Zwick and Zidar argue that a substantial share of the decline in labor share can be accounted for by changing forms of pay, including pass-throughs and equtiy compensation. In particular, if an employee is paid in stock and that stock increases in value then the tax rules tend to count some of that as capital…
Capital Gains Can Be Labor Income
Capital Gains Can Be Labor Income
10 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, top 1%
Missing women on Indian streets
09 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, discrimination, econometerics, economics of crime, gender, growth miracles, law and economics Tags: sex discrimination
How absent are women from city streets in the developing world? We answer this question using GPS-linked wearable cameras and randomized street audits across ~900 kilometers of roads in greater Mumbai. Across 4000+ street images containing 23,000+ visible person observations, women account for 16.4% of visible people in Mumbai and 14.7% in Navi Mumbai, far…
Missing women on Indian streets
What Is Personalized Pricing—and Why Are Lawmakers Scrambling to Ban It?
07 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
Companies already track your every move online. Some researchers say it is only a matter of time until retailers start using that data to set prices just for you.By Jackie Snow of The WSJ.The print edition titled this article “How to Prevent Personalized Pricing.” This sounds like a form of price discrimination, which I will…
What Is Personalized Pricing—and Why Are Lawmakers Scrambling to Ban It?
The Troubled History of Government Equity in Technology
07 Jul 2026 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economic history, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, privatisation, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction, Germany
Even though Germany privatized Deutsche Telekom in 1996, the federal government retained a substantial ownership stake. This partial state ownership status, which remains to this day, presents a textbook example of how this type of arrangement distorts incentives and delays the competitive dynamism necessary for technological progress. Through the late 1990s and into the 2000s, Deutsche Telekom…
The Troubled History of Government Equity in Technology
Do falling birth rates boost per capita income?
06 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic growth, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics Tags: economics of fertility
The secular decline in birth rates across the globe over the past seven decades has slowed population growth, raised average ages, and reshaped labor markets and the macroeconomy. Contrary to the widespread expectation that these trends hamper economic growth, we find lower birth rates are associated with higher growth in GDP per working-age adult across…
Do falling birth rates boost per capita income?
Rent Control: The Ceiling Trap
02 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, economics of regulation, law and economics, property rights Tags: rent control
Rent control is in the news again. Check out my new website, Rent Control: The Ceiling Trap. Here is just one bit: Norway abolished its rent control in 1982, and the economist Are Oust realized the newspapers had been quietly recording the whole experiment. He collected housing classifieds from Oslo’s Aftenposten from 1970 to 2008 and watched…
Rent Control: The Ceiling Trap
Nine Tweets Ripping Mamdani’s Economically Illiterate Expansion of Rent Control
28 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, income redistribution, law and economics, Marxist economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, urban economics Tags: rent control
I’ve written several columns (here, here, here, here, and here) detailing the folly of rent control. And now that New York City’s dilettante socialist mayor has proposed to expand rent control, I thought about doing the same thing. But I noticed so many clever comments on Twitter/X that I decided on a different approach. Here […]
Nine Tweets Ripping Mamdani’s Economically Illiterate Expansion of Rent Control
Ancient Clay Tablets Show Markets Worked 4,000 Years Before Economists Explained Them
21 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, development economics, economic history, history of economic thought, international economics, law and economics, property rights
Clay tablets unearthed in Asia Minor reveal a sophisticated commercial order emerging spontaneously nearly four thousand years before economists explained how markets work. By Surse Pierpoint of The American Institute for Economic Research.”A clay tablet from Kanesh, in what is now central Turkey, contains the founding charter of a twelve-partner trading company. Twelve merchants pooled thirty-three…
Ancient Clay Tablets Show Markets Worked 4,000 Years Before Economists Explained Them
A Nordic Nightmare for AOC
19 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
In 2015, I wrote a column entitled “A Nordic Nightmare for Bernie Sanders.” Today, let’s do something similar, but this time I’ll explain why economic data from northernmost Europe is bad news for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’m motivated to address the issue because I just saw this tweet about how Scandinavian-Americans are much richer than their […]
A Nordic Nightmare for AOC
Caplan-Jones UATX Debate Video
17 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, development economics, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, politics - USA Tags: economics of immigration
Here’s the full video from my recent immigration debate at UATX with Garett Jones. Coleman Hughes moderates. (A great guy, and not only did we finally meet in person for dinner; he also came to UATX karaoke!) Here are more debate details from the UATX Substack. I’ve got multiple post-debate commentary essays in my queue,…
Caplan-Jones UATX Debate Video
Greg Ip Is Mistaken Again About U.S. Trade Deficits
15 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, growth miracles, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, international economics, politics - USA Tags: free trade
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal. Editor: Writing about U.S. trade deficits, Greg Ip declares that “by exporting so much, China effectively forces its trading partners to run deficits” (“The Global Economy Is Threatened Again by Trade Imbalances,” June 12). Wrong. U.S. trade deficits occur whenever foreigners sell more to us than they…
Greg Ip Is Mistaken Again About U.S. Trade Deficits
Callaghan failure
14 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, survivor principle, theory of the firm Tags: industry policy, picking losers
The Post reports: Nearly a third of the Callaghan Innovation’s $149 million Covid-era research and development loan book is in arrears, including $21.5m linked to 63 failed or insolvent businesses, as the agency enters its final months before disestablishment. Callaghan Innovation – a government entity set up to make businesses around the country more innovative…
Callaghan failure
Piketty’s Eco-Marxist Utopia: Why Degrowth and Global Redistribution Will Trap the Poor in Poverty
13 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, economics of climate change, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, fiscal policy, global warming, human capital, income redistribution, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics Tags: climate activists, climate alarmism, regressive left
The world’s poor deserve better than another utopia designed for them by the globalist intelligentsia. They deserve cheap energy, open markets, secure property rights, and the freedom to industrialise on terms they choose for themselves. That is what worked in East Asia. It is what will work in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. And…
Piketty’s Eco-Marxist Utopia: Why Degrowth and Global Redistribution Will Trap the Poor in Poverty
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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