This issue brief reviews the status of state budget shortfalls and their growing impact on the Medicaid program. It describes the magnitude of the shortfalls, the forces behind them, and how states have responded with spending cuts and tax increases. It also discusses how long the budget crisis is expected to continue and what budget balancing options remain for fiscal year 2003.

1 Fresh data on English grain yields 1268-1480 are combined with revised price series to measure the frequency and scale of serious harvest shortfalls and estimate the elasticity of demand for cereals. Major food availability declines are shown to have been a significant component of most historical subsistence crises, as back-to-back shortfalls were of the worst famines. Although farmers did a...

In his “Games and the Art of Agency,” C. Thi Nguyen makes an intriguing very plausible suggestion: games, or at any rate a great many them, are artworks whose medium is, roughly, how one goes about doing what does. assigning objective, laying down constraints under which it has to be achieved, specifying terrain on will played out, game sculpts decision-making processes its players, ways they s...

In several economic fields, such as those related to health, education or poverty, the individuals’ characteristics are measured by bounded variables. Accordingly, these characteristics may be indistinctly represented by achievements or shortfalls. A difficulty arises when inequality needs to be assessed. One may focus either on achievements or on shortfalls but the respective inequality rankin...

In several economic fields, such as those related to health, education or poverty, the individuals’ characteristics are measured by bounded variables. Accordingly, these characteristics may be indistinctly represented by achievements or shortfalls. A difficulty arises when inequality needs to be assessed. One may focus either on achievements or on shortfalls but the respective inequality rankin...

We use North Carolina data to explore whether the quality of teachers in the lower elementary grades (K-2) falls short of teacher quality in the upper grades (3-5) and to examine the hypothesis that school accountability pressures contribute to such quality shortfalls. Our concern with the early grades arises from recent studies highlighting how children’s experiences in those years have lastin...