Economics

Archive for Economics

Further Thoughts on the Minimum Wage

Daniel Kuehn repeated a statement from an Economix blog post, saying that, “In fact, in 2000 only 46 percent of American Economic Association members agreed with the idea that the minimum wage increases unemployment.” That struck me as inconceivable. I could *possibly* believe that as of 2000, only 46% of AEA members thought the minimum […]

I Get Empirical on Minimum Wage

So Paul Krugman et al. are telling us that the empirical literature shows that minimum wage laws don’t have a discernible impact on teen unemployment. Yet another right-winger myth flushed down the toilet. I went and looked at the paper Krugman says documents this fact. I was a little concerned because it seemed to be […]

Two Views on Minimum Wage Hikes

(This post is taken from the heavy lifting David R. Henderson performed.) Here’s an economist talking about the textbook view of the minimum wage, and how we should take the (in)famous Card & Krueger results with a grain of salt: So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell […]

Thoughts on President Obama’s SOTU Call for a $9 Minimum Wage

Nothing earth-shattering here. As I explained on Facebook, I mostly made this because my last 5 video uploads were karaoke.

Paul Krugman’s Eyes Are Smiling

In this post, Krugman takes Marco Rubio to task for claiming that government deficits crowd out private investment. Amongst his points, Krugman produces the following scatter plot: …and then comments, “Contractionary policy has proved contractionary.” Wait a second. Look at that chart. Even on its own terms, it’s not nearly as obvious as Krugman makes […]

Potpourri

==> I make a modest point about fracking and federalism. ==> Simon Lester thinks Krugman is up to no good on his post about protectionism, but I don’t really have a dog in that fight. BTW, my Krugman takedowns are still coming, I’m just digging myself out of a pile of stuff. ==> Consumers are […]

An Odd Proposal to Tax Oil, From the CFR

In this IER post I take on a new paper (published through the Council on Foreign Relations) to impose a $50/barrel tax on crude oil. Some excerpts: The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) recently released a study by Daniel Ahn and Michael Levi showing how a new tax on oil—which would ultimately raise pump prices […]

Potpourri

==> Murray Sabrin has been our man in Cuba. Here’s an article in a series of posts on his visit. ==> Jerry O’Driscoll doesn’t heart Bernanke. ==> John Papola also caught something that I noticed about the Stiglitz/Krugman exchange (on inequality): Stiglitz quite explicitly said that low consumption spending was the reason for our recession, […]