EconLog Archive
Macroeconomics
Corporate Profits
In the comments on other posts, I have seen questions addressed to me about “excessive corporate profits.” I am going to answer this question in very basic terms. The way that national income accounting works, we have: net private saving = government deficit + trade surplus That is always true, just as 4 = 2 .. MORE
Growth: Consequences
Great Out the Gate?
At the Kauffman Foundation econ bloggers’ conference, Tyler Cowen repeated his novel argument about CPI bias. As he puts it in The Great Stagnation: In fact, income measures are most likely to understate growth during times when a lot of new goods are introduced into the marketplace or made more widely available, such as during .. MORE
Politics and Economics
Morning WaPo
Two items caught my attention. 1. A front-page story on the prospects for requiring higher down payments on mortgages. The story is all about how horrible this would be. It makes extensive use of quotes from an organization called the Center for Responsible Lending, which is an Orwellian name. The story does not say that .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
NCH Watch
Mark Whitehouse of the WSJ blog writes, Annual public and private health-care spending in the U.S. stands at $7,538 per person, 2.41 times the OECD average and 51% more than the second-biggest spender, Norway. Meanwhile, average U.S. life expectancy is 77.9 years, less than the OECD average of 79.4. Gaze at the chart he includes. .. MORE
Family Economics
Is Capitalism Pro-Kid?
I’m pro-capitalism and pro-kid, and I’d like the two to be complementary. So I have to smile when Corinne Maier, author of No Kid: 40 Good Reasons Not To Have Children, blames capitalism (plus the French government) for high birth rates: Maier’s concern is that no one is doing anything to temper the idealised view .. MORE
Politics and Economics
Recommended Reading
1. Bryan’s 40 aphorisms. 2. The latest Robin Hanson aphorism. many economically-puzzling regulations and policy inclinations tend to make everyone act like high status folks act, regardless of how appropriate that is for their situation. I think that describes the drive for universal health insurance and universal college education. High-status people want to spend their .. MORE
Labor Market
Child Labor vs. Child Slavery
In his comment on my post on child labor, Ryan Chamberlain argues against child labor, emphasizing child slavery, as if I had advocated child slavery. This is truly strange, given that I wrote: In other words, school goes beyond child labor. It is forced child labor. So I thought it would be clear to readers .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
40 Things I Learned in My First 40 Years
Today I turn 40. To ease the pain, I’ve decided to write a list of important lessons I’ve learned during my first four decades. In no particular order: Economics 1. Supply-and-demand solves countless mysteries of the world – everything from rent control to road congestion. 2. Almost anyone can understand supply-and-demand if they calmly listen. .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Michael Huemer Profile
Don’t miss this great profile of my favorite living philosopher, the noble Michael Huemer of the University of Colorado. Intro: Michael Huemer asks his students to imagine being a neighborhood vigilante. Suppose, he says, you live in a crime-ridden neighborhood, and nothing’s being done about it. So you hunt down criminals and lock them in .. MORE
Public Choice Theory
Tiebout Question from My Graduate Public Choice Midterm
Here’s the most open-ended question I included on last week’s Graduate Public Choice midterm: Suppose four states engage in Tiebout competition for a population that looks exactly like the current population of the United States. What are the main differences between populations of the four states likely to be? What are the main policy differences .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Why Not Health Care Austerity?
Like Arnold, I just read Kotlikoff’s plan to reform American health care. I realize that my first-best proposal – separation of health and state – has almost zero political support. But I’d still like to know why Kotlikoff ignores a far simpler and more reliable reform: Austerity. As I’ve argued before: Instead of pushing for .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
If Economists Designed Health Policy
They would come up with something like this. 1. All Americans receive a voucher each year to purchase a standard plan from the private-plan provider of their choice. 2. Vouchers are individually risk-adjusted; those with higher expected healthcare costs, based on documented medical conditions, receive larger vouchers. 3. Participating insurance companies providing standard plans cannot .. MORE
Labor Market
Anti-Child Labor or Anti-Market?
Robin Hanson has an excellent post on child labor that co-blogger Bryan Caplan has cited. I think Robin doesn’t go far enough, though, in one respect. He points out that tiger moms often force their kids to do things that, to us great unwashed, look a lot like child labor, but without pay. He doesn’t .. MORE
Labor Market
What would Scott Sumner Say?
Patricia Minczeski writes on the WSJ blog, U.S. wages as measured in the Labor Department’s employment report have been largely stagnant over the past few months, despite improvements in the job market. In fact, many industries saw more wage growth during the recession than during the recovery. I imagine that Scott Sumner would suggest looking .. MORE
Economic Methods
What I’m Reading
A review copy of Markets on Trial: The Economic Sociology of the US Financial Crisis, edited by Michael Lounsbury and Paul M. Hirsch. One of the essays, by Ezra Zuckerman, says, sociologists’ opposition to neoclassical economics generally, and to the EMH [efficient markets hypothesis] in particular, suggests two reasons to suspect that we might be .. MORE
Economics and Culture
Genetics, Politics, Culture, and the Future
On Facebook, I opined that boosting libertarians’ Total Fertility Rate to 3 is the most realistic long-run path to liberty. The underlying assumption is that political philosophy, libertarianism included, is fairly heritable. Will Wilkinson then presented an interesting objection: Even if personality is passed along genetically, and personality has a lot to do with our .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Morality and Medicare
M.S. writes (for the Economist blog), Mr Ryan’s plan ends the guarantee that all American seniors will have health insurance. The Medicare system we’ve had in place for the past 45 years promises that once you reach 65, you will be covered by a government-financed health-insurance plan. The key word here is promises. There is .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Future of Political Philosophy Bleg
Will any fundamentally new political philosophy emerge in the Western world during the next fifty years? If not, why not? If so, what is it likely to be?
Economic and Political Philosophy
Hypocrisy and Child Labor
Robin Hanson on child labor: Kids work hard at school, housework, sports, practicing music, supporting clubs, etc. and none of this cruelty is prevented by “child labor” laws. Such laws only prevent getting paid to work; they don’t even stop kids interning for free. If child labor laws come from our revulsion at miserable kids, .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Would You Give Up Your Health Insurance?
A question from lunch: If you could give up your health insurance in exchange for the cash required to pay for it, would you do so? Sure, the cash would be taxed. But if you buy the empirical evidence on the weak effect of medicine on health, doesn’t it seem like a good deal? To .. MORE
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Joseph Keckeissen, 1925-2011, RIP
I just learned that Josepk Keckeissen, an economics professor at Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala, has died. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Mont Pelerin Society meetings in Guatemala in November 2006. He had a spark in his eyes and an energy that was quite striking for an 81-year-old man. He had .. MORE