Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Smokers, like all people, respond to incentives. One powerful incentive is price. When something becomes more expensive, people are less likely to consume that item. This fact is borne out in the extensive literature on the impact of cigarette taxes on smoking: As prices rise through taxes, fewer people smoke. This happens by keeping non-smokers, including youth, from starting in the first place and by encouraging current smokers to quit. But do increases in cigarette taxes in one state incentivize smokers (or tobacco retailers and wholesalers) to cross the border into neighboring states where cigarettes […]

Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. It is no secret that the U.S. struggles with a skills gap. According to a March 2018 report released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and Burning Glass Technologies, “surveys of employers routinely find that companies have difficulty finding skilled workers.” This national finding holds true in Indiana, which faces a gap in “middle skill” jobs – i.e., jobs that require more than a high school education but not necessarily a four-year college degree. There are many factors that contribute to our state’s skills gap, perhaps the most fundamental of which is that too many Hoosier […]