The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee works to identify and analyze developing trends and ongoing events that promise to affect the efficiency and safe operation of sectors of the financial services industry; explore the spectrum of short- and long-term implications of emerging problems and policy changes; help develop private, regulatory and legislative responses to such problems that promote efficiency and safety and further the public interest; and to assess and respond to proposed and actual public policy initiatives with respect to the impact on the public interest.

For-profits may have incentives to cut corners in pursuit of profits, but this trait is the flip side of valuable characteristics: the inclination to grow rapidly, readily tap capital and talent, maximize cost effectiveness, and accommodate customer needs. Alongside nonprofit and public providers, for-profits have a crucial role to play in meeting America’s 21st century educational challenges.

While many interesting and valuable points come up in Goodman and Saving's post, several assertions raise some secondary questions about the true nature of the statistical comparisons.

The dramatic rise in college tuition costs is due to the ways in which they organize and allocate resources--not lavish university facilities and extra student services. The real levers for increasing efficiency include rethinking student-faculty ratios, eliminating under-enrolled programs, and trimming unnecessary administrative positions.

This book by Alan Viard and Robert Carroll proposes to completely replace the income tax system with a progressive consumption tax.

As school districts across the country struggle financially, Frederick M. Hess of AEI and Eric Osberg of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute offer new insight into how school leaders can not only survive the current economic storm, but also restructure their schools to save money and improve efficiency.

Will we recover, unbridle ourselves of debt, innovate, pay for our national security? Or, is China fated to become number one, leaving us to live in a Chinese world?

To reduce spending and more appropriately limit geographic variation in utilization among Medicare beneficiaries, the program should consider the utilization-management techniques employed in the private sector as a model.