An authoritative review of the long history of federal responses to state and local budget crises, from Alexander Hamilton through the COVID-19 pandemic, that reveals what is at stake when a state or city can't pay its debts and provides policy solutions to an intractable American problem. What should the federal government do if a state like Illinois or a city like Chicago can't pay its debts? From Alexander Hamilton's plan to assume state debts to Congress's efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the most important political disputes in American history have involved federal government responses to state or local fiscal crises. In a Bad State provides the first comprehensive historical and theoretical analysis of how the federal government has addressed subnational debt crises. Tracing the long history of state and local borrowing, David Schleicher argues that federal officials want to achieve three things when a state or city nears default: prevent macroeconomic distress, encourage lending to states and cities to build infrastructure, and avoid creating incentives for reckless future state budgeting. But whether they demand state austerity, permit state defaults, or provide bailouts-and all have been tried-federal officials can only achieve two of these three goals, at best. Rather than imagining that there is a single easy federal solution, Schleicher suggests some ways the federal government could ameliorate the problem by conditioning federal aid on future state fiscal responsibility, spreading losses across governments and interests, and building resilience against crises into federal spending and tax policy. Authoritative and accessible, In a Bad State offers a guide to understanding the pressing fiscal problems that local, state, and federal officials face, and to the policy options they possess for responding to crises.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A riveting book."—The Wall Street Journal "Essential reading."—David Brooks, New York Times From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

Market Imperfections and Macroeconomic Dynamics is based upon a collection of papers originally presented at the 5th Theory and Methods in Macroeconomics (T2M) meeting in Paris, France, 2002. The contributions in this volume focus on a central theme: the aggregate dynamic consequences of market imperfections. Such effects are of great interest to researchers in macroeconomics as these imperfections play a primary role in the persistence of aggregate output, the characteristics of the business cycles and the interactions of agents over time. Incorporating up-to-date techniques and methods, these contributions exemplify the remarkable progress made by macroeconomists in tackling these issues. The primary market for Market Imperfections and Macroeconomic Dynamics is academic researchers in economics and graduate students specializing in macroeconomics. Divisions of economic studies in public administration and in financial organizations will also find this book beneficial.

In this book Christopher Belshaw draws on earlier work concerning death, identity, animals, immortality, and extinction, and builds a large-scale argument dealing with questions of both value and meaning. Rejecting suggestions that life is sacred or intrinsically valuable, he argues instead that its value varies, and varies considerably, both within and between different kinds of things. So in some cases we might have reason to improve or save a life, while in others that reason will be lacking. What about starting lives? The book’s central section takes this as its focus, and asks whether we ever have reason to start lives, just for the sake of the one whose life it is. Not only is it denied that there is any such reason, but some sympathy is afforded to the anti-natalist contention that there is always reason against. The final chapters deal with meaning. There is support here for the sober and familiar view that meaning derives from an enthusiasm for, and some success with, the pursuit of worthwhile projects. Now suppose we are immortal. Or suppose, in contrast, that we face imminent extinction. Would either of these threaten meaning? The claim is made that the force of such threats is often exaggerated. The Value and Meaning of Life is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, ethics, and religion, and will be of interest to all those concerned with how to live, and how to think about the lives of others.

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies. These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality. Mettler analyzes three Obama reforms—student aid, tax relief, and health care—to reveal the submerged state and its consequences, demonstrating how structurally difficult it is to enact policy reforms and even to obtain public recognition for achieving them. She concludes with recommendations for reform to help make hidden policies more visible and governance more comprehensible to all Americans. The sad truth is that many American citizens do not know how major social programs work—or even whether they benefit from them. Suzanne Mettler’s important new book will bring government policies back to the surface and encourage citizens to reclaim their voice in the political process.

When faced with material crises governments do not call upon historians, anthropologists, political scholars, or psychologists. They call on economists. These have developed the most coherent and convincing description of how society organizes itself through a system of accounting amenable to precise analysis. Mastering this analysis is the challenge of the apprentice economist. Learn to become a master from Filip Palda, who earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. Here is what Nobel Prize winners have said about Palda's previous books: "Interesting and well written." Gary S. Becker. Nobel Prize in economics 1992. "Palda offers a novel and interesting perspective." James M. Buchanan. Nobel Prize in economics 1987.