~by Dr. Larry DeBoer July 22, 2021     Happy belated New Year, everyone! I mean the Indiana Fiscal New Year 2022, which started on July 1. The State Budget Agency celebrates the event every summer with a budget closeout, looking back at the year just ended and ahead to the next biennium. This time, …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer       We’ve got an inflation problem. What should we do about it? That depends on what kind of inflation problem we’ve got. In May the consumer price index was 4.9% higher than it was 12 months before. The last time we saw an inflation rate that high was July …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer       On April 15, toward the end of the 2021 session of the Indiana General Assembly, the State Budget Committee heard the revised revenue forecast. It was $2.4 billion more than the initial forecast from December 16. That’s “billions,” with a “b”. It was a forecast for the ages. …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer Suppose you’ve been prevented from buying things for a year, or maybe a decade. Now the dishwasher is on the fritz, the tires are nearly bald, and the springs on the couch have sprung.  Or, you’ve not been to a restaurant or concert or ballgame—or anywhere—for all that time. Then the …

When you’re looking to make data-driven decisions for local government financing, don’t overlook a great tool from the Purdue Center for Regional Development (PCRD): Rural Indiana Stats. This site features a capacity-cost index, calculated by Dr. Larry DeBoer, that helps everyone from local residents to local elected officials understand what resources are available to them …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer, Purdue University Tax season is coming up. This year, federal income taxes are due on May 17th. Indiana’s state and local income taxes are due on April 15th. The first installment of the property tax is due on May 10. You pay your motor vehicle excise tax with your vehicle registration …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer, Purdue University If you want to be remembered in economics, get yourself a curve. There’s the Lorenz curve, the Laffer curve, the Kuznets curve, and, probably most famous, the Phillips curve. Phillips was A.W. Phillips, an economist from New Zealand who worked in London. In 1958 he drew a curve connecting …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer, Purdue University Predictions are hard, especially about the future. Yogi Berra said that. (Unless he didn’t. Yogi also said, “I never said most of the things I said,” so we really don’t know.) Though some predictions are harder than others, we are confident about this one: Property tax bills for farmland …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer, Purdue University Forecasts? Don’t talk about forecasts. You kidding me?  I just want to know what’s happening now! With apologies to Jim Mora, that’s our problem. What’s happening in our economy, right now? In the first week of March, we’d have answered that gross domestic product above inflation grew 2.4 percent …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer, Purdue University Rents are falling in San Francisco. Keep that in mind as this column wanders along. The wizards in Harry Potter’s Britain use many forms of transportation. Brooms, but also floo powder, portkeys, flying vehicles, the Night Bus. Perhaps the most frequently used form of transportation, and certainly the most …