Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
09 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, environmentalism
Tweet… is from page 223 of Art Carden’s and GMU Econ alum Caleb Fuller’s superb book, Mere Economics [original emphasis; footnotes deleted; link added]: The “finite resources” argument also begs the question because it assumes we know which materials are “resources” and which are not. Something is only a resource insofar as we can use…
Quotation of the Day…
06 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, politics - USA Tags: competition law, creative destruction
This morning’s announced merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) would create a global media company of unprecedented scale. The transaction will also almost certainly attract scrutiny from antitrust regulators—most likely the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) Antitrust Division, rather than the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The deal would offer a direct test of the…
Metrics, Markets, and Merger Scrutiny: A Netflix-WBD Combination
06 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, international economics Tags: competition law, creative destruction
Nations around the world are reassessing antitrust policy (generally called “competition policy” overseas). Governments, regulators, and industry leaders are increasingly asking whether traditional antitrust enforcement is holding back the “competitiveness” of domestic firms. The term now shows up in speeches by European commissioners, in UK government directives, in U.S. merger battles, and in Canadian legislative…
Is Competitiveness Transforming Competition Policy?
29 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, economics of information, entrepreneurship, F.A. Hayek, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, law and economics, Ludwig von Mises, market efficiency, property rights, survivor principle, Thomas Sowell
21 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, macroeconomics, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction
Antitrust should center on dynamic market forces that drive major technological change, rather than on static “big is bad” market analysis, based on the work of the 2025 economics Nobel Prize winners. Antitrust enforcers in the United States and around the world could benefit by incorporating these insights into their policy development. Focus on Dynamic […]
Nobel Prize Winners’ Work Supports Dynamic Antitrust Enforcement
12 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought Tags: creative destruction
The growth of industry disrupted old economic patterns but produced undreamed-of wealthBy Phil Gramm and Michael Solon. Excerpts:”From the colossal changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Revolution of the last quarter-century, improvements in technology have created an array of jobs that far exceeded—in quantity and quality—the ones eliminated, elevating standards of living.””the…
The AI Revolution Will Bring Prosperity
01 Nov 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, managerial economics Tags: economics of smoking
ANALYSIS from the Economist: When lots of people smoked, there were many “price-elastic” consumers. In plain English, they were sensitive to increases in the cost of a cigarette. As more people have quit, however, only the most committed smokers are still puffing. Companies have responded by raising prices at an ever-quicker pace. MY COMMENT: In…
Irony: quitters are making tobacco companies rich
31 Oct 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation
There is a new AEJ Macro paper by Brynjolfsson, et.al. on how to value free goods. Here is one of the concrete measures: Using this approach, we estimate the reservation price [for giving up Facebook] to be $2,152 in 2003 US dollars. That is for the 2017 version of Facebook. Note this does not measure […]
Valuing free goods
29 Oct 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, industrial organisation
On The Marginal Revolution Podcast this week we continue discussing some of our favorite models with a whole episode on the Baumol effect (with a sideline into the Linder effect). I say our favorite models, but the Baumol Effect is not one of Tyler’s favorite models! I thought this was a funny section: TABARROK: When you […]
The MR Podcast: Our Favorite Models, Session 2: The Baumol Effect
20 Oct 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, business cycles, economic growth, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, macroeconomics
Has AI been propping up the American economy? For instance “the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s category for investment in information processing equipment and software accounts for over 90 percent of economic growth in the first half of 2025.” The key question is what would have been done with those resources otherwise. Regardless of their specific […]
Some simple economics of AI and macro cycles
30 Sep 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, industrial organisation
Back in the early 1990s, I wrote a paper called “The Creative-Destroyers: Are Entrepreneurs Mythological Heroes?” A reviewer at a journal said “The conclusion that entrepreneurs are heroes seems to be very dangerous!” That was in 1993.There is a picture of this review below. After that is a link to where I posted this paper here…
Is it dangerous to say that entrepreneurs are heroes?
26 Sep 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
From a big-picture economic perspective, I worry most about the damage of high tax burdens on innovation, entrepreneurship, and investment. Those are things that generate enormous benefits for society, yet also things that are very sensitive to bad tax policy (specifically high marginal tax rates and the tax code’s bias against saving and investment). Sadly, […]
Part I: Yes, Taxes Change Behavior
24 Sep 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, entrepreneurship, human capital, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - USA Tags: economics of immigration
From 1990 to 2010, rising numbers of H-1B holders caused 30–50 percent of all productivity growth in the US economy. This means that the jobs and wages of most Americans depend in some measure on these workers. The specialized workers who enter on this visa fuel high-tech, high-growth sectors of the 21st century economy with skills like computer […]
Michael Clemens on H1-B visas
21 Sep 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: electric cars, Germany
By Paul Homewood h/t Ian Magness From the Telegraph: Porsche has delayed the launch of its new electric vehicle (EV) as weak demand forces the German car manufacturer to focus on petrol and diesel engines.
Porsche delays new electric car after demand slump
18 Sep 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, survivor principle, transport economics
The Government announced: The Coalition Government will support at risk regional air routes with up to $30 million in loans from the Regional Infrastructure Fund for small passenger airlines, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones and Associate Transport Minister James Meager say. “Reliable air services are critical for the economic and social wellbeing of regional New […]
More corporate welfare for airlines
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