CBO's Oil Price Forecasting Record: Working Paper 2020-03

Oil prices are one of the economic variables that underlie CBO's projections of the federal budget. This paper describes CBO's methods to forecast oil prices and evaluates the quality of the agency's historical forecasts.

Income-Driven Repayment Plans for Student Loans: Working Paper 2020-02

Learn how CBO projects the budgetary cost of student loans repaid through income-driven plans. This working paper provides information on the characteristics of borrowers in those plans and on the methods used to project borrowers’ earnings, repayment, and resulting forgiveness.

A Simplified Model of How Macroeconomic Changes Affect the Federal Budget: Working Paper 2020-01

CBO uses the budgetary feedback model (BFM) to estimate how changes in the macroeconomy might affect the federal budget. This paper describes how the BFM is constructed, how it is used in CBO's dynamic analyses, and the model's limitations.

A Summary of Selected CBO Reports on Cash and Accrual Budgeting: Working Paper 2019-09

The costs of federal activities are recorded in the budget mostly on a cash basis. Using accrual accounting for retirement and insurance programs would accelerate the recognition of long-term costs and display the expected costs of new commitments when they were incurred.

CBO’s Medicare Beneficiary Cost-Sharing Model: A Technical Description: Working Paper 2019-08

CBO uses a model to estimate the federal budgetary effects of proposed changes to the cost-sharing structure of the Medicare fee-for-service program. This paper describes that model, the analyses it can support, and an illustrative option for changing Medicare’s cost-sharing structure.

Inflation, Inflation Expectations, and the Phillips Curve: Working Paper 2019-07

This paper studies the current state of inflation dynamics using a Phillips curve model, assesses the degree of anchoring of inflation expectations, and analyzes the sensitivity of inflation to cyclical fluctuations of economic conditions.

The Effect of the Employer Match and Defaults on Federal Workers’ Savings Behavior in the Thrift Savings Plan: Working Paper 2019-06

This paper develops an empirical model to forecast the effects on employee contribution rates and on employer costs if the federal government changed the employer match or the default contribution rate for participants in the Thrift Savings Plan.

The Effect of Tax-Motivated Transfer Pricing on U.S. Aggregate Trade Statistics: Working Paper 2019-05

In this working paper, CBO analyzes how corporate income tax rates affect flows of trade between the affiliates of multinationals—known as related-party trade—to examine whether transfer prices are sensitive to tax differentials.

Sources and Preparation of Data Used in HISIM2—CBO’s Health Insurance Simulation Model: Working Paper 2019-04

CBO developed a new version its health insurance simulation model, HISIM2, including using new sources of input data. This paper describes the new input data and the methods for adjusting and adding to those data to form the sample used in HISIM2.

How Do Changes in Medical Malpractice Liability Laws Affect Health Care Spending and the Federal Budget? Working Paper 2019-03

Updating its approach to estimating the effects of changes to medical malpractice liability laws on federal spending, CBO explains how and why the modeling is changing and offers a preliminary estimate of the budgetary effects.