Economy

The Agony of Restaurant Workers

Social distancing is necessary to slow the spread of COVID-19, but has significant economic impacts, hitting dine-in eateries disproportionately hard.

UHERO’s Carl Bonham Speaking to the State House Select Committee on COVID-19 (March 12, 2020)

Interim Forecast Update: COVID-19 Will Impose Significant Economic Impacts in Hawaii

The spread of the novel coronavirus and recent visitor falloff lead us to lower sharply our outlook for the Hawaii economy.  In the baseline forecast, real visitor spending is expected to fall more than 10% this year and payroll jobs by 0.6%, with an attenuated recovery path. Alternative scenarios reflect a wide range of possible […]

Carl Bonham appointed to Select House Committee on COVID-19

House Speaker Scott K. Saiki today announced the appointment of individuals to serve on the Select House Committee on COVID-19 Economic and Financial Preparedness adopted through House Resolution 54. UHERO Executive Director Carl Bonham along with a long list of other community, business, and legislative leaders have been named to the committee, which will be exploring how to […]

To Tax or Not to Tax: Making a High-Quality State Revenue/Tax System

By James Mak When Hawaii’s state lawmakers gather each year at the State Capitol to begin their annual legislative session, tinkering with the tax system always seems to consume much of their work.  Hawaii citizens can count on seeing a slew of bills introduced to raise taxes on somebody while other bills are introduced to […]

UHERO State Forecast Update: Coronavirus Presents Danger to Hawaii Tourism

Hawaii’s economy has been on an expected slowing trend for the past several years. While visitor arrivals racked up another record year in 2019, real visitor spending fell last year as international spending languished. And now the coronavirus rears its ugly head. That represents a considerable—if as yet uncertain—risk to Hawaii’s economy in the year […]

Charting a New Fiscal Course for Hawaii: A Fiscal Architecture Approach

The Hawai’i Executive Conference (HEC)’s recent report, Troubled Waters: Charting a New Fiscal Course For Hawaii, makes a compelling case for the Hawaii community to focus on “the future fiscal capacity of Hawaii state and local governments.” HEC examines three public expenditure challenges totaling $88.4 billion that residents will likely face over the next thirty […]

Little relief from Hawaii’s high cost of living

By Rachel Inafuku and Peter Fuleky Living in paradise comes at a cost. Hawaii is notorious for its combination of high costs of living and low incomes relative to these costs. These factors impose hardships on Hawaii families of modest-to-moderate income and prompt some to consider relocating to less-expensive mainland locales. So how expensive is it […]

Do Natural Disasters Make Sustainable Growth Impossible?

We consider the prospects for sustainable growth using expected utility models of optimal investment under threat from natural disasters. Adoption of a continuous time, stochastic Ramsey growth model over an infinite time horizon permits the analysis of sustainability under uncertainty regarding adverse events, including both one-time and recurrent disasters. As appropriate to small economies, we […]