Research

Now that they control both houses of the New York State Legislature, Democrats in Albany are reportedly preparing to raise the state income tax on high-income New Yorkers to help plug a $15 billion budget gap. Read More

NYU prof Thomas Philippon and U-VA Prof Ariell Reshef have written a tracing the trajectory of wages in the American financial sector over the last century. Not surprisingly, financial-industry wages broke away from the rest of the economy starting i Read More

The best fiscal news for New York in ages is that three and a half years ago, the city lost its bid to host the 2012 Olympics. This week, the UK, which won the bid, , because the private partners couldn't find financing for the "Olympic Village" a Read More

For New York, it's not paying (anymore) to be home to the smartest guys in the room. Since its credit-bubble peak, the securities industry has cut 3.1 percent of its jobs nationwide, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Assoc Read More

Today's New York Times "a growing sense" in Albany that the Democrats who now control state government will seek to raise state income taxes on "the wealthiest New Yorkers" to help close a $15 billion budget gap.  The Times articl Read More

Congratulations to President Obama! One of the new president's first tasks will be figuring out how to get Congress to fix the stimulus bill that the House proposed last week. In its current form, the bill won't do much for road and rail infras Read More

New York's huge budget deficit—$15.4 billion in the next 15 months—will force difficult choices in terms of government services and tax policies for years to come. To engage intelligently in that debate, New Yorkers need far more information than we now receive from Albany. Read More

Australia's Macquarie, along with Spain's Cintra, was the global pioneer of large-scale private-public partnerships (PPPs) in transportation infrastructure. American states and Read More

In his first annual address to legislators last week, Gov. David A. Paterson said, "The state of our state is perilous." Yet his energy platform promises to visit more peril upon the Empire State. Read More

Data point #1. Metropolitan Transportation Authority executive director Elliot Sander and the authority's board members attracted more than 600 people to their marathon six-and-a-half-hour fare-hike and service-cut hearing in Manh Read More

In a  interview in yesterday's Journal, David Swensen, the longtime chief investment officer for Yale's endowment, had an implicit warning for public pension funds and other supposedly "sophisticated" investors (ha ha) whose overseers thi Read More

Congressman Anthony Weiner, a probable mayoral candidate, showed yesterday that if he does run, he's going to campaign against Mayor Bloomberg's fiscal record over the past eight years -- and boy, does Weiner have a lot of material. Most startlin Read More