Economics

Archive for Economics

Potpourri

==> If you’re interested in the economics of climate change, I throw out some factoids in this blog post that may surprise you. ==> Somebody asked me to find this (I had cited it in my Rothbard study guide), so I thought I’d relay it to y’all: It’s a wonderful essay by Bohm-Bawerk that includes […]

Tucker Interviews Murphy on Illusion of Wealth

Laissez-Faire Books has released a new volume with excerpts of Mises talking about the business cycle. (Specifically, we went through Human Action and grabbed what the reader would need to fully understand the Austrian business cycle theory.) Here’s the interview about it. My son video-bombs us around 8:15.

The Real Tragedy

The sadistic von Pepe sends me this Tyler Cowen post: NGDP in Cyprus It seems to be falling: Luscious strawberries – €3.50 a box on Monday – are now €1.45. The prices of other perishables have also plummeted. “People are buying only what they needed.” No one knows how telephone, water and electricity bills paid […]

My Modest Proposal on the EPI Study

In case you folks are curious, the reason I’m focusing so much on DK’s position is that I think he is representative of a large fraction of self-described progressives. So I really want to push people on this, because I think this EPI study and Sen. Warren’s remarks are ludicrous (unless their point was to […]

A Different Explanation of the “Productivity” and Wage Divergence

I have not read a single word from the EPI paper claiming that if the minimum wage had followed “productivity growth” it would now be $22/hour, so everything I am writing in this blog post is predicated on Daniel Kuehn’s interpretation being sound. Having said that, consider the following fable: In 1968, a nation of […]

Potpourri

==> Some of you may have heard of the ethanol “blend wall.” In brief, the US government is literally requiring gasoline refiners to do contradictory things: One regulation insists they make the gas content higher than 10 percent ethanol, while another regulation forbids them from doing so. My colleague Mary Hutzler was the lead author […]

Was the Iraq Invasion “About Oil”?

This is a great question, and David R. Henderson’s answer is what I would say. The only difference is, I am less confident that it is right, as compared to David’s apparent confidence. Here’s what he said: [W]as the second war against Iraq about oil? In a sense it was, and in a sense it […]

Progressives Call Our Bluff on Minimum Wage

You know how some of us knee-jerk libertarians were scolded–by friends and foes alike–for saying, “Well gee Mr. President, if raising the minimum wage to $9/hour is a good idea, why not $20 or $100?” Well now we’re getting dangerously close to this. There’s now a video floating around the Intertubes, praised by progressive pundits […]