Courses

Ike Brannon

Visiting Fellow

Cato Institute

Ike Brannon is a visiting fellow who specializes in fiscal policy, tax reform, and regulatory issues. He was previously a senior fellow for the Bush Institute and before that was director of economic policy for the American Action Forum. Brannon has also served as the chief economist for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, chief economist for the Republican Policy Committee, senior adviser for tax policy at the U.S. Treasury, principal economic adviser for Senator Orrin Hatch on the Senate Finance Committee, chief economist for the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, and  senior economist for the Office of Management and Budget. He was also chief economist for the John McCain campaign in 2008 as well as an associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. His work has appeared in The Weekly Standard, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg View, USA Today, and The Hill. 
Brannon has a PhD in economics from Indiana University and a BA in math, Spanish, and economics from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. He also runs the Savings and Retirement Foundation and the Prosperity Caucus.

Blog Posts

Why don’t we allow markets to dictate parking policy?

November 10, 2016
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Basic Economics

There are two types of markets for parking in Washington DC: the private market, which tends to charge what the market will bear, and the government, which charges a price that’s deemed to be “fair” and “non-exploitative” to the constituents in residential areas. How’s that working out for everyone? Not very well, it turns out. The “fair” price on residential streets is just $25 a year, which is less than one percent of the private market rate. As a result there’s a large excess demand for parking on city streets, which has created a few predictable and undesirable consequences:

The answer is a new government program. What’s the question?

October 13, 2016
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Role of Government

The Sunday Washington Post had a long, hagiographic article about Senator Mark Warner’s critique about how capitalism “isn’t working” for the masses and his heroic attempts to fix it that left me thinking I’m in an alternate reality. The problem he sees is that the growing tendency of people to change jobs throughout their career has left people unprepared for retirement, and that we need to do more to make sure that workers have some sort of safety net to provide them with health care and income in their golden years. That this was largely addressed decades ago with the introduction