![The Most Important Blog Post Today](https://www.econlib.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mulligan-Casey-lg-photo-crop.jpg)
No, not this one.
As is not my wont, I won’t give highlights. Read, think, click, and think. The returns from spending half an hour or so on this are huge.
For his one year, Casey Mulligan’s output was a pure public good with huge value.
No, not this one.
As is not my wont, I won’t give highlights. Read, think, click, and think. The returns from spending half an hour or so on this are huge.
For his one year, Casey Mulligan’s output was a pure public good with huge value.
Jul 2 2019
A striking passage from Christopher Jencks' foreword to Edin and Lein's Making Ends Meet: Some conservatives oppose all efforts to help single mothers balance their budgets, even when the mother works. They argue that making life easier for single mothers will just make them more numerous. For those who see singl...
Jul 2 2019
Most people, including many among those who think of themselves as defenders of free markets, believe that antitrust laws are justified. It nearly goes without saying. So the recent paper of Ryan Young and Clyde Wayne Crews (“The Case Against Antitrust Law,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, April 2019), which revi...
Jul 1 2019
No, not this one. This one. As is not my wont, I won't give highlights. Read, think, click, and think. The returns from spending half an hour or so on this are huge. For his one year, Casey Mulligan's output was a pure public good with huge value.
READER COMMENTS
Thaomas
Jul 1 2019 at 2:32pm
The analysis of business taxes seems wrong in that it ignored the decrease in savings = supply of capital that is implicit in the increased budget surplus. And too bad there was not discussion of the cost-benefit analysis that went into tighter regulation of the labor market (immigration) and trade.
David Henderson
Jul 1 2019 at 3:53pm
I agree strongly with your second sentence.
John Ruf
Jul 1 2019 at 9:49pm
Absolutely fantastic!
Kevin Murphy’s crash course on price theory here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gw5FxD3OYo nearly made me switch majors from Mechanical Engineering to economics by itself. However the cost-benefit analysis didn’t swing my way as the costs of switching were just too high to justify. Now my dream is to get into U of C’s MA program in the social sciences to take that price theory course. It’s great to have a slightly more ground up introduction.
Can’t wait for the book to come out!
Benjamin Cole
Jul 1 2019 at 10:10pm
Of course, I agree with opening up supply-side bottlenecks.
I wonder about the Casey Mulligan’s blanket statement that there is no wage (or compensation) stagnation.
See this:
“The project has studio to two-bedroom apartments. Units have quartz countertops, electric stoves, LED lighting and washer and dryer systems; there are different finishing options, depending on a resident’s tastes. A 479-square-foot studio starts at $2,330.”
The above paragraph describes a new housing project just east of downtown Los Angeles, in an old industrial district. I admire the developers for somehow getting this project through L.A. red tape, zoning and politics.
But I do not see how real wages in L.A, or most places along the West Coast, are higher than two generations ago. There needs to be some recognition of housing costs in such commentary (housing costs, as captured by the PCE and CPI are something of a puzzle).
Rents for a 479-square-foot unit “start” at $2,330? And what do they finish at?
BTW, downtown LA east, until recently a Detroitified declining industrial zone, has become an interesting place, but is hardly Santa Monica. Consumers are backfilling into less-desirable districts due to housing costs and restrictive zoning closer to the near-perfect weather along the coast.
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 2 2019 at 5:46pm
Ben has an excellent point and it’s similar to what we are seeing here in my area of Bethesda as well as in Oakland where our younger daughter lives. Housing eats up a lot of one’s income and a better way to capture the impact on disposable income is needed.
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 2 2019 at 5:43pm
I’m not sure that the graph of pharmaceutical prices is worth much. I sit on the Board of a non-profit that provides health insurance to 5000 research fellows and families at a large research institution. I’m on the insurance subcommittee and we have been working very hard to get costs under control as the program is self-insured (anyone writing on healthcare ought to spend some time in this kind of position as one would quickly understand where the cost drivers lie). We have negotiated prices as part of our Rx coverage and one cannot directly compare these with the CPI prices as those are not reflective at all what insurance plans pay.
One also has to break out generic and on-patent drug utilization to understand this. In our program we have 80-85% generic utilization over the past five plan years and pricing of those drugs is essentially flat. the only area that we are seeing increased pricing is the specialty biologics where there are several egregious examples of price increases over this same period of time.
I guess I should not be surprised that Mulligan is taking pride in the CEA polemic on ‘the opportunity costs of socialism’ which to this untrained economist was a waste of research time.
I would like to have seen more research into the impact of the new tax legislation on corporate investment. The financial statements that I’ve been reading of equities I hold don’t show much of an increase but do show increased stock repurchases driven by the repatriation of off shore funds (no surprise here as the exact same thing happened after the Bush repatriation). Of course this led to increased share prices (but surprisingly not at the same level if memory serves me) which CEOs were happy to see as it drove up their compensation. I continue to vote no on certain pay packages in the proxy season where it appears pay raises were only a result of this type of manipulation rather than organic growth of earnings. It’s sure tough being a shareholder these days!!
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