The MIT Center for Finance and Policy recently announced the winners [...]

High rates of debt growth by local governments are a cause for concern in any country. In China, where recent turmoil in the equity and foreign-exchange markets has put a spotlight on that country’s economy and growth prospects, increasing levels of borrowing by provincial and other lower levels of ...

We are making breakthroughs almost weekly in our understanding of cancer and other deadly diseases, both in how to treat and – in some cases – how to cure them [...]

Başak Tanyeri, an Assistant Professor of Finance at Bilkent University, visited the CFP this summer to pursue a new research project evaluating the performance of public banks. Using a large and newly available [...]

The U.S. government’s ubiquitous role providing credit—mostly to students and homeowners—in the post-financial crisis economy is unmistakable but the ultimate costs to taxpayers can be far from obvious. While nearly all of the deliberation and debate about the price of extending government credit is...

Greece recently failed to pay $1.7 billion due to the IMF, thereby becoming the first developed country to default on an IMF loan. That missed payment represents only a portion of the approximately $23 billion in IMF credit outstanding to Greece, suggesting the ultimate losses to the Fund could be m...

A recent topic of debate in the U.S. budget community centers on how the federal government should estimate the cost of providing loans to various borrowers such as students and homebuyers. Currently costs are assessed assuming that the government’s cost of capital is equal to the Treasury rate. Pro...

It is the rare journalist who tackles the topic of government credit programs and their ills. Rarer still is a popular account that accurately brings these complicated issues to life. Kudos to Michael Grunwald, who writing for Politico, did just that. I highly recommend his article. (Note that to ge...

Last week Bob Pozen, a Visiting Senior Lecturer here at MIT Sloan with a distinguished background in government, business and education gave an eye-opening lunch talk. The topic was “Other Post-Employment Benefits” or OPEBs—which is accounting jargon for the liabilities governments incur for retiree...

CFP Director Deborah Lucas posted this guest blogpost on the Center for Economic Policy Research portal VOX: “Putting an accurate price tag on government credit support.”