Mark V. Pauly Photo Courtesy of wharton.upenn.edu

At this AEI event, health economists Thomas W. Grannemann and Mark V. Pauly (University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School) will present their findings from their new book, Medicaid Everyone Can Count On: Public Choices for Equity and Efficiency (AEI Press, February 2010) and explain how a new approach to federal financing and provider payments can improve the flawed incentives that now make the Medicaid program both inequitable and inefficient. John M. Colmers (Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene) and Colleen M. Grogan (University of Chicago) will discuss the authors' proposal. [READ MORE]

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The National Research Initiative (NRI) offers a variety of resources to support both established and emerging scholars.

NRI offers grants to support research, writing, and publication. NRI also offers fellowships. For more information, contact NRI's project manager.

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Is religion a universal instinct hard-wired into the human genome and key to the survival of civilization? Or, is it an archaic concept destined to be replaced by a more scientific view of human nature? Can faith and science coexist? These and other questions will be explored by an expert panel, including Charles Murray (AEI), Walter Reich (George Washington University), and others. [READ MORE]

photo: colorado.gov

At this joint AEI and Centennial Institute event in Denver, Colorado, AEI president Arthur C. Brooks will provide an overview of the new culture war developing in America over free enterprise and will describe the choice Americans face. Joining him will be Colorado Christian University president Bill Armstrong, who will discuss the moral and intellectual foundations for market capitalism and free enterprise. A panel discussion on the values of capitalism will follow. [READ MORE]

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An Options Pricing Method for Calculating the Market Price of Public Sector Pension Liabilities
By Andrew G. Biggs
AEI Working Paper, February 2010

In this working paper, AEI resident scholar Andrew G. Biggs uses an options pricing method to calculate the market value of taxpayer guarantees underlying public sector pensions. The average funding ratio declines from 83 percent under actuarial accounting to 45 percent under this options pricing approach. The typical state has unfunded public pension liabilities three times larger than its explicit government debt. Public pension shortfalls equal an average of 27 percent of state gross domestic product, posing a significant fiscal challenge in coming years. [READ MORE]

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iStockphoto/Larry Cole

AEI's Peter J. Wallison argues that the Obama administration's financial regulation proposals have stalled not because of partisan warfare but because the proposals are not grounded in a valid explanation of what caused the financial crisis and because they reflect the same impulse to control a sector of the economy that underlies its health-care and cap-and-trade proposals. [READ MORE]

R. Glenn Hubbard (AEI and Columbia University), Daniel F. Cogan, and Daniel Kessler (Stanford University's Hoover Institution) recommend scrapping the current health care bills and starting over. The writers suggest three policy changes for reducing the growth of costs, allowing individuals to take greater responsibility for their health care, and improving competition among health insurers and health care providers. [READ MORE]

How Obama Should Shrink His Deficit
By Martin Feldstein
Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2010

WhiteHousePhoto/PeteSouza

Martin Feldstein argues that the administration's projected $18.5 trillion debt in 2020 would be more than double the size of the debt when Mr. Obama took office. The key to shrinking the nearer term deficits is to avoid costly new initiatives, the most expensive of which are the tax cuts and income transfers to low- and middle-income households that would cost some $3.1 trillion over the next decade. [READ MORE]

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AEI Press, April 2010

In Lessons for a Long War, edited by AEI's Thomas Donnelly and Frederick W. Kagan, a group of the foremost U.S. military officials and national security experts analyzes the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan thus far in order to map a way forward--not only for the military, but also for diplomats, elected officials, and the American public. Donnelly, Kagan, and their coauthors offer several core lessons for success in the Long War. [READ MORE]

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The American Enterprise Institute is a nonpartisan research institution whose purpose is to defend and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism.