Evaluating New York City’s Congestion Pricing: A Shift Toward Public Transportation

By Felix Field and Brandon Kahn

Congestion pricing is a relatively uncommon policy worldwide, but a few major cities—such as Stockholm, London, Milan, and New York—have implemented it in recent years. This policy charges drivers a toll for entering specific high-traffic areas. The primary goal is to reduce traffic congestion by discouraging personal vehicle use and encouraging public transportation. In addition to easing urban gridlock, congestion pricing can also improve air quality by lowering carbon emissions from cars and motorcycles. Although only a few cities have adopted it, congestion pricing has the potential to significantly enhance urban life if implemented effectively.

On January 5, 2025, New York City implemented congestion pricing. In the case of New York City, the tax is paid when you enter the “Congestion Relief Zone,” which covers all of Manhattan below 60th Street. The toll paid upon entering the zone is also based on the time of day, with higher prices during rush hour and lower prices during the late hours of the day. Additionally, the revenue generated by the tax will then go towards MTA improvements that will improve public transportation in the future. Overall, if the tax effectively reduces traffic and increases the use of public transportation, it would be extremely beneficial to New York City, and many other cities may also benefit from implementing such a policy. 

Among other cities that have already implemented congestion pricing, London has continued to see positive results after around 20 years of implementation. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, “Congestion charging in London improves efficiency, reduces pollution, and raises revenue for transit improvements,” with automobile traffic having declined by about 20% compared to before congestion pricing. (Congestion pricing in London). Just like London, New York is a populous city with an effective public transportation system. By implementing congestion pricing, NYC could also see a reduction in pollution and traffic along with an increase in public revenue. Continue reading

Comparing Sweden and US’s Tax and Transfer Systems Effect on Inequality

By Grace Kinum and Katie NG

Sweden believes that because everyone contributes to welfare through taxes, everyone deserves equal access to those welfare benefits(“Taxes in Sweden”). Because they want extensive benefits for everyone, this requires higher government spending, and thus, they must increase government revenue through higher taxes, which Sweden is committed to. The United States on the other hand, taxes less and is more market-driven than welfare-driven, and citizens have more responsibility to handle their healthcare, education, and retirement. Sweden’s universal welfare system and the United States’ welfare system are vastly different. The two systems have the same goal: to redistribute wealth and help people in poverty by providing them with healthcare, childcare, and other social benefits. In the United States, these programs are directed at low-income families and individuals who are considered most in need. In comparison, Sweden employs a universal system where the benefits apply to all citizens regardless of financial status. These benefits include: universal healthcare, parental leave, unemployment benefits, and housing allowances and supplements, as well as many others. While some of these benefits are also present in the United States model, the differences have largely contributed to the high standard of living in Sweden. Their emphasis on education and public access to healthcare, which is largely privatized in the United States, has contributed to a highly educated workforce and more equitable wages (OECD). It is up to governments to decide how much to tax and, therefore, how much to spend on reducing this inequality. We compare and contrast Sweden and the United States’ taxation and transfer systems and the effects on inequality to highlight the pros and cons of each system. 

In Sweden, most people pay a local tax on their annual income depending on where they live, but the average local tax rate is around 33% (“Taxes in Sweden”). In contrast, the average individual income tax in the United States is 14.5% (York). Both countries have progressive taxes, meaning that the more taxable income you make, the higher the tax rate that you pay on the marginal dollar. In Sweden, the highest tax is 52.2% (“Sweden Tax Rates and Rankings”), while the highest federal income tax in the US is 37% (Durante). This shows that while both systems have similar structures, Sweden taxes income much more on average, with higher marginal tax rates for higher incomes. 

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How Do Minimum Wage Changes Impact Unemployment Rates?

By Felix Field and Brandon Kahn

What if a single government policy could change the lives of millions of workers overnight? The minimum wage was first established in 1938 through the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a key component of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The New Deal aimed to revive the economy from the depths of the Great Depression and address the widespread struggles of workers seeking fair employment and livable wages. The FLSA marked an important early step in the federal government’s recognition of workers’ rights. Today, the minimum wage remains a major topic of debate, as many hold differing opinions on its potential economic impact. Some argue that raising it could cause inflation and higher unemployment rates. In contrast, others contend that it is a necessary tool for improving workers’ quality of life and reducing economic inequality.

We studied how state minimum wage changes might impact unemployment rates to find evidence of either a positive or negative impact on the economy using a method similar to that of economists Card and Krueger. David Card and Alan Krueger use a “natural experiment” method to study the impact of minimum wage changes on employment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In their study on the impact of minimum wage changes on employment, they looked at two similar states, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with the only difference being New Jersey’s recent increase in state minimum wage. In these two states, they compared the employment numbers of fast food chains. Fast food chains were chosen as they are one of the biggest minimum wage employers. They found that employment numbers were relatively similar between the two states despite New Jersey’s minimum wage increase (Card and Krueger 776). These findings challenged the predominant economic theory, which said that raising the minimum wage would lead to higher unemployment. We hope to replicate a similar experiment to Card and Krueger’s using Delaware’s unemployment rate after minimum wage changes in 1988 compared to Maryland’s unemployment rate during the same time. Continue reading

Impact of Sweden and US’s Social Security Systems on National Debt

By Grace Kinum and Katie Ng

As the United States faces a looming national debt crisis, we must ask, is our social security system the most efficient? We researched how different Social Security structures may influence national debt. We focused our comparison on the United States and Sweden, two countries with similar demographic challenges but completely different structures and policies. We specifically looked at the World Bank’s data, through St.Louis FRED, to examine how these structures influenced their national debt levels using debt-to-GDP graphs. 

 In the United States, President Roosevelt implemented the Social Security Act in 1935 during the Great Depression. Social Security is a mandatory government spending program that has grown over the years and continues to expand. The system uses a pay as you go structure. Payments collected from paychecks pay for benefits immediately. 

Until recently, the collected payments exceeded the amount the government was paying out. The surplus created a Social Security trust. However, the government used it for other expenses (Glenn). According to the journal issue “The Great Social Security Debate” by Beland Daniel, this poses an issue to the United States because the fertility rate is decreasing along with the working age population. However, the population over 65, when a person is eligible to receive benefits, is increasing. The amount of people paying into the system is increasing while the number of people receiving benefits is increasing, broadening the deficit. 

The trust fund created in response to the baby boom is projected to run out in 2042. It has become increasingly clear that the debt crisis in the United States is becoming an issue as spending on programs like Social Security continues to grow. Without increasing government revenue, the large projected deficit for the upcoming fiscal year poses risks of eventual dependency on other countries to finance the United State’s debt. This dependency could lower other nations’ confidence in the United State’s fiscal stability and cause eventual economic decline. 

The Swedish Social Security system also includes a pay as you go component and a defined contribution system. In a defined contribution system money is held and invested in individual accounts meaning that the benefit amount is dependent on the success of those investments. The Swedish population faces challenges similar to those in the United States, such as declining fertility rates and an aging population. However, the defined contribution system places less financial strain on the Swedish government than the defined benefit model in the United States which impacts national debt differently. 

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Reaganomics, Tax Cuts, and Income Inequality

By Aidan Aybar and Haley McGill

Ronald Reagan was elected as the 40th President of the United States in 1980 and served from 1981-1989. He was a member of the Republican party, he enacted many conservative policies during his two terms, including a set of economic policies that came to be known as “Reaganomics”. 

Reagan focused on “supply side” economics and the idea that tax cuts would expand the economy and increase federal government revenue (Reagan Library). The 1970’s were a period of economic stagnation and inflation. During this time, “the inflation rate peaked at just over 13 percent, and prime interest rates rose as high as 21-and-a-half percent” (Gramm). When Reagan took office, he sought to improve the economy and took a different approach to solve the problem. 

To do this, Reagan took several steps during his first year. Reaganmoics included policies such as “engineer[ing] the passage of $39 billion in budget cuts into law”, “25 percent tax cut spread over three years for individuals”, and “faster write-offs for capital investment for business” (Reagan Library).

The tax cuts had significant impacts on the economy and functioned as an expansionary policy. Inflation dropped from 13.5% in 1980 to 5.1% in 1982 and a recession set in with unemployment levels of over 10% in October of 1982 (Reagan Library). For the remainder of Reagan’s two terms, there was record economic growth and low unemployment rates along with “record annual deficit and a ballooning national debt” (Reagan Library). 

In 2017, Donald Trump “signed into law the biggest tax overhaul since the Tax Reform Act of 1986” (Gale et al). These tax cuts are expiring soon, but the current administration is in favor of extending them. Over the past 40 years, “income inequality has increased sharply” (Tax Policy Center). Income taxes can help mitigate income inequality as “high-income households pay a larger share of their income in total federal taxes than low-income households” (Tax Policy Center). Therefore, it is important to investigate the historical impacts of Reagan’s tax cuts on inequality as the current administration seeks to enact similar economic policies.

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The Impact of the “No Child Left Behind” Act on Inequality

By Aidan Aybar and Haley McGill

George W Bush introduced the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 with the goal “to expand opportunities for American children of all backgrounds and provide all our children with the quality education they deserve while preserving local control” (White House Archives). The NCLB required all schools to test children on their reading and math skills and report results. These results and goals were known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Children were required to be tested every year from third to eighth grade and they were also tested once in high school. The goal of NCLB was to have all students reach the level of “proficiency” that each state set for itself by 2013-2014. Each state chose what tests to use meaning they were not standardized across the nation. 

If schools did not meet the requirements, the NCLB distributed consequences. “A school that misses AYP two years in a row has to allow students to transfer to a better-performing public school in the same district. If a school misses AYP for three years in a row, it must offer free tutoring. Schools that continue to miss achievement targets could face state intervention. States could “choose to shut these schools down, turn them into charter schools, take them over, or use another, significant turnaround strategy” (Klein). The purpose of these consequences was to encourage schools to stay on track and if they did not meet the consequences, students would end up in better situations. 

The results of the No Child Left Behind Act proved to be less promising. There seemed to be a wide range of results based on the income level of the school district. When comparing the math exams of New York in particular, “[w]hile 86.3 percent of students in rich, or so-called low-need districts scored proficiently, only 28.6 percent did so in Buffalo, 30.1 percent in Syracuse, and 33.1 percent in Rochester” (Herszenhorn). The resources that children have access to seemed to greatly affect their test scores. Additionally, in lower resourced schools, students had much larger class sizes which could have also been a factor in their low test scores (Herszenhorn). 

In his New York Times opinion piece, Sean F Reardon, a Professor of Education and sociology at Stanford, shares a similar sentiment (he wrote his piece in 2013, 11 years after the NCLB was enacted). When analyzing the scores of math and reading standardized tests over 1960-2010, he found that “rich-poor gap in test scores [was] about 40 percent larger [in 2013] than it was 30 years ago” and “the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor” (Reardon). 

But let’s see what the economic data says about it.

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The Impact of the 2016 Brexit Referendum on Inflation and Unemployment in the United Kingdom

By Will Childs and Grayson Moniz

In June 2016, the United Kingdom voted to depart from the European Union, a monumental decision known as Brexit. Although their actual departure would not happen until January 2020, it immediately disrupted the nation’s political and financial spheres. The UK had existed and functioned within an integrated European framework for several decades, benefiting from free movement, ease of trade, and coordinated economic governance. Brexit symbolized political segregation from the rest of the EU and a major shift in the nation’s economic proceedings. This structural realignment catalyzed major change in the nation, predominantly through two vital macroeconomic indicators: inflation and unemployment. 

Prior to Brexit, the UK had a relatively stable economy. The Bank of England was responsible for low inflation and a decline in unemployment after the financial crisis of 2008. The decision to depart from the EU shocked the nation’s economy. The pound sterling declined immediately after the votes had been finalized and fell to a 31-year low compared to the US dollar [8]. The falling exchange rate made imports more expensive, raising prices for the consumer and elevating inflation [7]. While the headline unemployment was relatively unaffected by Brexit, labor market dynamics faced growing instability. Specifically in sectors like agriculture, hospitality, and healthcare, which rely on EU workers, shortages became predominant [4]. Additionally, new immigration rules and trade frictions made hiring and production more complicated for producers. 

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The Impact of the 1991 Collapse of the Soviet Union on GDP and Unemployment in Russia

By Will Childs and Grayson Moniz

Throughout the 20th century, the economic proceedings of the Soviet Union were entirely under the jurisdiction of the government. They controlled the nation’s employment, production, and distribution. Most of the nation’s output was dedicated to industrial production and manufacturing at extremely high rates, rather than consumer goods. As a socialist nation, job security was virtually guaranteed, and unemployment was not a quantifiable issue. However, mass employment hindered the productivity and efficiency of the labor force and plagued the economy throughout the nation’s final years. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it resulted in an unprecedented economic crisis, reflected in massive contractions of GDP and skyrocketing unemployment [1].

Grigorii Khanin’s “Economic Growth in the 1980s,” featured in The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System (1992) provides valuable context for the conditions that predated the massive recession of the 1990s. He discovered that the nation had many underlying inefficiencies and stagnations that the economy endured prior to 1991, such as the over-centralization of production combined with slow technological innovation (compared to the United States). These factors directly contributed to the eventual dissolution of the union. Khanin’s analysis essentially highlights how certain deep-rooted issues made the USSR’s economy particularly vulnerable to both internal and external pressures.

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Trade Disruptions During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Study of U.S. Imports and Exports

By Arthur Dos Santos, Masai Gordon, and Adam Prince

Before COVID-19, few Americans thought twice about where their goods came from. However, when store shelves emptied and exports slowed, the fragility of the global trade system became impossible to ignore. We explore how COVID-19 affected U.S. imports and exports. Pre-pandemic, global trade was experiencing steady growth, shaped by decades of increasing globalization, technological advancements, and expanding international agreements. Throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, global trade skyrocketed, with the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and major trade deals like NAFTA, which created a free trade zone across North America. The U.S. became increasingly involved in global supply chains. In the early 2010s, trade continued to grow, but new tensions arose. The U.S. saw rising trade deficits and growing concern over reliance on foreign production. Trade levels remained high, with the U.S. being one of the world’s top importers and exporters.  Continue reading

The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Differences in U.S. Unemployment Rates

By Arthur Dos Santos, Masai Gordon, and Adam Prince

Imagine millions of jobs vanishing almost overnight, leaving workers across the world in uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just disrupt daily life—it triggered one of the most dramatic shifts in unemployment rates in modern history. In early 2020, before the pandemic hit, the United States’ unemployment rate had fallen to 3.5%, the lowest it’s been in the past 50 years. However, there were underlying issues in an evolving job market, such as declining labor force participation driven by an aging population, which still persisted and increased the severity of the collapse caused by the pandemic. We explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affected male and female unemployment rates to understand how unemployment rates respond to crises and which demographic is most vulnerable to these economic shocks. By studying these shifts, we are able to gain important insight into the labor market and its inequalities. Understanding differences in unemployment by gender reveals how economic shocks can amplify existing inequalities. By identifying who is most vulnerable, policymakers and economists can create improved support systems for these groups during future crises.  Continue reading