Format: (eBook)
ISBN 13: 9781634130721
Publisher: JMJ Economics
Publication Date: 08/28/2014

Spending on health care has grown faster than the economy itself, even while the share of the population without health insurance was increasing. The Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare) intends to reverse these trends, but in doing so has economic side effects. Businesses are complaining about the ACA’s new tax and regulatory burdens, whereas supporters say that it is a long-overdue “shot in the arm” that will promote entrepreneurship and a “more rapid economic recovery.” 

Positive and negative tax effects of the ACA are carefully documented. The book offers a comprehensive market analysis of the law that arrives at conclusions as to effects on work hours, productivity, and national income. It shows what the ACA means for economic performance in the years ahead, and explains why forecasters have yet to acknowledge many of the economic forces that have been put in motion. The book contains numerous facts and economic insights that have been unnoticed by both supporters and opponents.

Casey B. Mulligan, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1993 and has also served as a visiting professor teaching public economics at Harvard University, Clemson University, and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. He is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research, the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, and the Population Research Center. He has received awards and fellowships from the Manhattan Institute, the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation. His research covers capital and labor taxation, the gender wage gap, health economics, Social Security, voting, and the economics of aging.

Mulligan has written widely on discrepancies between economic analysis and conventional wisdom.  Before Side Effects, he wrote The Redistribution Recession and Parental Priorities and Economic Inequality.  He has also written numerous op-eds and blog entries for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, blogsupplyanddemand.com, and other blogs and periodicals.