Economics

Archive for Economics

I Agree With Krugman in Both Spirit and Letter

You think I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. I really like this post where Krugman argues: In my field there is indeed a problem with abstruseness, with the many academics who never even try to put their thoughts in plain language. And what is the nature of that problem? It’s not that laypeople don’t understand […]

Supply & Demand

For my Mises Academy class I got stuck on a runway in Little Rock, and missed the live lecture, which was to be on Supply & Demand. Since it’s such a timeless topic, I decided to make the lecture publicly available by hosting them at my YouTube channel. For convenience I’ve broken the lecture up […]

India’s Child Labor Ban: Can Someone Draw Me a Picture?

James Schneider, the new guy at EconLog, has an interesting post on an unintended consequence: Some take it as a matter of faith that increasing taxes will dull people’s desire to work. However, higher taxes can sometimes cause people to work more. When higher taxes reduce the after-tax wage, people are poorer for any given […]

Awkward: CBO More Than Doubles Estimate of Negative Employment Effect of “ObamaCare”

[UPDATE below.] At Mises Canada I explain the CBO’s new report that has people guffawing. Note: Please be careful in how you cite their analysis; it’s not really accurate to say, “CBO says ObamaCare will destroy 2 million jobs!” (Don’t get me wrong, it may very well do just that, but my point is, that’s […]

My EconLib Article on the Minimum Wage Debate

Learn it, live it, love it. The key graph, with my commentary: In Figure 1 below, for diagrammatic simplicity, I assume that the initial market-clearing wage for low-skilled labor is $7.25 per hour. At this $7.25 wage rate, two million workers have jobs. Then, the federal government imposes a wage floor of $10.10 per hour. […]

The Kronies

I had seen this floating around, but never thought it would be worth my time to click. But a buddy emailed it to me directly, and yep, it’s pretty funny.

Regression Pitfalls: Why Growth Rate versus Level Could Be Crucial

Daniel Kuehn and I have been reading a lot of the major papers in the minimum wage debate. (I had asked Daniel if he would be willing to work through these papers with me, since this is his area and [given our different political perspectives] I wanted to make sure I was being fair to […]

Peter Schiff on The Daily Show

On Facebook, I see libertarians are blasting Schiff for walking into an obvious trap. Give me a break, kids: If Samantha Bee wants to interview me tomorrow about private defense agencies, I’m saying “yes.” You don’t turn down the Daily Show. The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook