I’m a big fan of tax competition. I cheer when jobs, investment, and people (or even booze) move from high-tax jurisdictions to low-tax jurisdictions. This increases the rewards for good policy and also increases the punishment for bad policy. Given my interest in the topic, I obviously can’t resist sharing this chart, which shows the […]
In a sane world, medicines and vaccines already approved by trustworthy overseas regulators would automatically be able to be used in New Zealand as well.New Zealand is not sane. But neither is anywhere else really on that standard. Other places are just faster than NZ in getting things approved, with more practicable pathways for expedited…
For libertarians, this is a very depressing election (a feeling we tend to have every four years, so a familiar experience). What basically happens is that two politicians try to bribe us with our own money. This year, we have Kamala Harris, who was even worse than Bernie Sanders in the big-spender contest. And we […]
Jaw-dropping bit from the Grocery Regulator, in interview at Interest.co.nz:“What we’ve been told by these players is when they come and they want to open up a large store in New Zealand, the cost to get a spade in the ground is double that of Australia,” he says in a new episode of the Of…
Caught a fun phone call from an accountant after this week’s column over at the Dom Post (and Christchurch Press, etc) on the court’s decision in the Uber case.If Uber drivers are employees, rather than contractors, as the Court sees things, how will depreciation on their cars be handled? Contractors can count all those expenses…
Rent controls have created shortages of housing, every time and in every place that they have been tried. In the latest futile attempt to create working rent controls, the Netherlands has worsened its housing shortage. As Bloomberg reported recently (paywalled, but try this alternative link):Two years ago, Nine Moraal and her two children moved into a…
Dr Oliver Hartwich writes – Last week, an Uber driver surprised me in a conversation about the recent Court of Appeal decision classifying four Uber drivers as employees rather than contractors. My driver was blunt. He has no desire to be an employee. He values his flexibility to take breaks and drive when and where […]
About 10 days ago, i showed that Milton Friedman was a much better economist than Joseph Stiglitz by comparing Chile (which followed Friedman’s ideas) and Venezuela (which followed Stiglitz’s ideas). It was a slam-dunk win for Friedman. Chile started poor and has become relatively prosperous. The opposite happened in Venezuela, which started relatively prosperous and […]
This paper studies the long-run effects of slavery and restrictive Jim Crow institutions on Black Americans’ economic outcomes. We track individual-level census records of each Black family from 1850 to 1940, and extend our analysis to neighborhood-level outcomes in 2000 and surname-based outcomes in 2023. We show that Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until […]
Jon Hartley interviews Greg Mankiw on topics including New Keynesian macroeconomics, growth, and economic policy more broadly at his Capitalism and Freedom website (August 20, 2024, video and transcript available). Here are a few of the comments that caught my eye. On big models and small models in studying the macroeconomy: [O]n the issue of…
The differences between the most and least productive companies can be startlingly high. By one estimate, in the US alone the most productive firms in a sector can be more than two to four times more cost-effective than the least productive ones. Given the size of those discrepancies, any expansion of trade or innovation that makes […]
I’ve written many times about how Americans are much richer than Europeans. And I’ve also written many times that the U.S. economy has been growing faster (which shouldn’t happen according to convergence theory). There’s a simple reason for America’s superior performance. The U.S. is burdened by a medium-sized welfare state and a bad tax system […]
TweetIn the print edition of tomorrow’s (Friday’s) Wall Street Journal, Richard McKenzie and I explain some of the many unintended ill-consequences of the price controls proposed by Kamala Harris. A slice: Price-control proponents often justify their position by claiming that grocery stores are monopolies. They point to a fantasy economic theory that purports to show how…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
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