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Opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel January 20, 2017 – “Section 105(a) of title 3, U.S. Code, which authorizes the President to appoint employees in the White House Office “without regard to any other provision of law regulating the employment or compensation of persons in the Government service,” exempts positions in the White House …
“How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next,” by William Davies, The Guardian: “The ability of statistics to accurately represent the world is declining. In its wake, a new age of big data controlled by private companies is taking over – and putting democracy in peril…In theory, statistics should …
Follow-up to to previous posting – Brookings Paper – The Emoluments Clause: Its Text, Meaning, and Application to Donald J. Trump – this news release dated 1/2//2017: “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is bringing a federal lawsuit to stop President Trump from violating the Constitution by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments. …
Letter dated January 19, 2017 from the ACLU to the FOIA Officer, Office of Government Ethics: “The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation (together, the “ACLU”) submit this Freedom of lnformation Act (“FOIA”) request (the “Request”) for records pertaining to financial and other ethical conflicts of interest in connection with …
GAO: Summary of Performance and Financial Information Fiscal Year 2016 – Budget, Performance, and Financial Snapshot 2016. “In fiscal year 2016, we documented $63.4 billion in financial benefits for the government—a return of about $112 for every dollar invested in us. Key examples of our work that contributed to these benefits included (1) reducing improper …
Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility. Raj Chetty, Stanford University and NBER; John N. Friedman, Brown University and NBER; Emmanuel Saez, UC-Berkeley and NBER; Nicholas Turner, US Treasury; Danny Yagan, UC-Berkeley and NBER. January 2017. “We characterize rates of intergenerational income mobility at each college in the United States using administrative …
Via Treasury – By: Adam Looney 1/19/2017 – “In 2015, the Department of Education launched the College Scorecard, a vast database of student outcomes at specific colleges and universities developed from a variety of administrative data sources. The Scorecard provides the most comprehensive and accurate information available on the post-enrollment outcomes of students, like whether …
Bird, Andrew and Karolyi, Stephen A. and Ruchti, Thomas G., Regulating Information (October 18, 2016). Available for download at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2901650 “The SEC regulates and standardizes information production in financial markets through financial reporting standards. With a novel dataset exploiting institutional features of the standard setting process. On average, standards increase aggregate market value by …
“As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, the public has starkly different expectations about which groups in society will gain influence – and those that will lose influence – under his administration. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) say wealthy people will gain influence in Washington when Trump takes office. Just 8% say they will …
Overall Economic Activity – “Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicated that the economy continued to expand at a modest pace across most regions from late November through the end of the year. Manufacturers in most Districts reported increased sales with several citing a turnaround versus earlier in 2016. Growth in the energy industry …
The Nation’s Fiscal Health: Action is Needed to Address the Federal Government’s Fiscal Future, GAO-17-237SP: Published: Jan 17, 2017. Publicly Released: Jan 17, 2017: “The federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path. Federal spending continues to outpace revenue—by $587 billion in 2016—and, absent policy changes, the structural gap between revenues and spending puts the …
“In preparing the economic forecast underlying its forthcoming report on the budget and economic outlook, CBO updated its projections of labor force participation. In this blog post, we explain those updates and compare them with the agency’s previous projections and with those of the Social Security Trustees. The full economic forecast will be described in …
