EconLog Archive
Economics of Education
Two-Handed on Vouchers
What would a new economics blog be without “on the one hand…on the other”? Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen writes, If we are going to move forward with vouchers, I would like to know what the plan will look like, once it gets through the political meatgrinder. I don’t know any voucher proponent who has done .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Labor Market Puzzle
The latest labor market data show that aggregate hours worked fell again in August. This means that LUCY, my indicator of labor capacity utilization, also dropped. The longer that this productivity-cushioned recession continues, the more of a puzzle it presents to macroeconomists. The issue is this: if productivity is rising much faster than real wages, .. MORE
Economic Growth
Politics vs. Economics
On one of the comment threads, a reader asked me if I disagreed with the economics of Lawrence Kudlow. “Honestly, I never thought he had any to disagree with,” was how I began my reply. Let me revise and extend my remarks. I think that it is common to assume that there is a “conservative .. MORE
Game Theory
Economics of Content
Clay Shirky writes that the Internet helps to break the link between fame and economic success for writers. For an author to be famous, many people had to have read, and therefore paid for, his or her books. Fortune was a side-effect of attaining fame. Now, with the power to publish directly in their hands, .. MORE
Income Distribution
Imputed Income
Jeff Madrick discusses the work of Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi on the plight of middle-class two-income families with children. what families spend a lot more on, the authors calculate, is a house in a safe neighborhood with a good school — about 70 percent more a year, discounted for inflation, for the typical .. MORE
Uncategorized
The Civility Plea
‘Jane Galt’ and Kevin Drum have made “civility pleas” on their web logs. What they are saying is that people’s comments ought to treat opponents with respect. Let me add a similar plea to this blog. I’ve always felt that the stronger the case for the idea, the less need to attack the person. Calling .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Structural or Cyclical Unemployment?
I continue to think that the term jobless recovery should be replaced by productivity-cushioned recession. Meanwhile, Erica L. Groshen and Simon Potter have written more about the phenomenon. we look for evidence that structural change played a dominant role in the 2001 recession. Our investigation centers on two questions: Did temporary layoffs decline relative to .. MORE
Regulation and Subsidies
Comment of the Week, 2003-09-03
Regarding the New Deal, Boonton wrote, how much of the New Deal has survived? While national economic planning seems to have finally been discredited…the bulk of the New Deal remains firmly established not only in the US but in most successful, Democratic, nations. I have also seen it argued that economic shocks after the New .. MORE
Growth: Consequences
Manufacturing Crisis?
On Labor Day, President Bush announced that there would be a new Assistant Secretary of Commerce charged with addressing the decline in manufacturing employment. This prompted a number of skeptical responses. Yesterday, Daniel Gross wrote, The new assistant secretary must persuade American workers that broad, immensely powerful forces are at work against manufacturing in the .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
Government Incentives
Does the absence of a bottom line affect government behavior? Consider this story from the Washington Post about the “busy season” for GTSI, a company that sells technology products to government agencies. Fall is coming, and for GTSI that means the end of the federal fiscal year is approaching and that civil servants are rushing .. MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
High-Beta Houses
Kenneth Harney reports that prices for condominiums rising have shot up. whereas the nationwide median price of single family resale homes was up by 7.4 percent during the past year (to $169,900 at the end of the second quarter), the median resale condo price was up 15.1 percent during the year (to $163,500). There are .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
Budget Analysis
The Washington Post lead editorial for August 29 adjusts the baseline budget forecast for several factors. The largest is discretionary spending, which they argue will grow at the rate of the economy rather than at the rate of inflation. The next largest is extension of most of the Bush tax cuts beyond their scheduled expiration .. MORE
Economics of Education
Academia vs. Reality
I probably need to wear an asbestos suit after posting this essay. A few years spent working in a corporate or government setting would benefit professors by giving them first-hand knowledge of organizational behavior and politics in practice. I think that both our society and our universities would be improved if professors were required to .. MORE
Microeconomics
Demand Too Elastic?
London’s congestion charge, which seemed like such a good idea from an economic perspective, may have run afoul of elastic demand, according to an article by Iain Murray. economists…estimated that a reduction in traffic of 15 percent would require that £5 fee. Unfortunately, they got their sums wrong. The reduction in traffic has been far .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Canadian Health Care
Pierre Lemieux discusses the distortions in measured costs under a socialized system. Criticizing an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that reports on lower administrative costs in Canada than in the United States, he writes, Canada’s long waiting lines saves the health system money but at a cost to patients… The second category .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Comment of the Week, 2003-08-27
On the topic of the economic impact of the New Deal, Patrick Sullivan pointed to an interesting article by Cole and Ohanian. They make two points. One is that the recovery from the downturn of 1929-1933 was unusually weak. The second point is that the New Deal discouraged the normal forces of competition from operating. .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
Did the Bush Tax Cut Fail?
This group of economists with strong Democratic Party ties says that we needed fiscal policy that provided more stimulus in the short run and a lower deficit in the long run. Robert Solow says, There are three characteristics you want a stimulus package to have. One – that it stimulates. Two – that it be .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
Did the New Deal Fail?
Cato’s Jim Powell makes the case against the New Deal. Among the material Powell cites: Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway, in their 1997 study Out of Work, estimated that by 1940 unemployment was eight points higher than it would have been in the absence of higher payroll costs imposed by New Deal policies. .. MORE
Energy, Environment, Resources
Auction Toxic Waste?
How should the location of undesirable land uses, such as toxic waste dumps or prisons, be determined. Citing Julian Simon, Herbert Inhaber suggests using a reverse auction, in which the Federal government offers to compensate local residents for living near the undesirable site. the price would rise, every week or month. The rising price, as .. MORE
Economic Growth
Australia’s Economic Miracle
Peter Gallagher links to a speech by Gary Banks, Chairman of Australia’s Productivity Commission, on that country’s high productivity growth of the past several years. He credits improvements in policy. As you know, the reforms really began with the lowering of barriers to foreign competition in goods and financial markets in the 1980s. As tariff .. MORE
Growth: Consequences
Libertarian Manifesto
Irving Kristol recently wrote a neoconservative manifesto. It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. In .. MORE