Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy
9.8.21. Junjie Guo, Noah Williams, Zhuoer Ren, and Qi Yang. We study how the state corporate tax rate and 15 measures of the state corporate tax base have been evolving since 1980, with a particular focus on changes in the last decade.
6.22.21. Junjie Guo and Noah Williams. As an amendment to our initial report on June 17 titled “Middle Income Tax Reform Options for Wisconsin”, we evaluate the potential impacts of cutting the third income tax rate from 6.27% to 5.3%, a proposal approved by the Joint Committee on Finance on the same day.
4.1.21. Junjie Guo, Noah Williams, Arwa Alalwani, Zhi Jiang, Jiashun Pang, Stefan Smutny, Linhua Zeng. We analyze the effects of the 2020 CARES Act implementation on the local labor market. We use observations from the Homebase Database which provides granular labor market data from a sample of small businesses across the United States.
1.19.21. Junjie Guo and Noah Williams. This paper provides forecasts for the United States and Wisconsin economies in 2021. The economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have made forecasting difficult. To deal with the volatility caused by the shutdowns and reopening requires modifying standard procedures.
7.3.20. Junjie Guo. In a 4-3 ruling, the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated the state’s Safer at Home order on May 13, 2020, allowing most non-essential businesses to open immediately in most locations. Using several real-time measures, I find broad evidence suggesting a positive impact of the Supreme Court decision on economic activity.
4.29.20. Junjie Guo. In response to the spread of COVID-19, most states in the U.S. have ordered nonessential businesses to close and residents to not leave home unless necessary. This paper estimates the impact of these stay-at-home orders on the mobility of Americans using GPS data from mobile devices
3.26.20. Junjie Guo. On March 24, 2020, at the direction of Governor Tony Evers, Wisconsin issued a “safer at home” order requiring residents not to leave their home unless necessary. Similar orders to lock down the economy in an attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19 have been issued elsewhere.
3.23.20. Junjie Guo. In its latest news release on unemployment insurance (UI) weekly claims, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reported that, relative to the prior week, the number of initial claims increased significantly by 70,000 in the week ending on March 14, 2020.
2.21.20. Junjie Guo and Noah Williams. We evaluate the effects of the expansion in the standard deduction proposed recently in AB 910 by Wisconsin lawmakers. We find it would reduce taxes for about 2 million taxpayers and reduce state tax revenue by about $200 million, so the reduction per affected taxpayer is about $100.
1.17.20. Junjie Guo and Noah Williams. This paper provides forecasts for the United States and Wisconsin economies in 2020. We use a mixed-frequency vector auto-regression model that has been previously applied to forecast the national economy, which we extend to also consider the state of Wisconsin. Our forecasts suggest that the long economic recovery will continue in 2020.