I’m a big fan of tax migration. I cheer when productive people escape high-tax states or high-tax nations. And when the geese with the golden eggs fly away, it thwarts the plans of greedy politicians. The latest example of this is the exodus of billionaires – worried about a wealth tax – from California (the […]
Many countries, including almost all developed countries and many developing countries, are now experiencing below-replacement fertility, with fertility rates having declined substantially over the past decade or more. That means that each generation will be progressively smaller than the last, and almost inevitably that leads to a declining population (in the absence of offsetting migration…
Here’s a new article in Nature (click on the title screenshot below to read it); it’s about the dearth of information about the safety of drugs used by pregnant women. Except, to Nature, they refer not to “women” but to “pregnant people,” for in the article, that is about the only term that refers to…
There are many courses in universities that seem not to be exercises in objective teaching and learning, but rather courses designed to foist certain political ideologies or points of view on students. One of them at this university was called to my attention by several in our community; it seems to be a course on…
The good news is that Europe has a lot of economic freedom by world standards. Especially Western Europe. The bad news is that economic freedom has been declining in Western Europe. To make matters worse, Europe has a big demographic problem, with a growing number of older people over time who have been promised benefits […]
In 2017, I analyzed the Uber Tipping Equilibrium: What is the effect of tipping on the take-home pay of Uber drivers? Economic theory offers a clear answer. Tipping has no effect on take home pay. The supply of Uber driver-hours is very elastic. Drivers can easily work more hours when the payment per ride increases…
How many times have I heard versions of that claim? Erik Brynjolfsson picks up the telephone in the FT: While initial reports suggested a year of steady labour expansion in the US, the new figures reveal that total payroll growth was revised downward by approximately 403,000 jobs. Crucially, this downward revision occurred while real GDP…
Below is my column in the California Post and New York Post on the exodus of wealthy taxpayers from the state as Democrats seek to trap them with a retroactive wealth tax. They are engineering a type of reverse Gold Rush as up to a trillion dollars leave the state with a line of U-Hauls […]
In the United States, much of the gap in earnings between men and women is due to the persistent gap for high wage earners. This paper explores changes in the gender wage gap for MBAs graduating from a large public university over 30 years. We document large gender wage gaps on average, which grow in…
I used to subscribe to the New York Review of Books, which, while sometimes a repository for boring academic cat-fights, often included engaging and illuminating articles—until fabled editor Bob Silvers died in 2017. Now, under the leadership of editor Emily Greenhouse, the magazine, always Left-leaning, seems to have become more progressive. The article by gender…
In editing two papers on Asian American immigration for the Winter 2026 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (where I work as Managing Editor), I found myself musing over two alternative histories: one about more such immigration, one about less. Hannah Postel describes “Asian Immigration to the United States in Historical Perspective” (Journal of Economic…
Based on a video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity back in 2010, as well a video from Johan Norberg I shared in 2016, there’s a lot to learn by looking at Swedish economic history. Here’s a more recent video that also looks at that nation’s economic track record. You’ll notice a similar message […]
Juliet Moses writes at Quillette: The furore surrounding the storied Adelaide Writers Festival, the longest-running and largest literary festival in Australia and one that receives significant taxpayer funding, has made international headlines. Our drama ostensibly begins when the Festival’s board disinvites Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, an Australian writer with Palestinian heritage. Its climax sees a cultural…
One way of looking at the a policy of increased ICE enforcement of US border security is as a debate over decision error costs. The expressed goal is to remove the worst of the worst criminals. Few would disagree with this goal. However, in this dragnet, immigrants without criminal backgrounds have also been detained. The…
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.”
“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.
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