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Get the latest news and research from Badger Institute
- Three policy avenues to help public schools flourish
- Data center boom means good times for old-line manufacturing, 50 or 500 hires at a time
- Strong foundations, untapped potential: Wisconsin’s economy
- Want to help families, Wisconsin? Stop raising childcare costs
- Wisconsin’s childcare subsidies, regulations fail for families
- How a development tool can increase property taxes
- Wisconsin should stop treating data centers worse than other taxpaying industries
- Why are schools that put kids more than a year ahead even at issue?
Browsing: Reports
Raising children, as can be fully appreciated only after you’ve done it, takes place in real time. They eat, sleep and grow whether you’re ready or not. So as parents supply children with the most crucial material treasure they ever will receive — a stable, loving home — many rely on some outside help in caring for their children while earning a living.
The surest way to improve the healthcare that Wisconsinites receive is to enable people to get the greatest satisfaction at the most favorable price via a free and transparent market.
Eight states, including neighboring Minnesota and Michigan, have authorized dental therapist programs statewide. Dental therapists are mid-level providers who perform preventive, restorative and intermediate restorative procedures.
The good things in life in this democracy — opportunity, fulfillment, upward mobility, prosperity, the redounding energy and succor that comes from free association, love of relatives and friends
As we move through 2022, the national economy is in what might best be described as a strange state.
Some people earn a lot of money. Some earn a little.
Wisconsin’s politicians prohibit over 1 million citizens from working unless they have government permission.
As a way for funding an important public good — highways — Wisconsin’s gas tax was pretty good
Wisconsin, like most states, allows individuals who have been convicted of a one-time, low-level offense to ask a judge to have the record of that conviction expunged once they’ve served their sentence and demonstrated they pose no risk to public safety
Recent and rigorous academic evaluations suggest that such policies aren’t effective at increasing employment among the formerly incarcerated.
August 11, 2022
Even before the pandemic, U.S. entitlement spending was on an unsustainable path, the growth in means-tested safety net programs far outstripping inflation.
A new report from the Tax Foundation and the Badger Institute offers five comprehensive tax reform options to enhance Wisconsin’s tax competitiveness by reducing harmful taxes on labor and investment.
Wisconsin could help lead the nation in empowering patient-consumers to seek care in a functioning market with upfront transparent pricing.
The estimate by the Department of Public Instruction of potential added costs to property tax payers from opening Wisconsin’s school choice programs to families of all income levels is deeply flawed.
A proposal to enhance public credibility
Wisconsin’s unemployment situation has rebounded, but participation in government programs remains elevated.
In a joint brief with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, we lay out the problems with occupational licensing in Wisconsin and what meaningful reforms can be enacted.
The new age of electronic monitoring
A majority of voters believe the state’s criminal justice system needs significant improvements, nearly three-quarters believe expungement law needs reform, among other findings.
Incarceration is rare for pot-only convictions; coupled with municipal policies, Wisconsin has, in effect, decriminalized marijuana.

