment, and output. Regulators can use this model to apply antitrust principles to labor markets, as a basis for antitrust enforcement.

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  Bright Lines: How Regulatory Asset Thresholds Change the Banking Industry

  Allison Nicoletti, Michael Iselin, and Hailey Ballew

  One of the key features of the Dodd-Frank Act is that it imposes specific and costly regulatory requirements on banks that cross the threshold of having more than $10 billion in total assets. Anecdotal accounts have suggested that this threshold has led to increased consolidation in the banking industry. This brief provides new statistical evidence of that phenomenon. Banks that approach the $10 billion threshold are significantly more likely to engage in an acquisition, pay more for that acquisition, and acquire bigger target banks than similar banking institutions did prior to Dodd-Frank. To the extent that policymakers are concerned with further consolidation in the banking industry, these findings should be of interest as they continue to evaluate current regulations and develop new ones, which might include the use of bright line asset thresholds.

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  Regulating Robo Advisors: Old Policy Goals, New Challenges

  Tom Baker and Benedict Dellaert

  Financial “robo advice”—an automated service that ranks or matches consumers to financial products—has gained significant attention in the investment industry and on the Hill, but there has not yet been a consensus on how to regulate these new services. Robo advisors often are on par with and can exceed the standards of human advices, but they don’t fit into the category of fiduciary, and therefore won’t be held to the same regulatory standard that humans advisors are. Nonetheless, they are subject to systemic risks and the potential for abuses that can hurt consumers. Professors Tom Baker and Benedict Dellaert offer a regulatory trajectory to follow as the technology of robo advisors continues to develop and expand.

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  The Presidency, Congressional Republicans, and the Future of Financial Reform

  Peter Conti-Brown

  This brief examines the tension between the Republican ideological commitment to curbing executive power and the opportunity Republicans now have for Trump to dominate the direction of financial regulatory reform. The discussion will focus on three key policy outcomes that Republicans have sought during the last six years: reforming the Federal Reserve, overhauling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and changing the way in which the nation’s largest financial institutions are designated and regulated.

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  The Economic Realities of Replacing the Affordable Care Act

  Hanming Fang

  Using simulations based on a new economic model, this brief empirically examines the pivotal mechanisms of the Affordable Care Act, such as the individual mandate, employer mandate, and premium subsidies, to inform the debate over repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. The research suggests that the ACA, if left intact, in the long run significantly reduces the uninsured rate. The simulations also suggest that the employer mandate is not a crucial pillar for the success of the ACA. The analysis indicates it is the premium subsidy, rather than the employer mandate or the individual mandate, that is crucial for the success of the ACA, in terms of expanded coverage. The brief concludes with a look at the key elements of the main legislative proposals Congressional Republicans have offered to replace the ACA, including the American Health Care Act.

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  Before International Tax Reform, We Need to Understand Why Firms Invert

  Michael Knoll

  A wave of corporate inversions by U.S. firms over the past two decades has generated substantial debate in academic, business, and policy circles. The core of the debate hinges on a couple of key economic questions: Do U.S. tax laws disadvantage U.S.-domiciled companies relative to their foreign competitors? And, if so, do inversions improve the competitiveness of U.S. multinational firms both abroad and at home? This brief, summarizes both old and new research that views these questions through the lens of corporations’ global effective tax rates (ETRs), and finds that the stronger case seems to be that U.S.-domiciled corporations are often tax-disadvantaged and that they can improve their competitive position by inverting. Additional evidence also suggests that U.S. MNCs can increase their after-tax cash flow by inverting. Inversions indicate that something is fundamentally wrong with the tax system. The brief concludes by discussing two feasible paths forward for reform.

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  Why Taxing Carbon May Not Make the World More Green

  Serguei Netessine and Sam Aflaki

  Although taxing carbon is an idea that enjoys significant support among policymakers and business leaders, new research indicates that carbon taxation can actually cause energy investments to gravitate away from the cleanest energy technologies. This counterintuitive finding reflects two key characteristics of energy markets: the worldwide increase in renewable energy sources whose output is intermittent and variable; and greater market liberalization, which has made the spot driving of electricity more volatile. The intermittency of renewable energy sources requires backup generation, typically from generators using fossil fuels. The dynamics of market liberalization amplify this negative effect of intermittency. Policymakers need to take steps to reduce intermittency by supporting storage technologies or setting monetary incentives to increase renewable generation capacity investment.

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  An Updated Look at Student Loan Debt Repayment and Default

  Laura W. Perna, James Kvaal, and Roman Ruiz

  Over 41 million Americans now owe more than $1.2 trillion in outstanding federal student loan debt. Policymakers are considering a number of amendments related to federal student aid programs in the context of the Higher Education Act reauthorization. In addition to providing a snapshot of key data related to student loan debt that all policymakers should consider, this brief discusses recommendations for facilitating repayment and curbing defaults on student loans, including: protecting students from low-performing institutions; encouraging use of forbearance and deferment mechanisms; and strengthening income-driven repayment options.

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  Addressing Personal-Income-Tax Manipulation with Tools from Psychology

  Alex Rees-jones

  In order to better understand the tax manipulation decision-making process—both legal uses of tax deductions and illegal tax evasion—this brief looks at the impact of gain/loss framing. Analysis of tax data confirms that tax decisions are influenced by “loss aversion.” For instance, taxpayers are more likely to pursue tax reduction activities when they make a loss smaller, as compared to when they make a gain larger. The brief looks at tools that policymakers have at their disposal for both deterring tax evasion and making exiting tax incentives maximally effective. The brief discusses instances when such gain/loss framing interventions might be deployed, and provides estimates around the size of the revenue responses they may generate. The author estimates that if tax filers who face losses experienced the lower motivation to manipulate shown by those facing gains, annual tax revenue would increase by $1.4 billion. Even attempts at marginal interventions, though smaller in predicted effects, might be financially worthwhile.

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  The Issue at the Heart of America’s Great Unbanking

  Lisa Servon

  Consumer protection regulation targets services like payday lenders under the presumption that these services can be predatory and associated with high costs. Yet an increasing number of Americans are utilizing such alternative financial services and joining the ranks of the “unbanked” and “underbanked.” Altering this status quo and promoting greater middle-class stability will require that policymakers foster innovation in the development of high-quality, transparent, and consumer-oriented financial services within the mainstream banking system.

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  Lessons for Policymakers and Regulators on the (Predictable) Future of the Digital Economy

  Kevin Werbach

  The next stage in the evolution of the digital economy involves the creation of what can be called the “Internet of the World”—an expanding web of transactions, anticipated today by on-demand platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, that eventually will occur across trillions of networked devices and penetrate every sphere of human activity. This brief looks at the many legal questions raised by these novel services, in particular, at the regulatory classification of on-demand services, as well as the application of antitrust provisions, the imposition of taxes and fees, and the assignment of liability to these new platforms.

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  A Financial Assessment of Municipal Fiber in the U.S.

  Christopher S. Yoo and Timothy Pfenninger

  In the interest of bringing high-speed broadband access to communities underserved by current Internet service providers, many U.S. cities have initiated municipal broadband projects. Such efforts have received favorable attention from those eager to help close the digital divide. This brief presents a first look at a new, comprehensive empirical analysis of 20 U.S. municipal fiber builds for which financial data is available. The findings show that half of the projects in this study are cash-flow negative, and based on their performance from 2010-2014, 90 percent are unable to generate sufficient cash to recover their project costs within the 30-40 year life expectancy of a municipal fiber build. City leaders considering such projects, as well as state and federal officials interested in supporting them, need to understand the documented costs and risks before encouraging new municipal fiber programs to form.

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  The Economic Costs and Benefits of Implementing the Clean Power Plan

  Jose Miguel Abito, Christopher R. Knittel, Konstantinos Metaxoglou, and Andre Trindade

  This brief looks at the costs of implementing the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Specifically, it examines whether implementing the CPP on a state-by-state basis—that is, with each state meeting its own individual target for emissions reduction by 2030, rather than establishing regional targets—is economically efficient. The economic analysis uses data from electricity-generating firms participating in the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) Interconnection to examine the relative economic efficiency of regional versus state-by-state implementation of the CPP. The research indicates that state-by-state implementation would yield the lowest electricity prices in 2030.

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  Excessive State Debt: A New Approach to a Growing Problem

  Vincent Buccola

  Economists and political observers agree state governments defaulting on their debt obligations is a growing concern. How best to aid struggling states, however, is a point of contention. This Issue Brief makes a case against ex post restructuring measures, specifically bankruptcy modeled on Chapter 9 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, and in favor of ex ante debt mitigation action. In particular, it introduces tax-credit borrowing (TCB) as a potential commitment device for states that would allow for the creation of super-priority, risk-free debt. TCB ensures that states internalize the risk of default and avoids the moral hazard problem of states assuming that the federal government will, in a fiscal crisis, use taxpayer money to offer a bailout. It also incentivizes better monitoring of the borrowing decisions made by state officials, as the fiscal ramifications of excessive debt would move from state creditors to taxpayers and voters. Small changes to federal tax policy and likely a subsidy (relative to traditional debt) would be necessary to encourage tax-credit borrowing, but this new approach can solve the sticky problem of debt prioritization that continues to mystify states and municipalities.

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  Walls or Welcome Mats? Immigration and the Labor Market

  Howard F. Chang

  While the public debate on immigration reform has been divisive, the tools of economics provide clear lessons for a way forward. The single most important lesson that economics holds for immigration policymakers is that immigration restrictions are costly, because they interfere with the free movement of labor. Most economists believe that the gains to global GDP from greater labor mobility are very large. Beyond the estimated gains to the world economy, the consensus among economists is that, as a whole, U.S. natives gain from immigration in the labor market. While immigration may have an adverse effect on some native wages and employment—particularly for the least skilled workers—the empirical evidence indicates these effects, if existent, are small.

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  Walls or Welcome Mats? Immigration and the Public Treasury

  Howard F. Chang

  Advocates of restrictive immigration policies often claim that immigrants impose a net burden on the public treasury. The most comprehensive and authoritative study of the fiscal effects of immigration in the U.S. finds, however, that there is a net positive effect. If policymakers are concerned that less skilled immigrants may pose some risk of a fiscal burden, then restricting immigrant access to means-tested public benefits would be a better response than denying them admission. A path to citizenship for these immigrants need not entail a fiscal burden as long as their access to these public benefits and citizenship is sufficiently delayed.

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  The FDA and the Regulation of Medical Device Innovation: A Problem of Information, Risk, and Access

  Matthew Grennan and Robert J Town

  Are FDA premarket trials on new drugs and medical devices excessive and do they inhibit consumer access to new and much-needed technologies? Or may they actually be insufficient and expose consumers to too much risk? To address this question, the new research described here compares the regulatory approaches of the U.S. and the European Union for second and third generation coronary stents. The research supports the FDA’s argument that reductions in their standards for device approval would reduce consumer welfare. Nevertheless, the research also suggests that in some circumstances, FDA reform proposals advocating for more relaxed premarket requirements but enhanced post-market surveillance would yield considerable welfare gains.

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  Insurance against Extreme Events: Pairing Short-Term Incentives with Long-Term Strategies

  Howard Kunreuther

  Consumers tend to purchase too little insurance or purchase it too late. Consequently, taxpayers wind up bearing substantial burdens for paying reconstruction costs from extreme events. The 2005 and 2012 hurricane seasons alone cost taxpayers nearly $150 billion. There is much that can be done to better facilitate the role that insurance can play in addressing losses from extreme events, both natural and man-made.

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  As American as Apple Inc.: Corporate Ownership and the Fight for Tax Reform

  Penn Wharton PPI

  Both supporters and critics of the current tax advantages enjoyed by U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) bolster their arguments with appeals to patriotism: the MNCs and their political supporters argue that allowing inversions or other similar arrangements and instituting another tax holiday for “repatriating” overseas earnings are good for the American economy as a whole; opponents condemn these tax advantages as unpatriotic in depriving the U.S. of enormous sums of needed revenue. But where, precisely, is the “home” to which profits held offshore return? For many purposes, home is where the shareholders are. Determining ownership of U.S. MNCs such as Apple and GE, however, is extremely hard to do. Appeals for policies that promote U.S. competitiveness by presuming U.S. ownership of U.S. incorporated parent companies rest, in the end, on very little.

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  After Debt: A Path Forward for Puerto Rico

  David A. Skeel

  This Issue Brief summarizes events surrounding the current debt crisis in Puerto Rico and presents a two-step plan for restructuring Puerto Rico’s debt and encouraging more effective governance. This plan draws extensively on the previous experiences of debt crises in municipalities on the U.S. mainland. Step one entails the creation of a financial control board (FCB) for Puerto Rico, monitored by the U.S. federal government but involving significant Puerto Rican representation. Step two would be for Congress either to craft a restructuring framework applicable to all of America’s territories, or to extend the existing bankruptcy laws in Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code (with modifications) to Puerto Rico and its municipalities.

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  A New Coalescence in the Housing Finance Reform Debate?

  Susan M. Wachter and Patricia A. McCoy

  In the wake of the stalled Johnson-Crapo bill, the overarching goal of housing finance reform continues to be the efficient provision of long-term fixed-rate mortgages to credit-worthy borrowers in all markets throughout the business cycle.This Issue Brief analyzes three newly-proposed plans for reforming the U.S. housing finance system: (1) a proposal from Jim Parrot et al. to merge Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a new government corporation; (2) Andrew Davidson’s proposal for mutual ownership of the GSEs by mortgage originators; and (3) an opposing plan from Mark Calabria, arguing against securitization altogether and for a return to the regime of originate-and-hold.

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  SSDI Reform: Promoting Return to Work without Compromising Economic Security

  Jagadeesh Gokhale

  With the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) trust fund on the verge of depletion, Congress must enact structural reforms to the SSDI program that address and counter the rapid growth in SSDI enrollments in recent years. This brief details a work incentive program for SSDI beneficiaries, called the Generalized Benefit Offset (GBO), which would help get SSDI recipients back into the labor force, enhancing their own economic welfare while increasing economic output on a societal level.