Strategic Research

Educational Choice
Choice and Opportunity
On February 29, 2008, Gov. Bobby Jindal presented the Louisiana Legislature with a proposed budget allocating $10 million for a school choice initiative that would enable parents in New Orleans to send their children to…

Economic Liberty | First Amendment | Interior Design | Occupational Licensing | Occupational Speech
Designed to Mislead
Do people who design interiors “mislead” the public when they call themselves “interior designers” without government permission? Industry insiders advocating greater regulation say yes, but practicing interior designers who simply want to accurately describe what…

Economic Liberty | First Amendment | Interior Design | Occupational Licensing | Occupational Speech
Misinformation & Interior Design Regulation
This report responds to a purported rebuttal of the Institute for Justice’s research on interior design regulations and details how its author, an advocate of increased regulation, fails to provide any evidence of the need…

Eminent Domain | Private Property
Doomsday? No Way
When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld eminent domain for private development in the 2005 Kelo case, the public reacted with shock and outrage, leading to a nationwide movement to reform state laws and curb the…

Economic Liberty | First Amendment | Interior Design | Occupational Licensing | Occupational Speech
Designing Cartels
This report examines titling laws, little-known regulations that require people practicing certain professions to gain government permission to use a specific title, such as “interior designer,” to describe their work. Although titling laws receive little…

Educational Choice
Fatally Flawed
In October 2007, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute released a research report on public school choice and parental involvement, Fixing the Milwaukee Public School: The Limits of Parent-Driven Reform. Unfortunately, as this analysis finds, the…

First Amendment | Political Speech
Campaign Finance Red Tape
Twenty-four states permit citizens to make laws directly through ballot measures. These states also regulate how citizens—if they band together—may speak out about them. In the name of “disclosure,” these regulations impose complicated registration and…

Eminent Domain | Private Property
Victimizing the Vulnerable
In Kelo v. City of New London—one of the most reviled U.S. Supreme Court decisions in history—the Court upheld the use of eminent domain by governments to take someone’s private property and give it to…

First Amendment | Political Speech
Disclosure Costs
This study examines the impact of one of the most common features of campaign finance regulations: mandatory disclosure of contributions and contributors’ personal information. While scholars have looked at the effects of other kinds of…

Educational Choice | Publicly Funded Scholarships
Private Choice In Public Programs
Georgia’s Special Needs Scholarship Program extends to a new group of students the same kind of educational choice already enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of Georgia citizens from prekindergarten through college. Prior to the adoption…

Educational Choice | Publicly Funded Scholarships
Private Choice In Public Programs
Voucher programs that give recipients the free and independent choice of an array of providers, including faith-based organizations, have a long and established history in Arizona, including six different educational voucher programs that help more…

Educational Choice | Tax Credit Scholarships
Fiscal Analysis of Arizona’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program
This report updates a 2005 analysis by Arizona’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) that looked at the fiscal impact of a proposed corporate tuition tax-credit scholarship program and reflects the program as actually passed in…

Educational Choice | Tax Credit Scholarships
Arizona Individual and Corporate Tax Credits
Arizona’s tax code, like that of many state, national and international governments, includes a series of tax credits individuals and corporations may use to offset taxes owed. Arizona’s individual and corporate scholarship tax credit programs…