Where is it easiest to start a business? Explore the fully interactive map. buff.ly/1GPl5DM #progress http://t.co/YlN3vtfKpt—
HumanProgress.org (@humanprogress) June 18, 2015
Where is it easiest to start a business?
20 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, industrial organisation, labour economics, occupational choice, occupational regulation Tags: cost of doing business, creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, freedom of entry
What do American soldiers get paid
24 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in defence economics, labour economics, occupational choice, occupational regulation Tags: military pay
Salaries of Active Duty US Military Personnel bit.ly/195NbKb http://t.co/3fNenWtcF2—
Catherine Mulbrandon (@VisualEcon) December 24, 2013
Doing business in the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) – World Bank rankings
03 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, currency unions, economic growth, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, Euro crisis, health and safety, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, law and economics, minimum wage, occupational regulation, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle, unions, welfare reform Tags: cost of doing business, Eurosclerosis, Greece, Italy, PIGS, Portugal, Spain
Figure 1: Doing Business rankings, PIGS, 2014
Source: World Bank Doing Business 2015.
All in all, Italy and Greece are a dog of a place to enforce a contract. The long-suffering taxpayer is better off paying taxes in Greece than in Italy! Not surprisingly, trading across borders is the greatest strength in doing business in the PIGS. The European Union does have some benefits.
Figure 2: Doing Business rankings, Greece and Italy, 2014
Source: World Bank Doing Business 2015.
All in all, Italy and Greece are equally bad places to do business and Italy is much worse when it comes to taxes. About the only saving graces of Italy is the registration of property and the protection of minority interests in companies.
Figure 3: Doing Business rankings, Spain and Portugal, 2014
Source: World Bank Doing Business 2015.
Spain and in particular Portugal are much better places to do business than Italy and Greece.
Profits Are So High, Why Don’t More Farmers Switch To Organic?
02 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of information, economics of religion, health economics, occupational regulation Tags: compensating differentials, consumer fraud, entrepreneurial alertness, expressive voting, food snobs, organic farming, reputational capital, social norms
HT: Yet Again, Organic Ag Proves Just as Productive as Chemical Ag | Mother Jones.
The increase is partly because more farmers are taking advantage of the healthier profit margins and partly because organic marketing groups sell a health food mythology where cost is not a factor, so costs can rise along with more product. It is a miracle of capitalism.
But given a consumer-base that is wealthy and that is educated by advertising so completely, why don’t all farmers switch?It just takes paying for a sticker and promising to use an organic toxic chemical rather than a synthetic one, there is no testing of organic food, so it would be easy to just make more money.
The reason more don’t move to organic, according to a paper in the Journal of Marketing, is because conventional farmers know in their hearts and minds they are deceiving the public if they switch – making that change is like switching belief systems.
via “Chemical Farmers”: Profits Are So High, Why Don’t More Farmers Switch To Organic?.
Adam Smith wrote about religion in the Wealth of Nations in part because how it infused moral fibre into market dealings. Smith offered a theory explaining the participation of individuals in religion based on his theory of human capital.
In particular, businessmen want to signal to customers that they were moral upstanding people who will not cheat them because that would be against their own moral code and sense of self-respect.
For this reason, Adam Smith suggested that religious sects proliferating in cities because people wanted to join them as a way of signalling they were morally upstanding people. These sects were demanding and rigourously policed the morals of their membership and expelled those who fell in any way short.
A reputation for honesty is both an entrepreneurial investment as well as a way of living a decent life.
People value their reputations and self-respect for being a good and decent man or woman, but some do so more than others. This is why the wage premium under the theory of compensating differentials is large enough only for the trailing edge of the business community. What is that premium?
In 2011, [the] organic premium for a bushel of wheat was 52.2% after factoring in reduced yield per acre of organic production versus total [chemical] average yield per acre. In other terms, [chemical] wheat would have had to have yielded over 53 bushels [a two-thirds increase] per acre to match organic return per acre. (Ted Craig, Wyoming Department of Agriculture, personal communication)
Being an organic farmer is somewhat trendy these days and raises you in the eyes of many but not all. As such, self-respect rather than reputation would be the bigger driver of how large the compensating differential must be before more move to organic farming.
Stranger than fiction: The reason why Zinedine Zidane was almost sacked as main coach of real Madrid B
30 Jan 2015 1 Comment
in economics of regulation, occupational regulation, rentseeking, sports economics Tags: Eurosclerosis, occupational regulation, soccer, Spain
Zinedine Zidane is one of the top 5 soccer players of all time (World Cup 1998, Euro Cup 2000, etc).
He retired and became assistant coach for Real Madrid in 2013 and in August 2014, main coach for Real Madrid B.
A director of the Spanish National Football Coach Education Centre because he does not have a three year higher education degree in Soccer coaching.
Zinedine Zidane was fined and expelled from Spanish league. His lawyer found a loophole due to his French citizenship and saved the day.
Zidane made his professional debut aged 16. Too busy becoming one of the greatest players of all time to spend three years at university. He spent his first weeks at his first club mainly on cleaning duty as a punishment for punching an opponent who mocked his ghetto origins.
HT: Lee Ohanian via John Cochrane
Sorry, Conservatives—Basic Economics Has a Liberal Bias By Matthew Yglesias
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in history of economic thought, occupational regulation Tags: academic bias, political bias
…here are some ideas that I’ve seen in most of the introductory economics textbooks I’ve looked at:
- Governments (typically through central banks) need to manage the demand level of national economies to prevent catastrophic recessions and mass unemployment.
- Absent carbon pricing, a market economy will massively overproduce greenhouse gases.
- Many industries, such as broadband Internet, are “natural monopolies” where an unregulated market will lead to higher prices and less investment than is socially optimal.
- Due to asymmetrical information, consumers in a market economy will be unable to bargain effectively with doctors and other providers of health care services.
- Due to adverse selection, consumers in a market economy will be unable to effectively insure themselves against health risks.
- Due to the declining marginal utility of money, taking $100 from a rich person and giving it to a poor one will increase human welfare.
- Increasing the number of immigrants, raising taxes on the rich, and making Social Security benefits more generous will make almost everyone better off.
I could go on like this. But suffice it to say that one of the main reasons that so many economists are Democrats is that on a whole lot of issues the basic econ 101 view supports the liberal position.
via Economics is liberal: Chris House on conservative economics..
Be Afraid. Be A Little Afraid: The Threat of Terrorism from Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq | Brookings Institution
14 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, managerial economics, occupational regulation, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: Jihadists, war against terror
Complex Model of Foreign Fighter Radicalization
via The Threat of Terrorism from Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq | Brookings Institution.
The Gender-Pay Gap Is Largest for the Highest-Paying Jobs – The Atlantic
18 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in discrimination, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational regulation Tags: employer discrimi, gender wage gap, sex discrimination
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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