Economists tend to favor relatively free trade in goods and the discipline is even more optimistic about the benefits of the free movement of people. For example, below are some polls of elite economists done by the University of Chicago…
Blog Archives
Minimum wage problems?
Until the 1990s, most economists believed that the minimum wage was a major cause of unemployment because that is what the canonical supply and demand model predicts. If wages rise, more people will want to work (increasing the quantity of…
Posted in Labor
Keynesian stimuli and the Covid recession.
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…
Posted in Macro
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
Medianism 