All Donald Marron

A study suggesting Romney's tax plan would raise costs for the middle class got plenty of attention. But its deeper message got lost: Tax reform is hard.

Government payrolls have been shrinking steadily over the 40 years, but the last decade or so has seen an uptick.

Is the government growing or shrinking? The answer isn't so simple.

The economy grew at a disappointing 1.5 percent in the second quarter of 2012, well below the pace needed to reduce unemployment.

A famous experiment, published in 2000, points to something called the Paradox of Choice: more choices lead to lower overall sales. That makes no sense in the narrow rationality often used in economic models, and some evidence suggests it might not actually be true.

Tax policy is ultimately about changing the way people behave. And to do that, you need to understand more than just economics. It's not enough to limit the "tyranny of lawyers." Effective reform requires to cooperation of both lawyers and economists.

Unemployment numbers coming out from the BLS today show payrolls up 80,000, a weak gain not enough to counteract the large numbers of continued unemployed. The employment rate continues to remain low.

Orbitz is experimenting with different criteria as it creates lodging and travel recommendations. The site sometimes looks at operating systems to decide what hotel options to show you. Mac users may be shown pricier options first.

Chinese authorities have artificially lowered the interest rates that regular Chinese citizens earn on their savings and have directed these cheap funds to finance “staggeringly unprofitable” state enterprises that spin out wealth for connected elites.

Held two decades ago, the original Earth Summit gathered world leaders in Rio de Janeiro to try to grapple with climate change, biological diversity, and other environmental challenges. Rio+20 is smaller, but still generating interesting ideas.

Natural gas is now significantly cheaper than gasoline, which could make natural gas vehicles increasingly popular. The biggest potential savers: gas guzzlers like heavy duty trucks.

Many Americans believe that Medicare is financed like Social Security – mostly through payroll taxes – but that's not the case. Payroll taxes only cover a third of Medicare's cost, with other revenues and borrowing accounting for the rest.

In deciding the fate of expired and expiring tax cuts, lawmakers should consider the larger problems facing our tax system. That system is needlessly complex, economically harmful, and widely perceived as unfair. And it fails at its most basic task: raising enough money to pay our bills.

The two heavyweights of economic statistics are released this week, but the with both the job market stats and numbers on economic growth, competing systems of data collection and presentation can sometimes create confusion.

A new Pew study shows that less and less people are willing to respond to public opinion surveys. This increases the cost of reliable surveys and raises the question of whether the minority of respondents are representative of the population as a whole.

Budgeting for Medicare's hospital insurance program is flawed. Here are two ways to fix it (and one way not to).

A new study of the Affordable Care Act finds peculiar Medicare budgeting practices, including counting spending cuts and revenue increases twice. It's causing a stir among budget experts.

Years ago, American Airlines offered unlimited first class air travel, for one-time price of $350,000, to a select group of frequent travelers. It cost the airline millions of dollars in revenue.

Skip the new high heels. You'll get more lasting enjoyment out of going bungee jumping, driving hours to try a new restaurant, or getting lost on vacation.

The tax code is full of credits, exclusions, and preferential rates. Taken together, such tax preferences will total almost $1.3 trillion this year. But even if Congress repealed all of these tax preferences, it would likely generate much less than $1.3 trillion in new resources.