Honest talk about the deficit is risky. Voters are more enthusiastic about the abstract notion of deficit reduction than about the painful details of accomplishing it.

As a former member of President Obama's economic team, I have a soft spot for the fiscal stimulus legislation he signed just a month after his inauguration.

Many of my students assume that government protection is the only thing ensuring decent wages for most American workers. But basic economics shows that competition between employers for workers can be very effective at preventing businesses from misbehaving.

Climate change and dependence on foreign oil are problems that won't go away on their own. Tabling plans to deal with them doesn't make it easier for companies to plan and invest; it makes it harder.

Honest talk about the deficit is risky. Voters are more enthusiastic about the abstract notion of deficit reduction than about the painful details of accomplishing it.

The very first email I got [was] from a women's group saying 'We don't want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.'

Cold-turkey deficit reduction would cause a significant recession. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that going headlong over the cliff would cause our gross domestic product, which has been growing at an annual rate of around 2 percent, to fall at a rate of 2.9 percent in the first half of 2013.