EconLog Archive
Labor Market
The Forgotten Men
My colleague Robin Hanson has schooled me in the ABCs of the Men’s Rights Movement. Bottom line: There are a lot of things that a lot of men could reasonably complain about, but don’t, because they would be greeted with derision rather than sympathy. Here is a striking example from Kingsley Browne’s Divided Labours: An .. MORE
Uncategorized
Have More Children?
The incentive to have children is reduced in a welfare state, according to Pavel Kohout. To put it straightforwardly, and perhaps a little cynically, in the past children used to be regarded as investments that provided their parents with means of subsistence in old age…whereas today’s anonymous system makes all workers pay for the pensions .. MORE
Social Security
Social Security Incrementalism
On the new pro-reform group blog, Kerry Kerstetter makes a case for incremental privatization. Allowing private control over retirement money that would otherwise go to the Social Security bureaucrats in DC is no different than what we have long had with IRA, 401(k), 403(b) and other personally controlled savings plans. I have seen clients with .. MORE
International Trade
Free Trade with the AARP
Should you join the AARP if you disagree with its political positions? Carrie Lukas says no. So does Professor Bainbridge. Why? Because they are just one more liberal special interest group, albeit a particularly well camoflauged and effective one (using those discounts to pull in seniors who probably vote red). My wife has a different .. MORE
Behavioral Economics
What, Me Rich?
A very interesting paper by Moses Shayo begins by surveying the literature on identity. “People tend to identify more with high status groups than with low status groups,” which seems pretty obvious. But I’m not so sure. A major counter-example: Almost no one in the United States identifies himself or herself as “upper class” or .. MORE
Income Distribution
Income Distribution and the Left
Chris Dillow thinks that the Left has lost its moorings on the issue of income distribution. That is, Dillow supports income redistribution, but he thinks that neither the Left nor the Right is with him. Hayekian arguments can be applied to company bosses as well as central planners. For me, what’s really offensive about capitalism .. MORE
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Pricing and Marginal Cost
Don Boudreaux looks at cases where prices should be above marginal cost. Jones builds the bridge and charges tolls to pay for it. When the bridge is not congested, the marginal cost of allowing each driver access to the bridge is zero. Is the optimal toll zero? According to textbook theory: yes. According to the .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
VA Hospitals as Quality Leaders
On the previous post, Spencer left a comment recommending an article by Phillip Longman on Veterans Administration hospitals, which it turns out over the past decade have improved quality in many areas relative to other medical care systems. suppose an HMO decides to invest in improving the quality of its diabetic care anyway. Then not .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Health Care First-party Payments
Andy Laperriere makes the case for Health Savings Accounts combined with high-deductible health insurance policies. more than 10% of the cost of a visit to the doctor — $40 billion per year — is wasted on paperwork. Most of these costs would disappear if patients paid for their doctor visits directly (with a debit card, .. MORE
Social Security
Social Security Debate
The Washington Post presents a wide range of viewpoints. Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker write, The bottom line is that Social Security is more financially sound today than it has been throughout most of its 69-year history, according to Social Security trustees’ numbers. If workers in 2050, who will be earning on average 68 percent .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Lovecraft, Sutter, and the Media
The master of horror is of course not Stephen King, but H.P. Lovecraft. (My personal favorite is “The Dunwich Horror”). Lovecraft lived a life of aristocratic penury, and he wasn’t too happy about it: “He who strives to produce salable fiction is lost as an artist, for the conditions of American life have made art .. MORE
Regulation and Subsidies
Michael Powell Resigns
Michael Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is stepping down. In my book, I included an essay on Powell’s Hayekian approach at the FCC. The FCC oversees industries in which competition is messy. Broadcasting and telecommunications do not resemble the economist’s model of “perfect competition,” in which there are no economies of scale .. MORE
Social Security
Lifespan, Social Security, and Medicare
Continuing to peruse Brad’s reading list (see preceding post), I came across an article on the topic I raised in my Lifespan essay. The article is by Ronald Lee and Jonathan Skinner. We find that the prospects for longevity are considerably brighter than currently expected by the Social Security Administration. This is good news for .. MORE
Economic Growth
Computers and Productivity
At lunch today with Robin Hanson, guest blogger Bryan Caplan, and blogging competitor Tyler Cowen, someone brought up the subject of computers and productivity. I am scanning Brad DeLong’s reading list for a course in American Economic History, and naturally he points to something on the topic, by Dale W. Jorgenson, Mun S. Ho, and .. MORE
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Nobel Prize-Winner Makes Intermediate Error
In Globalization and Its Discontents, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz tells us: Behind the free-market ideology there is a model, often attributed to Adam Smith, which argues that market forces – the profit motive – drive the economy to efficient outcomes as if by an invisible hand. One of the great achievements of modern economics .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
The Selfish Reason to Have More Kids
Steve Landsburg has some powerful moral arguments for having another kid. (See the chapter “People Wanted” in Fair Play). Contrary to organizations like Zero Population Growth, the externalities of another productive human being are positive, not negative. But like most economists, I don’t think that the typical person’s willingness to pay to do the right .. MORE
Social Security
Social Security Debate Online
The Wall Street Journal has posted one of their periodic Econoblogger Celebrity Death Match thingies. This one features yours truly and Max Sawicky, on the topic of Social Security Reforms. I’ll use this forum to respond to some of Max’s charges that I left unanswered. we have not succumbed in this dialogue to any economic .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Malpractice Reform
Richard Posner cautions against overstating the benefits of tort reform in health care. It is always important to distinguish between financial and real costs. Insofar as malpractice liability merely transfers wealth from physicians to (some) patients, aggregate costs are unaffected. The real cost of malpractice liability is limited to the cost of the actual resources .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Lifespan Calculations
In this essay, I discuss the esoteric but important topic of longevity calculations. How do we calculate the longevity of a person born in, say, 1950? The analogy would be to look at how many people born that year died in 1950, 1970, 1990, 2010, 2030 and 2050. The problem is that we only have .. MORE
Uncategorized
Guest Blogger
As baseball fans know, this is free-agent signing season. In attempt to become the Billy Beane of the economics blogosphere, EconLog is proud to announce a new guest blogger–Bryan Caplan, the prolific GMU scholar. As President Lyndon Johnson once complained about an aide, “He can write faster than I can read.”
Labor Market
Most Economically Literate Movie of the Year
This is the season for giving movies their just deserts, but as far as I know there isn’t a prize for Most Economically Literate Movie. Until now. The First Annual Prize in this category goes too… A Day Without a Mexican Inspired by the “magic realism” common in Latin American literature, A Day Without a .. MORE