EconLog Archive
Energy, Environment, Resources
Conservation Through Capitalism
I recently stumbled across a news story that highlights something about capitalism and the profit motive that is underappreciated by the very people who most loudly clamor for it – the conservation of resources. Capitalism doesn’t merely incentivize maximizing output – it also incentivizes minimizing the use of inputs as well. If you want to .. MORE
Political Economy
Some Lessons from a Just War Fought Unjustly
The horrible “unintentional” murder of seven aid workers in Gaza carries many lessons. One is the importance of signaling the moral principles that are expected to be followed. One week after the barbaric attack against Israeli civilians, I wrote: The basic individualist ethic nurtured by Western civilization rejects group identities and tribal intuitions that justify .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
Milei’s Message to the World
The first few months of Javier Milei’s administration have already had major consequences in Argentina as the country has started to move away from years of leftist, failed economic policies. This is of course relevant to Argentines, who were the ones who actually suffered because of their country’s dismal economic situation. But the interest that .. MORE
Labor Market
“All the new jobs are going to immigrants”
Language can be quite ambiguous. The quotation in the title of this blog could be viewed as being either true or false, depending on how one defines certain words. Consider the graph shown in this tweet by Matt Yglesias: It shows an increase of employment of slightly over 2 million (in green), with almost all .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
My Weekly Reading for April 8, 2024
I’m at the Association for Private Enterprise Education (APEE) meetings in Last Vegas and my weekly reading roundup has been delayed by a day. Don’t Blame Decriminalization for Oregon Drug Deaths by Jacob Sullum, Reason, May 2024. Excerpt: In March, Oregon legislators overwhelmingly approved recriminalization of low-level drug possession, reversing a landmark reform that voters .. MORE
Price Controls
An Added Perversity of the $8 Cap on Late Fees
Co-blogger Vance Ginn has nicely laid out some of the perverse, probably unintended, but definitely foreseeable, consequences of the federal government’s proposed $8 cap on the amount that credit card companies are allowed to charge credit card holders when they are late on a payment. I want to point out two other consequences, both of .. MORE
Economic History
The Miners’ Strike
The Miner’s Strike is one of the most controversial events in modern British history. One version is that Margaret Thatcher sought the conflict, prosecuted it ruthlessly, and destroyed a viable industry to crush the powerful National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The truth is very different. The British coal industry peaked just before World War One, .. MORE
Media Watch
Public Choice vs. Homo Politicus
Old habits of thought are difficult to shred. Public choice theory entered economics three quarters of a century ago, but many analysts and journalists have barely noticed. A Financial Times column is a case in point (Gillian Tett, “Snickers Wars Reveal the Enduring Perversity of Human Behaviour,” April 4, 224): First, business competition does not .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Which Price Indices are Most Useful?
I don’t believe that it makes sense to speak of the true rate of inflation. After all, no one seems to know what inflation is supposed to be measuring. Some economists might argue that it represents the increase in pay you’d need so that you are not worse off in terms of utility. But what .. MORE
Politics and Economics
Biden’s War on Credit
Through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Biden administration has proposed a regulation to cap how much credit card companies can charge us when we’re late on a payment to just $8. This sounds great on the surface, right? Lower fees mean less stress when we’re struggling to make ends meet, as inflation-adjusted average .. MORE
International Trade
Biden’s Economists Are Pretty Decent on Free Trade
When economists are polled on whether free trade creates net benefits for an economy, the vast majority, sometimes over 90 percent, answer that it does. Politicians, though, are another story. In 2018, President Trump proudly called himself “tariff man” and was true to the label: he imposed many tariffs on imports, even though .. MORE
Adam Smith
Taboo Your Words, Political Philosophy Edition
Running the risk of retreading old ground, I wanted to talk one more time about how definitions can be either clarifying or misleading, depending on how they are used. In my first foray into this area, I briefly mentioned Eliezer Yudkowsky’s essay Taboo Your Words, where Yudkowsky suggests people replace words with descriptions of the .. MORE
Economics of Crime
The Road to Serfdom
The housing sector in Irvine, California is booming, partly due to an inflow of investment from China. When I ask Chinese acquaintances where the money comes from, they suggest that it is transferred to the US through mysterious channels. Commenter Ahmed Fares directed me to a Daily Mail story that sheds light on one such .. MORE
Taxation
Missouri Voters Vote Against Wealth Redistribution
At EconLog, I often catalogue and criticize government measures that reduce our freedom and hurt our economy. So it’s nice when I can report on a recent vote that went the other way: a vote to reduce the role of government in our economy. On Tuesday, April 2, voters in Jackson County, Missouri voted, by .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
Nothing New Thing Under the Sun: Prohibition, Drugs and the Iron Law
Some time ago, roughly four years, I began this series on how drug prohibition only serves to create the public health crisis that such policies are supposed to mitigate. Of course, I never intended for such a large period to lapse between my last article and this one, but I suppose it is a nice .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
The Dangers of Milei’s Bi-Monetarism
The topic of dollarization sparked controversy during Argentina’s presidential campaign. Javier Milei, the current president, pledged to dollarize, grabbing international media attention. He even announced that Emilio Ocampo, my co-author on the dollarization proposal for Argentina, would lead the central bank, hinting at a possible dollarization and closure of the institution. However, as the elections .. MORE
Law and Economics
Decriminalization Doesn’t Solve the Problem
The Economist has a major article discussing the fentanyl crisis. This graph has some discouraging data: I knew about the horrific fentanyl data, but was surprised to see the huge increase in cocaine deaths. I doubt that cocaine usage has increased that dramatically in recent years. Instead, I suspect that cocaine use has become much .. MORE
Competition
Bills on the Sidewalk
There’s an old joke about economists that usually goes along these lines: Two economists are walking down the street. One of them says “Look, there’s a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk!” The other economist says “No there’s not. If there was, someone would have picked it up already.” There are a few ways to interpret .. MORE
Energy, Environment, Resources
The Farce of Clean Energy Dumping
I did not find in the quoted words of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen the exact expression “clean energy dumping” to attack inexpensive Chinese exports of clean-energy goods (solar panels, EVs, and such). But when giving her speech at solar cell producer Suniva, she did say “flooding the market,” which means the same. And that’s how .. MORE
Central Planning
My Weekly Reading for March 31, 2024
FDA Aims To Stifle Medical Innovation Again By Ronald Bailey, Reason, April 2024. Excerpt: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that massively screwed up COVID-19 testing now wants to apply its vast bureaucratic acumen to all other laboratory developed tests (LDTs). By insisting on its recondite approval procedures, the FDA at the beginning of the pandemic stymied .. MORE
Liberty
The World We’ve Lost
I finally got around to reading Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, and I found it to be even better than its reputation. It’s not just a memoir; it’s also a brilliant example of social science. While Zweig is aware that the pre-1914 world had many flaws, he mourns the freedoms that had been lost .. MORE