Platte Institute for Economic Research

A legislative floor debate took an interesting turn last week as a discussion over teacher pension plans turned into a debate on charter schools and educational choice. While debating LB553, Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh noted there are more options for improving schools beyond simply increasing funding, singling out charter schools as an idea whose time has come. More>

Internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales have grown from 2 percent in 2000 to 16.1 percent today, with a value of $4.1 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.  This massive revenue source has caught the attention of governments looking to meet budgets because many of these transactions are not subject to state and local sales taxes. More>

There are various ways to evaluate the health of an economy; from examining gross domestic product to calculating the inflation and unemployment rates, each measurement provides different information for regarding the economy as a whole. Yet there is one important statistic for determining the availability of economic opportunity and mobility: the growth rate of private sector jobs. More>