Plenty of people have commented on New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to lower food prices by creating city-owned grocery stores, but there is still more to be said about this plan. Mamdani either thinks or believes that voters think that store owners are making huge profit through … Continue reading →
Failing to Learn the Lessons of History
Failing to Learn the Lessons of History
01 Jul 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, entrepreneurship, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics, unions, urban economics
Quotation of the Day…
01 Jul 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, income redistribution, international economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: tarrifs
Tweet… is from page 45 of Milton & Rose Friedman’s great 1980 book, Free To Choose: Another source of “unfair competition” is said to be subsidies by foreign governments to their producers that enable them to sell in the United States below cost. Suppose a foreign government gives such subsidies, as no doubt some do.…
Quotation of the Day…
Greg Mankiw on Modern Monetary Theory
30 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economics of education, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, monetary economics Tags: cranks, monetary policy
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) had a real moment in the spotlight in the late 2010s, with political support in the US from Presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, mainstream economists mostly didn’t understand it, or ridiculed it, or both. I mostly ignored the detail of it, only picking up what I knew about it from…
Greg Mankiw on Modern Monetary Theory
Bad Economic History Fuels Bad Present-Day Economic Policies
28 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, history of economic thought, income redistribution, industrial organisation, international economics, liberalism, politics - USA, Public Choice
TweetAt CapX, I explain what motivated Phil Gramm and me to write our book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism. A slice: Likewise with America’s own industrial revolution, the ‘Gilded Age’. American schoolchildren are taught that the final third of the 19th century witnessed John D. Rockefeller and…
Bad Economic History Fuels Bad Present-Day Economic Policies
Weaker incentives in unionized plants make them more likely to close
27 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, history of economic thought, labour economics, unions Tags: union power
Unionized plants have worse incentive alignment: 26% less likely to offer performance-based bonuses. 11% less likely to promote based on performance 13% less likely to dismiss workers for poor performance. Consequently, unionized plants have: Higher rates of business closures, lower investment slower employment growth BOTTOM LINE: right-to-work states (no unions) have higher employment and better outcomes. CITE:Maksimovic, Vojislav and…
Weaker incentives in unionized plants make them more likely to close
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
25 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: economics of immigration, employment law, monopsony
A quarter century ago, economist Price Fishback published “Operations of ‘Unfettered’ Labor Markets: Exit and Voice in American Labor Markets at the Turn of the Century” 1,762 more words
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
Slowly Strangling the Death Tax
23 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, economic growth, macroeconomics, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics Tags: death taxes, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and savings
Back in 2013, I debated Joe Biden’s top economist on the death tax. Everything I said then (and wrote four years before then) is still true today. In the interview, I mentioned nations that have abolished their death taxes, including Australia. I should have mentioned Sweden as well. As a general rule, I don’t want […]
Slowly Strangling the Death Tax
The Profit Motive Will Ensure Adequate Supplies of Rare Earths
21 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, international economics, politics - USA, resource economics Tags: China
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: Editor: You’re correct that “Trump has no China trade strategy” (June 12). Nearly all trade talk coming from this administration is economically incoherent bluster from which we Americans can expect only diminished prosperity. You err, however, in describing China as having a “stranglehold on rare-earth minerals.” China…
The Profit Motive Will Ensure Adequate Supplies of Rare Earths
Why “cheaper” wind and solar raise costs. Part III: The problem with power markets
20 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, industrial organisation Tags: solar power, wind power
by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler) Part 3 of this series examines power markets, promoted by policymakers (FERC) and industry advocates to lower costs through competitive bidding and merit-order dispatch. While markets can optimize resource allocation in many sectors, they struggle to deliver affordability and reliability in electricity systems dominated by intermittent renewables. This post first […]
Why “cheaper” wind and solar raise costs. Part III: The problem with power markets
Predatory Pricing Is A Foolish Strategy
20 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economic history, history of economic thought, industrial organisation Tags: competition law
TweetI’m proud to have paired up with the Cato Institute’s Marian Tupy to pen this new piece at National Review on so-called ‘predatory pricing.’ A slice: Competition drives innovation, improves quality, and most importantly, lowers prices for consumers. Yet when foreign companies — particularly Chinese firms — successfully compete on price, accusations of “predatory pricing”…
Predatory Pricing Is A Foolish Strategy
Markets are forward-looking
18 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, defence economics, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, financial economics, macroeconomics, market efficiency, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: efficient markets hypothesis, World War II
LPL Financial analyzed 25 major geopolitical episodes, dating back to Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. “Total drawdowns around these events have been fairly limited,” Jeff Buchbinder, LPL’s chief equity strategist, wrote in a research note on Monday. (Full recoveries often “take only a few weeks to a couple of months,” he added.) Deutsche Bank analysts […]
Markets are forward-looking
What Explains Growing Gender and Racial Education Gaps?
16 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economic history, economics of love and marriage, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: gender wage gap, racial discrimination, sex discrimination
In the 1960 cohort, American men and women graduated from college at similar rates, and this was true for Whites, Blacks and Hispanics. But in more recent cohorts, women graduate at much higher rates than men. Gaps between race/ethnic groups have also widened. To understand these patterns, we develop a model of individual and family […]
What Explains Growing Gender and Racial Education Gaps?
Effects of Zoning: when we restrict supply, prices go up.
14 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, income redistribution, law and economics, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, zoning
What happened when Spain brought back the wealth tax?
13 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, Public Choice, public economics Tags: Spain, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and savings
From the Journal of Public Economics Twitter feed: What happened when Spain brought back the Wealth Tax in 2011? Using variation in exposure, this paper finds: – No drop in savings, but drop in taxable wealth—mainly via legal avoidance – Asset shifting caused most revenue loss – Estimated revenue loss was 2.75x initial 2011 rev. […]
What happened when Spain brought back the wealth tax?
Very Expensive Affordable Housing
10 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, offsetting behavior, The fatal conceit, unintended consequences
In my post Affordable Housing is Almost Pointless, I highlighted how point systems for awarding tax credits prioritize DEI, environmental features, energy efficiency, and other secondary goals far more than low cost. A near-comic example comes from D.C., where so-called affordable housing units now cost between $800,000 and $1.3 million dollars each! One such unit […]
Very Expensive Affordable Housing
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