Blogs
How high are interest rates really?
By Byron Gangnes The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates sharply over the past fifteen months, and Fed officials have signaled that perhaps two more quarter point hikes are coming. How high are interest rates compared with past Fed tightening episodes? Are they high considering the state of the US economy? First, a little about […]
Read MoreHawaii’s long-term economic recovery after COVID-19
By Steven Bond-Smith The following is adapted from a speech I recently gave at the Western Regional Science Association meetings on the Big Island. My research focuses on the implications of theoretical regional economic models for small and isolated places, like Hawaii. These are places where distance matters such that they are generally unable to […]
Read MoreAre Businesses Heavily Taxed in Hawai’i?
By James Mak A recent report—Total State and Local Business Taxes—published by Ernst & Young LLP, State Tax Research Institute, and Council on State Taxation presents detailed state-by-state estimates of state and local taxes paid by businesses in Fiscal Year 2021. The report (hereafter referred to as the Ernst & Young report) is in its […]
Read MoreFifth time’s a charm!
By John Lynham PhD student Adrian Amaya and UHERO Research Fellow John Lynham recently started working on a new NSF-funded $1.6 million project entitled “Pathways and constraints to adaptation in coastal social-environmental systems”. The project is a collaborative research endeavor, both across institutions and academic disciplines: it brings together marine biologists, oceanographers, economists, anthropologists, and […]
Read MoreIs inflation going the Fed’s way? Depends where you’re looking.
By Byron Gangnes The Fed’s war on inflation has been underway for more than a year. Interest rates have been driven up sharply, with consequences for the macroeconomic outlook—will the economy just slow or drop into a steep recession—but also for households and businesses right now. Many families have been priced out of the housing […]
Read MoreHawai‘i Should Adopt a “Whole of Government” Approach to Destination Management
Paul Brewbaker, Frank Haas, and James Mak Hawai‘i has a long history of publishing community-based tourism plans with various version of these plans going back to the 1970s. Despite these well-intentioned efforts, tourism in Hawai‘i has not been effectively managed and has, thus far, been unable to achieve the vision articulated by the Hawai‘i Tourism […]
Read MoreShort-term Vacation Rentals and Housing Costs in Hawaiʻi
By Rachel Inafuku and Justin Tyndall Of the state’s 565,000 total housing units, 30,000 are listed as Short-term Vacation Rentals (STRs), meaning roughly 5% of local housing units operate as tourist accommodations. In a tight housing market with high prices and barriers to creating new supply, removing supply from the long-term housing market could harm […]
Read MoreDissolving the Hawaii Tourism Authority
Read the full UHERO brief. By Paul Brewbaker, Frank Haas, and James Mak State lawmakers in the 2023 state legislature are bashing the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA)…again! This year, the existence of HTA is at stake. Two bills (Senate Bill SB 1522 SD2 and House Bill HB1375 SD3) propose to repeal the HTA although they […]
Read MoreWhen banks go boom: Footloose deposits, regulatory failure, and the SVB crisis
By Byron Gangnes Banking can be a risky business. A bank keeps only a fraction of its deposits as cash reserves, turning the rest into income-earning assets, primarily loans, but also federal government bonds and other securities. Fractional reserve banking, which goes back at least to the 17th century, provides a source of funding for […]
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