Instead of facing the foreclosure crisis head-on, President Barack Obama has chosen a terrible time to finally discover the virtue of federal restraint and mostly deferred to state attorneys general.

It’s going to be bait and switch for as far as the eye can see. That’s how it looks now that the smoke has cleared after the recent “Mommy War” skirmish over Democratic operative Hilary Rosen’s comment that mother of five Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life.”

In this paper we monetize the direct costs and avoided costs of the war in Iraq, both to date and the total expected net present value of costs through 2015.

Absent competition, whether water systems are owned by private firms or governments may, on average, simply not matter much.

Economic analysis of life-saving investments has the potential to dramatically improve longevity and the quality of life, but only if the analyses on which decisions are based are done well.

New Orleans seems determined to preserve the reforms brought on by Katrina. The question is whether it can sustain the innovative momentum in the face of old habits--and new storms.

Insurance companies are currently regulated entirely by state governments. During this congressional session, it is expected that Senators Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) will cosponsor legislation that would create an optional federal charter for insurance, allowing companies to organize under federal rather than state laws. Advocates of...