By Patrick Emerson Oregon Economics Blog Over the weekend, Greg Mankiw used his Economic View column in The New York Times to address the ides of taxing soft drinks.   He argues that they are sin taxes and not Pigovian taxes because they are designed to save users from themselves, but […]

Gun sales take surprise drop By Oregon Tax News, As industry revenue levels recede this year, potential for modest growth in gun and ammunition sales through 2015 may still exist. The National Rifle Association (NRA) held its annual meeting in May in Charlotte, North Carolina. The general theme outlined the […]

Bloomberg Businessweek released their top 100 tech companies with Chian crowding out the US for the top spot.  China has the #1 and #3 spots.   The U.S. however has 44% of the total 100 listings whereas China has only 8%, Japan 11%, Taiwan 8%, India 6% and Brazil 5%. 1. […]

Oregon Small Business Association, Portland lost 23,000 jobs according to the U.S. Census Bureau.   suffering a 2.82% decline.  The greatest declines came from Las Vegas, Wichita, Sacramento and Cape Coral (FL) with over a 4% decline in workers.  The single biggest raw number declines came from Chicago (-101,500), Los […]

Video game maker, Electronic Arts, has released a new ad with Tiger Woods and it is a vast departure from the somber and serious one that Nike issued a few weeks ago. Below are three videos: 1.  New Electronic Acts video 2.  Previous Electronic Arts Tiger video 3.  Nike ad […]

Oregon Population: Always on the Rise by Brooke Jackson-Winegardner Oregon Employment Department The population of a state increases when there are more births than deaths (a natural increase), when more people move in than move out (net in-migration), or both. Every year the U.S. Census Bureau provides estimates of how […]

Tackling Oregon’s Budget Woes By  J.L. Wilson Associated Oregon Industries, Associated Oregon Industries, in concert with some of Oregon’s leading business and trade associations, is devoting much of 2010 to an effort to address the State of Oregon’s projected $2.5 billion deficit for fiscal years 2011-13. Economists predict that Oregon […]

By Ronnie London & Micah Ratner Davis, Wright and Tremaine LLP The FTC announced on May 19, 2010, that on April 8, a Northern District of California judge issued a permanent injunction shutting down an ISP—Pricewert LLC—that primarily hosted spam, botnets, trojan horses, viruses, child pornography, and spyware.  ICANN and […]

By Oregon Employment Department, Oregon’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was unchanged at 10.6 percent in April, the same level as in March. The rate has been essentially unchanged for the most recent six months. Oregon’s unemployment rate was 11.5 percent in April 2009. In April, 211,688 Oregonians were unemployed. In […]

By Tim Duy, Oregon Economic Forum University of Oregon Portland Metro Business Index . sponsor, KeyBank. The University of Oregon Portland Metro Business Index (PMBI) rose 1.2% percent to 88.9 (2002=100) in the first quarter of 2010.  Compared to year ago levels, the PMBI is down just 2.5 percent, a […]