Updated January 8, 2024 Business cycles are the fluctuations in national income and unemployment. Before the Great Depression, economists had been debating whether or not the government could use monetary and fiscal policy to fight recessions. The mainstream classical school…
Yearly Archives: 2023
Does affirmative action in education reduce racial disparity?
The goal of affirmative action is a good one: It’s to reduce racial disparity. Like most Americans, I support this goal, but I don’t personally care much about the Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions because affirmative…
Posted in Discrimination, Labor
Corporate takeover of groceries
Stacy Mitchell is the executive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance who studies the problem of big businesses eating the entire economy. An economy full of small businesses has Less monopoly power which can mean lower prices. Greater diversity…
The cost disease of services
Suppose there are two industries in a nation. One has rapidly rising productivity growth and the other has stagnant productivity growth. Which one would tend to grow and see rising wages? Ironically, the industry with stagnant productivity will probably grow…
Posted in Globalization & International
Fossil Fuel Propaganda Octopus
It is well known that the fossil-fuel industry has spent millions for many years seeding doubts about climate science, as documented in Naomi Oreskes book, Merchants of Doubt. But later, she discovered that electric utilities started a big propaganda campaign…
Posted in Environment, Public Finance
Makers, Takers and the Wealth of Nations
Updated Feb/25/2023 There are only two possible ways to get wealth inequality: some people either make more or they take more. Making is positive sum creation and taking is zero-sum redistribution at best or destructive at worst. Plus there are…
Posted in Development, Globalization & International
The Economics of International Trade Textbook Chapters
I am teaching International Trade this semester and there are two models of trade that are important to teach, but there weren’t any resources that teach all the main intuitions without excessive complexity so I wrote my own “textbook” chapters…
Posted in Medianism
Medianism 