Together with leaders in the state legislature, Montana governor Greg Gianforte successfully passed an important package of bills that will make it easier to build more and less-expensive housing. Journalist Kriston Capps coined the phrase “Montana Miracle” to capture just how much the legislature did to roll back local barriers to housing construction in a single year. Before the legislative session began, Gianforte issued an executive order to establish the Governor’s Housing Task For...| Mercatus Center
Arlington, VA—The Mercatus Center’s Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange is pleased to announce its fourt| Mercatus Center
This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres.| Mercatus Center
Nathan Tankus is the director of research at the Modern Money Network, and a research fellow at the Global Institut| Mercatus Center
Striving to realize a world where markets operate at their full potential to increase abundance, civility, and well-being| Mercatus Center
With no relief from high home prices and rents, more and more state legislators are interested in pursuing housing reform. As a result, state legislatures set new records for the number and strength of new laws intended to unlock homebuilding.| Mercatus Center
The Texas legislature is currently considering reforms to its valid petition law. Valid petitions are an obscure zoning procedure that have been used to try to obstruct a Dallas hospital expansion, student housing in Bryan, and Habitat for Humanity houses in Austin. The law has come under scrutiny as a potential contributor to the scarcity of housing—and thus its high cost. Legislators ought to either reform the valid petition process to be less onerous and more democratic or do away with i...| Mercatus Center
Launched in 2018, Emergent Ventures is a low-overhead fellowship and grant program that supports entrepreneurs and brilliant minds with highly scalable, "zero to one" ideas for meaningfully improving society. Mercatus Center faculty director Tyler Cowen administers the program. Grants are awarded to thinkers and doers around the world, with dedicated support available for projects with a focus on India, Africa and the Caribbean, or Ukraine. Applicants with a specific geographic focus should s...| Mercatus Center
Medicaid’s complex federal-state financing structure has long created perverse incentives that discourage efficient care. Key to the problem is the federal government’s uncapped reimbursement of state Medicaid expenditures, which encourages states to artificially inflate their Medicaid spending. Such schemes have significantly increased over the past several years and they likely add tens of billions in generally low-value Medicaid spending each year.| Mercatus Center