Economics

Archive for Economics

Mario Rizzo’s Ludwig Lachmann Impression

There’s some other stuff about Israel Kirzner in here you might find interesting, but in yet another contribution, the wry von Pepe points us to 45:00 in this video:

Minimum Wage Analysis: Killing Econ 101 Via the Magic of Econometrics

I tried working my way through the Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) paper that I think is a good representative of the “latest research” that allegedly overturns the old consensus. Now that I am pretty sure I know what happened, I have to say that if these results are allowed to guide the debate, then […]

Ben Powell on the Minimum Wage, and Question From Uncle Bob

I hadn’t yet read this Ben Powell HuffPo piece on the minimum wage issue. A lot of it we have already seen before, but he gave some interesting facts I didn’t know. Yet here’s something that is really bothering me in our discussions. Ben writes: Informed apologists for minimum wage laws often cite David Card […]

Memories of Armen Alchian

Arman Alchien is one of those economists–like Wicksteed–that I would read a lot more of, if I were on a deserted island. (That’s a compliment to them, and a criticism of myself.) He recently died, as most of you know, and so a lot of people who knew him were giving their appreciations. One of […]

Others on the Minimum Wage

==> David R. Henderson writes a neat summary and critique of the Card & Krueger work. (Daniel Kuehn doesn’t get it.) In the comments, Bill Woolsey leaves a fantastic summary of the various issues. ==> Don Boudreaux says that if we can raise employment costs by 24% with no dire effect on employment, would it […]

More on the Minimum Wage

Some people thought I was reacting to comments on this blog, but actually, I am reacting to the peanut gallery on Facebook. I.e. I’m not here trying to convince a mainstream economist, rather I’m trying to convince someone who is sympathetic to Rothbardianism but thinks college professors don’t know what it’s like on the streetz.

Landsburg Frames the Minimum Wage Debate Very Strangely

Ahh, it seems Steve Landsburg is no longer cuddly. Instead of worrying about the unskilled inframarginal workers, he is now concerned about upper middle class college kids working at Wendy’s on their summer breaks. There’s nothing wrong with Steve’s post as far as it goes, but it would be like Obama proposing to increase the […]

Even More Thoughts on the Minimum Wage

I am still in a mild state of shock that so many professional economists apparently doubt that demand curves slope downward. I admit upfront that I have not spent more than an hour or so looking through the latest literature reviews on the topic. Nonetheless, I remain unrepentant: I think increasing the price of unskilled […]