The Mercatus Center provides comparison information on the fiscal performance of state governments. For this case, access the Mercatus Center at https://mercatus.org.

Required

a. What is the Mercatus Center?

b. On the drop-down menu under Research, select State by State and then click on a state of interest to you, and click on the Fiscal Ranking button to answer the following:

1. What was the fiscal ranking for the state you selected?

2. What are the five categories on which the state’s fiscal health is ranked?

3. Based on the rankings, what factors, if any, are the strongest for the state? The weakest?

4. Analyze the trends for the ratios identified on the graphs.