Economics

Archive for Economics

Unemployment Benefits: The Government Gets What It Pays For

My latest article at FEE. An excerpt: Just about everyone agrees that incentives affect behavior, but economists really mean it. That’s because economists take the logic of incentives further than most other people are willing to. Such analysis often reveals that government policies have unintended consequences that seem shocking to the average person. The list […]

Murphy vs. Krauthammer on Gas Tax

My latest at IER. For you folks, here’s the part I want to highlight: First, let’s use a trick from the minimum wage debate, which I’m sure Krauthammer and other Fox contributors will appreciate. When a progressive says how great boosting the minimum wage to (say) $10/hour would be, the easiest way to show the […]

A Defense of Surge Pricing

I’m not defending the company Uber per se, but in my latest FEE article I walk through the logic of surge pricing. An excerpt: The wonderful thing about our smartphone age is that the dynamic pricing isn’t merely limited to a particular night, but can vary even in half-hour intervals. For example, Uber emailed its […]

Ultra Magness and Optimus Murphy Fight Piketty

Phil Magness (GMU historian) and I have a working paper up, critiquing the empirical contribution of Thomas Piketty’s bestseller. If you religiously follow this blog, the stuff I added to the paper won’t be new, but when you combine it with what Phil dug up, I think it’s pretty compelling. If you have serious questions […]

Does Government Spending Boost the Economy?

At the Freeman I take on the recent Business Insider article. An excerpt: Edwards seems to think that the above chart shows at least a correlation between government spending and economic growth. After all, he wrote that the BEA chart “seems to show that government has a pretty straightforward effect on GDP.” But as Scott Sumner […]

Ecclesiastes Doesn’t Exactly Endorse Hedonistic Economics

The book of Ecclesiastes (reputedly written by Solomon though some dispute this) is pretty depressing at times. From Chapter 1: 12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has […]

Every Citizen Must Know Basic Economics

Near the end of his treatise on economics, Ludwig von Mises wrote: There is no means by which anyone can evade his personal responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a self-appointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon […]

Self-Serve Registers

In a fit of self-loathing, I decided to walk to the Hardee’s near my office for dinner. I had heard some fast food restaurants were installing self-service registers, but this was my first time seeing them: The really ingenious thing is that Hardee’s would knock 10% off the price if you used the screen. […]