Category: Finance

Amazon, Costco, Target, Walmart and other retailers begin their holiday sales as early as October. But there’s no need to rush to buy wool scarves, fuzzy throw blankets and the other holiday gifts on your list the second you spot some tinsel while shopping. As a finance professor who studies how people and companies make […]

Polling is looking grim for Republicans ahead of the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 3, 2026, due in large part to deep pessimism among the public about the economy. At first glance, this might seem surprising. With the exception of inflation, many economic measures remain strong, including gross domestic product growth. But consumer sentiment continues […]

Allegheny County will undergo a countywide reassessment of every property it taxes for the first time since 2012. A county judge ordered the reassessment in August 2026, requiring the work to begin by July 1, 2027, and finish within five years. The goal is to bring property values in line with today’s market. That could […]

Imagine you get hit by a car. An ambulance brings you to the nearest hospital. Your private health insurance covers emergency care, but the hospital isn’t in your plan’s network. Before 2022, if you received emergency care from an out-of-network provider or hospital, you could get hit with an extra, often huge bill on top […]

Catherine Bilskie, the advertising and office manager for the newspaper in Solon, Iowa, had seen many local news outlets close. So she was sure her job at the Solon Economist was about to go one Friday morning in February 2024. But to her surprise, a new owner, Jason Brummond, appeared. He not only promised to […]

Three times a week, Amber Titus wakes up at 5 a.m. to get ready for the 45-minute drive to the methadone clinic. Titus, 38, and her husband live with their two young children in Bisbee Junction, Arizona, a rural community near the U.S.-Mexico border. The couple started taking methadone, a medication that treats opioid addiction, […]

After 10 states began to add new restrictions to what people could buy with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in early 2026, the number of convenience stores authorized to accept those benefits was 1.4% lower than would be expected based on trends in states without the policy change. That’s what we found in our study, […]

Healthcare costs are a major concern for Americans, and health insurance premiums are a primary fuel for that anxiety. Shrinking federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans led to large premium increases for millions of Americans in 2025, causing many people to drop coverage. With premiums expected to rise further and Medicaid work requirements set […]

While affordability pressures are hitting Americans in many facets of their lives, from groceries to gas prices to housing costs, one important expense often gets less attention – childcare. After a huge infusion of federal funds into childcare dried up at the end of the Biden administration, experts warned that this sharp cutoff, sometimes dubbed […]

I was teaching health economics when a student raised his hand. We were discussing the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, which requires most health plans to cover certain recommended preventive services at no additional cost to patients. I explained that preventive care could cost nothing. The student had expected that, too. Instead, he said, he […]