The Department of Defense (DoD) submitted the Navy's 2015 shipbuilding plan, which covers fiscal years 2015 to 2044, to the Congress in July 2014.1 The total costs of carrying out the 2015 plan-an average of about $21 bil-lion in 2014 dollars per year over the next 30 years-would be one-third higher than the funding amounts that the Navy has received in recent decades, the Con-gressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. The Navy's 2015 shipbuilding plan is very similar, but not identical, to its 2014 plan with respect to the Navy's total inventory goal for battle force ships, the number and...

The federal government, through laws and regulations, sometimes imposes requirements-known as federal mandates-on state, local, and tribal governments and entities in the private sector to achieve national goals. In 1995, lawmakers enacted the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) in part to ensure that, during the legislative process, the Congress receives information about the potential effects of mandates as it considers proposed legis-lation. To that end, UMRA requires the Congressional Budget Office, at certain stages in the legislative process, to assess the cost of mandates that would...

Freight transport plays a key role in the economy. Over the past several decades, as the U.S. economy and the role of international trade have grown, freight shipping activity has increased substantially. That activity has been accompanied by a considerable amount of public and private spending on the highway and rail infrastructure that supports it. The economic returns from such investments depend on the public and private value of the activities they support, including freight transport. The returns will be higher to the extent that investments are based on accurate information about...

This analysis is preliminary and results are subject to change. - By 2075, climate change and coastal development cause expected damage to be five times greater than today(measured in 2015 dollars). - Likely range is three times to eight times greater - The economy in 2075 is projected to be nearly four times larger than it is today. - In combination, climate change and coastal development cause damage to increase more rapidly than GDP. - In contrast, damage due only to coastal development grows more slowly than GDP.

Carbon dioxide and other atmospheric gases--the so-called "greenhouse gases"-trap some of the sun's heat near the Earth, creating the climatic conditions that make life possible. Some investigators believe that rising concentrations of these gases, largely resulting from human activities, may cause an increase in the Earth's average temperatures that could have severe economic and ecological effects. Although there is great uncertainty about the extent to which such global warming is likely to occur, what its effects might be, and the costs of efforts to slow the progress of warming, the...

This paper models the production of energy from shale resources and examines the outlook for that production. Four key regions account for most U.S. oil from shale. Drilling activity in those regions is modeled as operating along an elastic supply curve, which has drifted down over time as mining productivity has improved. The elastic response of production to prices is gradual, making production insensitive to prices in the short run but quite sensitive within two to three years. That model, coupled with a forecast of crude oil prices that the Congressional Budget Office published in January...