EconLog Archive
Cryptocurrency
Silly Celebrity Lawsuits
What do Madonna, Tom Brady, David Ortiz, Jimmy Fallon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian have in common? Yes, they are all famous, but that’s not it. Rather, it is the fact that they have all been the subject of lawsuits against them for their endorsement of crypto currency. It would appear that the plaintiffs lost money in .. MORE
Central Planning
Jeff Sonnenfeld’s Bombshell About the Russian Economy
My friend Jeff Hummel sent me a link to a recent 28-minute interview that DW News did late last month with Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management. Jeff asked me to evaluate it. I find it highly credible. The big bottom line: Russia’s economy is in the tank and the reason many of .. MORE
Economic Philosophy
Is the State Discriminatory by Definition?
It is barely an exaggeration to say that governments as we know them are discriminatory by definition. A current government crusade confirms that. The claim by the federal government and some state governments is that the Second Amendment can be legally discriminatory because it was so historically. A Wall Street Journal story summarizes the issue, .. MORE
Economics of Education
Antifragile children
The Schweizer Monat is probably the oldest conservative-libertarian publications in Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is a Swiss-German magazine: Germans seem to be more inclined to keep reading traditional newspapers (and books) than us Latins. The latest issue is now online, and the website includes the English version of a couple of articles. I was .. MORE
International Trade
Globalization and Its Discontents
There’s nothing special about free trade across international borders. The principles are the same whether I in Pacific Grove am trading with someone in neighboring Monterey or someone in Mexico, Myanmar, or Morocco. Free trade both within a country and across international borders is what has led to our huge standard of living. If .. MORE
Economics of Crime
Fine for parking?
Most people view legal market activities, such as buying goods and services, as being in a very different category from illegal activities where violators face penalties. But the distinction between these two categories is not always clear. My wife and I recent stayed just outside Pucón, Chile. We drove into town for dinner and parked .. MORE
Free Markets
Stick Shift or Automatic: Subjective Preferences
Back in 1976—it was another world, wasn’t it?—I purchased a Ford Granada in California. I remember the salesman confidently asserting, as if he had a serious theory to back up his opinion, that all cars would soon come with an automatic transmission. But one does not fool an economist so easily. I remember thinking, and .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Optimism and Ethics in The Calculus of Consent
The Calculus of Consent by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock is one of the Great Books in the Public Choice tradition, a scholarly tradition within economics and political science that uses tools of economics–rational choice, methodological individualism, and the notion of politics as exchange–to understand political decisions. Public choice has been criticized as cynical .. MORE
Labor Market
D. McCloskey’s Passionate Defense of Reason
In the 1980s, an intermediate microeconomics text that I was a big fan of was Donald N. McCloskey’s The Applied Theory of Price. It’s very “Chicagoan” in the best sense of that word. If you mastered that book–I mean really mastered it–you could plausibly call yourself a microeconomist and not just a student. Here’s a .. MORE
Public Choice Theory
The Latest on Ivermectin
Last week, Tyler Cowen published a link to a recent study of the use of ivermectin in patients who had had Covid-19 for a median of 6 days. As is his wont, he doesn’t say much about the study (other than a quizzical comment about Scott Alexander) but simply links to it. Many of the .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
Uncomfortable truths
The Economist has a graph that doesn’t seem to fit into the worldview of either of America’s political parties: On the left, pundits often bemoan the fact that America’s government doesn’t provide a generous health care program like those European countries. On the right, the prevailing view seems to be something like, “Thank God we .. MORE
Regulation
Electricity Hell
In California, the state government is pushing us Californians away from gasoline and natural gas and towards electricity. The California Air Resources Board wants to ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles and even hybrid vehicles effective in 2035. I say “wants to” rather than “will” because I don’t think it will succeed. It also plans .. MORE
#ReadWithMe
Bruno Leoni and libertarianism
Our Virtual Reading Group on Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law has been magnificent. The book is still capable of eliciting disagreement and suggesting new ideas. Several participants never read it before and were impressed, not least because of its style: Leoni’s lectures were reviewed and edited by Arthur Kemp, who perhaps also deserves some .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
When Does Insurance Make Sense?
When does it make sense to use an insurance model, and when is an insurance model less useful? After all, it clearly doesn’t make sense for most of our transactions to be done through an insurance model. We don’t make our food choices using grocery insurance, nor do we buy movie or concert tickets with .. MORE
Regulation
Did Deregulation Lead to More Railroad Accidents?
The data below are for rail accidents, derailments, and collisions from 1975 to 2021. Pothole Pete Buttigieg has claimed that the accident in East Palestine, Ohio is due to deregulation under Trump. Actually, deregulation of railroads happened under Carter in 1980. Notice what happened to accidents and derailments since 1980. HT2 regular reader Mark Barbieri. .. MORE
Energy, Environment, Resources
The southwestern US has plenty of water
Many people are under the impression that the southwestern US suffers from a severe shortage of water. In one sense that’s true. The market price of water is set far below equilibrium. And that sort of price control almost always tends to lead to shortages. If you set prices low enough, even Canada would have .. MORE
Upcoming Events
My March 6 Speech in Austin
On Monday, March 6 at 4:00 p.m. CST, I’ll be speaking at the University of Texas. The speech is sponsored by the McCombs Salem Center. Title of Speech: Economic Inequality: Popular Misconceptions and Important Facts. You can attend in person or by Zoom. Here’s the link. If you attend in person, please come up and .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
Britain’s National Health Service is in Critical Condition
Last month, CNN asked ‘Why is Britain’s health service, a much-loved national treasure, falling apart?’: Scenes that would until recently have been unthinkable have now become commonplace. Hospitals are running well over capacity. Many patients don’t get treated in wards, but in the back of ambulances or in corridors, waiting rooms and cupboards – or .. MORE
Microeconomics
Ratting on a Brewer of Non-Water-Tasting Beer?
Is white chocolate better than, or not as good as, dark chocolate? Can you prove it? No to the last question, of course, because tastes reside in each individual’s mind. De gustibus non est disputandum. Now, does Bud Light beer taste like water? An economist worth his salt must be surprised to read in the .. MORE
Economic Education
Getting Property Right(s)
A commonly understood concept in economics is the idea of the tragedy of the commons. Without sufficient property rights, people will be encouraged to overuse the resources around them, for fear that others will do the same. Less commonly understood is the tragedy of the anticommons, a situation where resources have multiple owners, and no .. MORE
Tax Reform
20 States Have Flat Income Tax Rates
Also, as state governments cut tax rates, they are moving closer to a flat income tax rate. Thirteen states—Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington—already have a flat rate. In New Hampshire that rate applies only to interest and dividends and in Washington only to .. MORE