The UK’s Orwellian sounding Equality Act 2010 is strikingly Marxist. It demands equal pay for work of equal value where these are defined as follows: A’s work is equal to that of B if it is like B’s work, rated as equivalent to B’s work, or of equal value to B’s work. A’s work is […]
By Eric Pichet, here is the abstract: Despite attempts to ‘unwind’ the Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune (‘Solidarity Wealth Tax,’ the French wealth tax) during the last legislature (2002-2007), ISF yields had soared by 2006, jumping from €2.5 billion in 2002 to €3.6 billion. Analysis of the economic consequences of this ISF wealth tax […]
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 […]
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…
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 […]
CEO compensation at large firms is high, especially in comparison to average worker wages, sparking debates over income inequality. Critics argue that such pay packages are unfair and disproportionate to actual company performance. Proponents contend that high pay reflects productivity and is necessary to attract scarce top talent to large firms. Let’s go to the […]
My tradition on this blog is to take a break (mostly!) from current events in the later part of August. Instead, I pre-schedule daily posts based on things I read during the previous year about three of my preoccupations: economics, editing/writing, and academia. With the posts pre-scheduled, I can then relax more deeply when floating…
The idea behind Uber first arose, the story goes, on a snowy evening in Paris back around 2008, when Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp found themselves stuck in Paris on a snowy evening, unable to find a taxi. They wondered “What if you could request a ride simply by tapping your phone?” They co-founded Uber based…
By Eva Vivalt, Elizabeth Rhodes, Alexander W. Bartik, David E. Broockman, Sarah Miller, Here is the link, but I am still sleeping. Here is the abstract: We study the causal impacts of income on a rich array of employment outcomes, leveraging an experiment in which 1,000 low-income individuals were randomized into receiving $1,000 per month […]
Claudia Goldin’s Nobel prize lecture, “An Evolving Economic Force,” has now been published in the June 2024 issue of the American Economic Review. Or if you prefer, you can watch the watch the lecture (with more numerous slides!) from the link at the Nobel website. She writes: Women are now at the center of the…
Peter Dunne writes – In 2016 New Zealand instituted comprehensive new health and safety laws for workplaces and other areas of activity. The expectation was that the new regime the legislation introduced would dramatically improve the culture and practice around safety in the workplace, reduce the numbers of accidents and save lives. However, the most […]
From a new NBER working paper by Steven J. Davis: Two extraordinary U.S. labor market developments facilitated the sharp disinflation in 2022-23 without raising the unemployment rate. First, pandemic-driven infection worries and social distancing intentions caused a sizable drag on labor force participation that began to reverse in the first quarter of 2022, and perhaps […]
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.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Recent Comments