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Biographies

Harold Demsetz

1930-2019

Harold Demsetz made major contributions to the economics of property rights and to the economics of industrial organization. He also coined the term “the Nirvana approach.” Economists have altered it slightly but use it widely. Demsetz was one of the few top economists of his era to communicate almost entirely in w...

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Corporations and Financial Markets

Industrial Concentration

By William F. Shughart II

“ Industrial concentration” refers to a structural characteristic of the business sector. It is the degree to which production in an industry—or in the economy as a whole—is dominated by a few large firms. Once assumed to be a symptom of “market failure,” concentration is, for the most part, seen no...

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Corporations and Financial Markets

Capital Gains Taxes

By Stephen Moore

What Is Capital? The term “capital” refers to produced goods used to produce future goods. Even a corner lemonade stand could not exist without capital; the lemons and the stand are the essential capital that makes the enterprise operate. A recent study by Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University discovered that a...

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Biographies

James J. Heckman

1944-

  In 2000, James Heckman, along with daniel mcfadden, received the Nobel Prize in economics. Heckman won the prize for “his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples,” highly technical work that it is difficult to explain to the layman. Nevertheless, the work rewarded by th...

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Taxes

Progressive Taxes

By Joel Slemrod

If, as Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, taxes are the price we pay for civilized society, then the progressivity of taxes largely determines how that price varies among individuals. A progressive tax structure is one in which an individual or family's tax liability as a fraction of income rises with income. If, for exa...

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CEE

Program Trading

By Dean Furbush

Program trading, the subject of considerable controversy in recent years, is the simultaneous trading of a portfolio of stocks, as opposed to buying or selling just one stock at a time. The New York Stock Exchange defines program trading as any trade involving fifteen or more stocks with an aggregate value in excess of...

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Biographies

William F. Sharpe

1934-

  In 1990 American economists William F. Sharpe, harry markowitz, and merton h. miller shared the Nobel Prize “for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics.” Their early contributions established financial economics as a separate field of study. In the 1960s Sharpe, taking off fr...

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