Economics

Archive for Economics

Time for Bryan Caplan to Give Rothbard Another Look

Alex Tabarrok has a post explaining that (government) water systems have been bad on lead contamination for a century; it’s not just an isolated problem in Flint. There’s no way I can talk about this without sounding like a punk, so I simply remind everyone of Bryan Caplan’s EconLog post from 2014 entitled “Why Do […]

Pareto Big Macs

David R. Henderson has a nice post hitting on the sunk cost fallacy in typical discussions over drug pricing. You can see in the comments though that I think this is a trickier topic than perhaps David realizes. (Or, alternatively, David doesn’t realize how much clearer his thinking is on this than the average person’s.) […]

My Take on “The Big Short”

Since there was a lag before this review would run, I focused on the role of the ratings agencies. An excerpt: The Big Short leads viewers to believe that shortsighted greed is the ultimate explanation for why the ratings agencies gave their blessing to dangerous products. In one scene, a woman working for a major […]

Powerball and the Lucas Critique

I realize a few commentators gave a nod to this consideration, but I don’t think they realized just how critical it is. An excerpt: To see the point, suppose the Powerball official jackpot somehow rose to $1.3 trillion, with a lump-sum payout of $806 billion. Running through the same calculations as above, we might get […]

Santa Needs Market Prices

Wow, it’s a good thing my latest FEE article is running in December. Otherwise it would just be weird.

Trying to Pass the Market Monetarist Turing Test

[UPDATE below.] Suppose someone asks you, “What was the stance of US monetary policy in mid-1980? Pretend you are a Market Monetarist answering.” BOB TRYING TO PASS AS A MARKET MONETARIST: First thing, we would not look at interest rates; that is a totally misleading indicator. As Sumner tells us in this post, “Interest rates […]

Star Trek and Economics

My latest at FEE. C’mon click it, they put up a cool photo of Kirk & Co.

Monetary Policy Views Applied to a Thermostat

If you’re trying to understand why I made this post, all I can say is that Scott Sumner went down this road. You wanna get nuts!? Come on! Let’s get nuts! * * * The curtain rises, showing six nerds in a house, all shivering and breath visibly coming out of their nostrils. BEN: While […]