General Economy

This article was co-authored by Practice Lead, Mazen Bou Zeineddine. It was originally published by the UC Riverside School of Business Center for Economic Forecasting and Development. The current public health crisis resulting from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has dealt a swift, heavy blow to the U.S. economy, and nowhere is this pain being felt more acutely than in the creative

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The April employment report was released this morning and the grim tidings it delivered, while anticipated, were still quite startling. The U.S. unemployment rate shot to 14.7%, over 11 percentage points higher than in February, even as the number of payroll jobs in the nation fell by over 20 million. Never has the United States experienced such a dramatic decline

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As Beacon Economics has written in our published outlooks over the past six weeks, a true understanding of what is currently happening in the economy is limited given the delay in receiving relevant data, as well as the total lack of recent historical examples illustrating how pandemics impact economies. As such, any prediction of how the COVID-19 crisis will affect

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Co-Authored by Christopher Thornberg, PhD Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Zocalo Public Square on May 2, 2018. Envious of Silicon Valley’s success, more than 80 places throughout the world have renamed one of their neighborhoods “Silicon-something,” including “Silicon Beach” in Los Angeles, “Silicon Bayou” in New Orleans, and “Silicon Roundabout” in London, as if the very word works an

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Our elected officials in Washington DC continue to struggle over the issue of immigration policy reform. The Trump administration has already made its views known, with its Muslim Ban, mixed signals on the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, and more recently, its immigration reform proposal, a plan that reflects a much more restrictive stance toward immigrants than previous

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It is often said that generals always fight the last war—and this applies to that still highly overused and abused political catch phrase “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Such rhetoric about creating new jobs continues to be attached to the rollout of almost any new government policy, regardless of the veracity or relevance of the claim. Times change, as do economic realities

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For years, Proposition 13 (Prop 13) has been viewed as the third rail of California politics. While Prop 13 is responsible for capping annual property tax assessment increases at 2%, it also required that future tax increases face a two-thirds vote for passage, making it very difficult for elected officials to tinker with the tax code. In 2012, voters approved

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Editors Note: This posting was originally published on the Opinion Page of the Los Angeles Daily News. High housing costs continue to be at the center of policy debates in Los Angeles—and across much of the state. This intensifying focus is warranted now more than ever given how the crisis has moved from simply eating up the disposable income of residents

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President Donald Trump has promised to radically change the trade relationship between the United States and the rest of the world. He has already pulled the nation out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), has promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and intends to penalize China for unfair trade practices. President Trump argues that the United States

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Californians are correct to be worried about the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) now that the Republicans control both branches of Congress and the White House. But they should be more worried about a looming crisis that neither presidential candidate addressed during the contentious election season — the coming fiscal calamity being driven by spiking Medicare costs. During

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