From young professionals to the working poor, many Cape Town residents complain that out-of-control housing prices have forced them to live far from the jobs, affluent schools and healthy supermarkets available in the city center. They blame deep-pocketed tourists for occupying housing in prime locations and developers for pricing them out. Some 70 percent of…
Cape Town estimate of the day
Cape Town estimate of the day
24 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, growth disasters, Public Choice, urban economics Tags: South Africa
Misuse of HDCA
24 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: crime and punishment, free speech
Shayne Currie reports: One of New Zealand’s biggest news organisations is appealing a precedent-setting court decision, in which a man convicted of assaulting his partner convinced a judge that an online news article about him and the attack should be removed. The district court judge agreed the man, who did not receive name suppression at…
Misuse of HDCA
Resourceful Earth Day: Fred Smith on Julian Simon
23 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism Tags: pessimism bias, The Great Enrichment
“The problems of famine, overpopulation, poverty, and disease are resolvable. In fact, they have been resolved in the United States and other places where human ingenuity is free to solve them.” The post Resourceful Earth Day: Fred Smith on Julian Simon appeared first on Watts Up With That?.
Resourceful Earth Day: Fred Smith on Julian Simon
Is each American generation doing better?
23 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history Tags: The Great Enrichment
We construct a posttax, posttransfer income measure from 1963 to 2023 based on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement that allows us to consistently compare the economic well-being of five generations of Americans at ages 36–40. We find that Millennials had a real median household income that was 20% higher than that…
Is each American generation doing better?
BBC News amplifies a convicted terrorist’s unverified claims
23 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economics of crime, International law, law and economics, laws of war, war and peace Tags: Gaza Strip, Israel, media bias, Middle-East politics, regressive left
On April 15th BBC News website’s editors thought that it would be a good idea to facilitate the worldwide amplification of unverified stories told… The post BBC News amplifies a convicted terrorist’s unverified claims appeared first on CAMERA UK.
BBC News amplifies a convicted terrorist’s unverified claims
The Disbarment of John Eastman: The California Bar Bags a Trump Lawyer and Leaves Troubling Questions
23 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in law and economics, politics - USA Tags: 2020 presidential election
Below is my column in the California Post and New York Post on the disbarment of John Eastman. I criticized…
The Disbarment of John Eastman: The California Bar Bags a Trump Lawyer and Leaves Troubling Questions
The Paper That Breaks Climate Economics
22 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, econometerics, economic history, economics of climate change, economics of natural disasters, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, growth miracles
Part 1 of 2 on a damning new paper that takes on the top-down climate-economics literature — “The empirically inscrutable climate-economy relationship”
The Paper That Breaks Climate Economics
An evolutionary biologist lists and discusses the ten most influential books in the field
22 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
I would have missed this video had reader Doug not called my attention to it. It’s a very good half-hour discussion by evolutionary biologist Zach B. Hancock, a professor at Augusta University, in which he recommends the the top ten most influential books in evolutionary biology. Since Hancock is a population geneticist, the books deal…
An evolutionary biologist lists and discusses the ten most influential books in the field
Breaking: Major Under-the-Radar SCOTUS Decision on Climate Lawfare
22 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights Tags: nuisance suits
There are Supreme Court decisions that arrive with fanfare, and then there are those that quietly rearrange the legal landscape in ways that only become obvious after the dust settles. Today’s decision in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish belongs firmly in the latter category. It is not packaged as a climate case. It does…
Breaking: Major Under-the-Radar SCOTUS Decision on Climate Lawfare
Tony Blair on anti-semitism
21 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, International law, laws of war, war and peace Tags: Gaza Strip, Israel, Middle-East politics, regressive left
Tony Blair writes: The suffering of Gaza, the death and destruction, is undeniable. You can make a legitimate criticism of Israel’s tactics in the conduct of the war. Many Jews around the world make exactly those critiques. But you cannot engage in such criticism legitimately if you do not also condemn the terrorism of October…
Tony Blair on anti-semitism
The Chinese Current Account Imbalances
21 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, econometerics, economic history, economics of love and marriage, financial economics, growth miracles, labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: China
The subtitle of the paper is Puzzles, Patterns, and Possible Causes. Here is the abstract: China’s large current account surplus has been an irritant to its trading partners. While industrial and trade policies often lead to sector-level imbalances, they play a relatively limited role in the economy-wide surplus. Structural factors such as an unbalanced sex…
The Chinese Current Account Imbalances
Why the Cost of Your Coffee Has Soared—and Isn’t Going Down Soon
21 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, international economics, politics - USA Tags: tarrifs
By Inti Pacheco of The WSJ. Excerpts:”Behind the jump: Extreme weather, including droughts in Brazil and Vietnam, had hit coffee crops. And even before any tariff increases, hedge-fund bets anticipating the levies were pushing commodity prices higher.” (droughts cause supply to shift to the left which raises price)”Then in July, President Trump slapped an additional 40%…
Why the Cost of Your Coffee Has Soared—and Isn’t Going Down Soon
The alternatives to agreement determine the terms of agreement: Iran’s alternatives are bad and getting worse.
20 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, energy economics, international economics, war and peace Tags: Iran
WSJ: “Iran insiders are rumbling about the looming economic catastrophe if Washington does not grant sanctions relief that would unlock prospects for economic recovery,” said Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow with the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. “Without the prospect of economic recovery, regime survival beyond the short term will face sustained structural…
The alternatives to agreement determine the terms of agreement: Iran’s alternatives are bad and getting worse.
Peak fashion was in the 1970s; cheap too
20 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture
Does this have implications for higher ed in particular?
20 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, population economics
Declining fertility and population loss pose significant challenges for state and federal local governments responsible for providing a range of services to citizens, including education, health care, and infrastructure. Indeed, many areas are already experiencing outright population decline, with roughly half of U.S. counties losing population between 2010 and 2020. This paper examines how shrinking…
Does this have implications for higher ed in particular?
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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