Elon Musk’s email to federal employees prompted angst, but lots of employers use technology for continuous feedback on worker performanceBy Natasha Khan and Ray A. Smith. Excerpts:”What did you do last week?The question that Elon Musk lobbed to federal workers in an email set off anger and angst from unions and employees. It also prompted…
Bosses Don’t Need a ‘What Did You Do’ Email. They’re Already Tracking You. (and how this might be related to Keynes’ theory of sticky wages)
Bosses Don’t Need a ‘What Did You Do’ Email. They’re Already Tracking You. (and how this might be related to Keynes’ theory of sticky wages)
27 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, macroeconomics, managerial economics, monetary economics, organisational economics, personnel economics, property rights, unemployment Tags: efficiency wage, wage rigidity
What does India want – and what is New Zealand willing to give?
25 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, economics of education, growth disasters, growth miracles, human capital, income redistribution, industrial organisation, international economic law, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle Tags: India, preferential trade agreements
Chris Trotter writes – What does India want from New Zealand? Not our dairy products, that’s for sure, it’s got plenty of those. Indeed 45 percent of the Indian population are small-scale farmers, most of them running a few head of cattle – not to eat, you understand – but to milk. If it once […]
What does India want – and what is New Zealand willing to give?
The importance of the chronometer
24 Mar 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, industrial organisation, transport economics, urban economics Tags: Age of Discovery
The chronometer, one of the greatest inventions of the modern era, allowed for the first time for the precise measurement of longitude at sea. We examine the impact of this innovation on navigation and urbanization. Our identification strategy leverages the fact that the navigational benefits provided by the chronometer varied across different sea regions depending […]
The importance of the chronometer
The Anatomy of Marital Happiness
22 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, economics of love and marriage, industrial organisation, labour economics, population economics Tags: dating markets, economics of fertility, marriage and divorce, marriage premium
How can I not link to a new Sam Peltzman piece on such a topic? Here goes: Since 1972, the General Social Survey has periodically asked whether people are happy with Yes, Maybe or No type answers. Here I use a net “happiness” measure, which is percentage Yes less percentage No with Maybe treated as […]
The Anatomy of Marital Happiness
Commerce Secretary Lutnick Is Among Those Government Officials Who Are Ignorant of Basic Economic Facts
21 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, industrial organisation, international economics, market efficiency, politics - USA, survivor principle, transport economics Tags: 2024 presidential election, free trade, tarrifs
TweetHere’s a note to the Highland County Press. Editor: Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick asserts that NAFTA allowed U.S. automobile producers to “screw” American auto workers by shifting auto-industry production to Mexico and Canada (“Trump Cabinet members: Tariff plans are working; tariffs could eliminate federal income tax for those earning less than $150,000,” March 20). Mr.…
Commerce Secretary Lutnick Is Among Those Government Officials Who Are Ignorant of Basic Economic Facts
Stop waiting for a foreign hero: NZ’s supermarket sector needs competition from within
21 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: competition law
Lisa M. Katerina Asher, Catherine Sutton-Brad and Drew Franklin write – New Zealand’s concentrated supermarket sector is back in the spotlight after Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she was open to offering “VIP treatment” to a third international player willing to create competition. However, New Zealanders hoping for a foreign hero to break up the […]
Stop waiting for a foreign hero: NZ’s supermarket sector needs competition from within
The Grumpy Economist on Foreign aid: “send a person a fish every day, and he forgets how to fish.”
20 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles Tags: overseas aid
John Cochrane recommends the Economist article Aid cannot make poor countries rich. From 2004 to 2014, foreign aid increased by 75%, but it didn’t help: 2004, William Easterly: aid was just as likely to shrink the world’s poorest economies as to help them grow. 2005, World Bank: grants and loans did not move the needle…
The Grumpy Economist on Foreign aid: “send a person a fish every day, and he forgets how to fish.”
Arctic Instincts? The Late Pleistocene Arctic Origins of East Asian Psychology
17 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, behavioural economics, economic history Tags: cognitive psychology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology
Highly speculative, but I found this of interest: This article explores the hypothesis that modern East Asian populations inherited and maintained extensive psychosocial adaptations to arctic environments from ancestral Ancient Northern East Asian populations, which inhabited arctic and subarctic Northeast Eurasia around the Last Glacial Maximum period of the Late Pleistocene, prior to back migrating southwards into East Asia in […]
Arctic Instincts? The Late Pleistocene Arctic Origins of East Asian Psychology
Why tit-for-tat tariffs may not work against Trump
16 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, industrial organisation, international economics, International law, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: 2024 presidential election, game theory, tariffs
Last week, my ECONS101 class covered game theory. At the end of the final lecture, after we had been covering repeated games and tit-for-tat strategies, a really perceptive student asked me about Trump’s tariffs. A lot of the rhetoric about tariffs has been posed in terms of tit-for-tat (see here and here, for example). The…
Why tit-for-tat tariffs may not work against Trump
Institutional ownership of single-family housing
16 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, econometerics, urban economics Tags: housing affordability
In the last decade, large financial institutions in the United States have purchased hundreds of thousands of homes and converted them to rentals. This paper studies the welfare consequences of institutional ownership of single-family housing. We build an equilibrium model of the housing market with two sectors: rental and homeownership. The model captures two key…
Institutional ownership of single-family housing
*Progressive Myths*: The Kling Club Convo
14 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: The Great Enrichment
Long ago, I co-blogged for EconLog with Arnold Kling. Now he’s running a book club for Liberty Fund. Last month, Arnold invited me and philosopher Rachel Ferguson to discuss Mike Huemer’s new Progressive Myths. Enjoy!
*Progressive Myths*: The Kling Club Convo
Boettke on the Socialist Calculation Debate
14 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of information, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights Tags: economics of planning
An excellent EconTalk episode with Pete Boettke on the socialist calculation debate. I like Boettke on the three Ps. The three Ps–property, prices, and profits and loss. Property incentivizes us. Prices guide us. Profits lure us to new changes and losses discipline us. Today, “incentives matter” is often considered the first lesson of economics. But […]
Boettke on the Socialist Calculation Debate
Hawks, doves, Israel and Iran
13 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, defence economics, economics of information, economics of media and culture, Public Choice, war and peace Tags: game theory, Iran, Israel, Middle-East politics, war against terror
In The Conversation last October, Andrew Thomas (Deakin University) discussed the recent (at that time) military flare-up between Iran and Israel, likening it to a ‘game of chicken’:Israel’s strike on military targets in Iran over the weekend is becoming a more routine occurrence in the decades-long rivalry between the two states…There is a reason why…
Hawks, doves, Israel and Iran
Did you know the Magna Carta was against tariffs?
13 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, international economics Tags: 2024 presidential election, constitutional law, tariffs
One clause of the Magna Carta says: All merchants shall have safe and secure exit from England, and entry to England, with the right to tarry there and to move about as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by the ancient and right customs, quit from all evil tolls So tariffs […]
Did you know the Magna Carta was against tariffs?
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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