EconLog Archive
Austrian Economics
Competition as a Process
In one of the sessions of the one-day colloquium on Harold Demsetz, moderator Harry DeAngelo asked Joe Kalt, Bob Topel, and me to reminisce about Harold as a person and also about his contributions to us and to economics. In response to one of Harry DeAngelo’s questions (at the 3:07:00 point,) Joe Kalt answered that .. MORE
Regulation and Subsidies
This Will Likely End Badly
Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, the two bloggers at Marginal Revolution, are rightly impressed with GiveDirectly. In a post yesterday, Alex points out that four economists started GiveDirectly. That’s figuratively putting their money where their economists’ mouths are because economists tend to believe that the most efficient way to help people is to give them .. MORE
Energy, Environment, Resources
Global warming: Are both sides wrong?
Many progressives view global warming as a looming catastrophe, justifying a major change in our lifestyle. Some conservatives regard global warming as a hoax. Most [conservatives], however, acknowledge its reality, while arguing that economic models often show only a very modest hit to global GDP over the next century. (Large in dollar terms but quite .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Is there a case for higher inflation?
I recently ran across a couple of tweets that look at the pros and cons of inflation. This one seems to accept the Philips Curve as a way of framing the issue: This one opposes higher inflation: I am not a fan of either tweet. It’s true that using monetary policy to suddenly move inflation .. MORE
Uncategorized
All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men – The Genoa Conference and the Gold Standard
A century ago, many of the world’s great statesmen gathered in the Italian city of Genoa to build a monetary order for the post-war world. Before 1914, the world’s leading economies had been on the classical gold standard. This was based on convertibility between paper money and gold at a fixed parity price and the .. MORE
Central Planning
Biden’s Short-termism Not Surprising
President Biden’s attack on oil refiners illustrates why efficient government economic planning is impossible, including and perhaps especially in a democratic regime. Except if he is a saint or if he is restrained by strong moral principles and a binding political philosophy, a democratic ruler focuses on the next election—or, at best, on the next .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
Why so glum?
The economy is booming, with unemployment near a 50-year low. Yes, there is high inflation, but NGDP is up 10.6% over the past 4 quarters, easily outpacing the rate of inflation. Nonetheless, the public feels horrible: US consumer sentiment plunged in early June to the lowest on record [since 1978] as soaring inflation continued to .. MORE
Economic Growth
Wonderful Consequences of Economic Growth
In a nine-minute video, Swedish statistician Hans Rosling, who died in 2017, shows just how dramatic the washing machine was to his family. It freed his mother to do other things and his grandmother found it so fascinating that she just sat and watched it perform its tasks. In one of my classes at the .. MORE
Media Watch
What happened to good news?
Last year, Matt Yglesias did a post suggesting that all news is bad news. Allowing for hyperbole, I think that’s roughly true. But I recall a time when it was not true, when much of the news was good. To be fair, Yglesias is mostly considering a certain type of popular headline news, which has .. MORE
Energy, Environment, Resources
Do General Subsidies Substantially Increase Demand for Energy?
In yesterday’s (June 15) print edition of the Wall Street Journal, economists Mickey D. Levy and Charles I. Plosser, in “Inflation Demands Bold Fed Action,” write: Strikingly, many [state and local governments] are now providing financial subsidies to offset higher gasoline costs, which may buy votes for local elected officials but also contributes to .. MORE
Austrian Economics
Border Militarization and Austrian Capital Theory
I recently appeared on a couple of different podcasts to discuss U.S. Border Militarization and Foreign Policy: A Symbiotic Relationship, a paper that Chris Coyne and I recently published in the Economics of Peace and Security Journal. Caleb Brown interviewed me about the paper on the Cato Daily Podcast. This was a short nine-minute discussion .. MORE
Moral Reasoning
The woke are feeding on themselves
As with the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the radicalism of the woke movement will end up destroying itself. In yesterday’s post, I half-jokingly suggested that maybe the movement is being funded by a right wing billionaire. Today, I encountered a long article at The Intercept by Ryan Grim that makes a similar point: Another leader [of .. MORE
Finance
Is the Fed Likely to Go Bankrupt?
Last month, Arnold Kling caught my attention with his profoundly pessimistic and, I thought, reasonably plausible argument that the Fed could go bankrupt. But I don’t follow Fed balance sheets the way my friend Jeff Hummel, an outstanding monetary economist, does. So I asked him what he thought. Jeff gave me a detailed answer, which .. MORE
Macroeconomics
The Fed knew
David Beckworth has a very interesting podcast with George Selgin. This exchange caught my eye: Beckworth: Well, I was about to say we now provide a forecasted nominal GDP gap series, which is nice because it actually comes out on a monthly basis. It’s a forecast of a quarterly series, nominal GDP. But every month, .. MORE
Free Markets
The EU Government Looks to a Beacon of Protectionism
Even if it was often more wishful thinking than unambiguous reality, it used to be that American economic freedom was a (classical) liberal model that many other world governments hoped to imitate or at least felt obliged to offer excuses for not following. Now, it seems, the situation is clearer: America is becoming a dirigiste .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Hooper on Chudov on Vaccines Against Variants
On May 18, in response to a May 16 post by Igor Chudov titled “’Vaccine Against Variants’ is Impossible and Will Endanger the Naturally Immune,” my friend and co-author Charley Hooper wrote: Chudov presented two main points. First, creating a vaccine to address many of the SARS-CoV-2 variants will be difficult, if not impossible. Second, .. MORE
Liberty
Bolsonaro and Trump: Are Elections Important?
In a constitutional democracy, elections are important, but not for the reasons that supporters of unlimited democracy think they are. Reflecting on this is useful in the context of the January 6 House Committee and of recent declarations by the president of Brazil, Jail Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro fears losing the upcoming election in Brazil and suggests .. MORE
Price Controls
Economists’ Views on Price Controls: The Good News and the Bad
Chicago Booth’s “Initiative on Global Markets” (IGM) occasionally publishes the responses of fairly well-known economists at prestigious schools on various public policy issues. On June 7, IGM published responses on the topic of price gouging. It asked 2 questions. I’ll discuss the first and the answers to the first. Question A: It would serve the US .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Supply is more elastic than you think
In the comment section after my previous post, Garrett provided another nice example of how America’s doctors are making us sick: My wife (early 30s) caught covid a few weeks ago. She noticed a scratchy throat on a Sunday night after we’d been out for dinner Friday night, and by that Tuesday she was bedridden .. MORE