The year 1971 was important for economic development in Indiana. For in that year, the actual number of jobs created in firms attracted directly by government policies declined.

To me, it was a thunderclap. Years ago, when I was in Congress, we were in the midst of a tense, contentious debate. Members had gotten irritated, levying charges back and forth, and tempers were rising. It was starting to look like we might just go off the rails. Then one member stood up, a…

Over the dozen or so years I’ve penned this column, I’ve allocated considerable space to education issues. That is natural for an economics and business column. Nothing better predicts the income of a region as does the average educational attainment of its residents. And nothing better pred…

I first discovered the reality of symbols as “emotional shorthand” when I raised a Nazi flag over my family home in Hope in 1954. I was 9 years old and was leading American forces against Germany at the time.

There seems to be a great deal of recent romanticizing the 1950s and 1960s. This is particularly the case with a vague vision of a middle class and middle-class neighborhoods.

"Lee HamiltonRepresentative democracy is based on a simple premise. It’s that ordinary citizens can make satisfactory judgments on complex public policy and political issues — or at least grasp them well enough to decide who should be dealing with them.

Influential and strategically located, Iran has long presented a challenge for U.S. foreign policy. We have struggled for decades to get this important bilateral relationship right, and we aren’t there yet.

I recently attended my first college reunion. It was a charming event, attended by well over half of the living graduates of my class at a small military college in Virginia. The weekend was even more special because my oldest son is undergoing the rigors of freshman year at the same school.…

Amid all the other kerfuffle last week, Congress held hearings on growing evidence of monopsony power in labor markets. For those lucky few who didn’t take a labor economics course, monopsony is simply the ability of a few large local employers to control local labor markets. The worry is th…

One of the not-so-small gifts of living in a representative democracy is that you can’t accomplish things alone. Whether you’re trying to get a stop sign put up on a dangerous corner or to change US policy on greenhouse gas emissions, you have to reach out to others. And learning how to pers…

The economic recovery that began in the summer of 2009 is now over for Indiana.

I am a person who believes the election of President Donald J. Trump is a tragic blow to American moral leadership around the world, and a serious threat to the future of our representative democracy.

“I ask how and why this decision was reached,” Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said in the Senate recently. He was calling for an investigation into President Trump’s decision to pull US forces out of Syria. “Was there no chance for diplomacy? Are we so weak and so inept diplomatically that Turkey for…

The debate on trade and automation was on prime display during the recent Democratic party presidential debate this week. There is a lot packed into this discussion, from trade policy and taxation of capital to the role of place-based economic development efforts and the design of pre-K, hig…

This weekend has me heading to a conference of economic research centers. As always, the big topic is new research, though given the current economic slowdown, there will be many a forecast. In a time when so much research is available on the internet, I’m surprised how useful it is to meet …

I was talking with a friend the other day about immigration. It’s one of the most divisive issues of our time, and we, too, found ourselves divided. “Our country is full,” he quoted President Trump, who said this back in April. Let’s improve the country with the people we already have, my fr…

Many of our national trials and tribulations — along with our Grand-Canyon-size political divide — could be resolved, if someone could just find “the average American.”

The U.S. House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is unlikely to sway voters’ positions, according to Indiana University professor of political science Marjorie Hershey.

“Who is it?” asked one of my college professors in response to a knock on his office door.

NEW YORK — Large majorities of black and Latino Americans think Donald Trump's actions as president have made things worse for people like them, and about two-thirds of Americans overall disapprove of how he's handling race relations, according to a new poll conducted by The Associated Press…

You’re probably chuckling already. Seriously? “The joy of politics”?

Economic growth, not recession, is the norm. For every one quarter the U.S. has spent in recession since the end of World War II, we’ve spent eight quarters growing. Of the 75 quarters in this century, only 10 have been recessionary. I’m counting our current quarter as growth, which may prov…

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill has thrown a wrench into what appears to have been an effort by two other state agencies to clear away a little red tape for transgender individuals seeking to obtain a driver's license. He declined to sign off on an administrative rule change that would …

Spending on K-12 education is by far the largest piece of Indiana government. Appropriations for schools make up half of the state’s general fund budget. School budgets are 55% of all local government budgets. Total local school appropriations are $11 billion in 2019. About $7 billion of thi…

Natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, have economic costs. They also reveal much about market economies, government planning and response.

A wave of protests is roiling Moscow. Millions of people, young and old, have been crowding the streets in Hong Kong. In Britain, members of the Conservative Party took to open revolt over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to sideline Parliament on Brexit. If democracy is dysfunctional and…

The last Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line in Puebla, Mexico, in July. The price for the basic 2019 model was $23,940. In 1960, the car would have cost $1,560 — or $12,651, based on the current value of the U.S. dollar.

Kurt Hein was an infantryman in the army of Germany’s Third Reich.

July marked the 121st month of the economic expansion that began after the Great Recession. That makes it the longest expansion in American history, surpassing the 10-year expansion of 1991-2001.

Labor Day weekend is always a popular time to talk about work and worker issues. I wish to a put a twist on it and talk about some popular misconceptions about work and capital and the meaning of both. If you’ve been fed a steady diet of anti-capitalist nonsense, or are a diehard capitalist,…

Sometimes you wonder if the world is doomed to descend into autocracy. Certainly, that’s what the coverage of the past few years suggests. We read about the nations that are already there, like China and Russia, of course, and Saudi Arabia and Iran. Or about countries like Hungary, Turkey, a…

Gov. Eric Holcomb always looks so comfortably stern, like an accountant at tax time waiting for his client’s big gulp of ulcer medicine to kick in.

It is almost September and classes have begun or are about to start. We detect some reluctance in students, but not in adds for school supplies or with summer-weary parents. Parents and retailers are more than ready. For teachers as well, there is inevitably an autumn bounce in starting anew…