I was chosen to be Bluffton’s Civic Engagement Day scholar for 2018 and so I’ll be lecturing about honor for Civic Engagement Day and at the Presidential Scholarship Competition next week. I had to assign a reading about honor to the prospective…
Blog Archives
The best marijuana policy is the least popular: decriminalization
Americans tend to be conservatives in the sense that we tend to be risk averse. We don’t want to change our system unless there is a really good reason. But we are embarking on a radical social experiment in marijuana…
Posted in Health, Public Finance
Market failures in everything: Book publishing
Markets are only efficient when they are close to perfect competition, and if they are efficient there should not be shortages and surpluses. However, there are persistently large surpluses and shortages in the book publishing industry. There is a particularly…
Posted in Managerial Micro, Public Finance
Innovative societies must have equality of opportunity
The current tax bill is largely motivated by the theory that if you give tax cuts to successful rich people, even though it increases inequality, it will be worth it because these elites will create jobs through innovation with the…
Posted in Inequality, Public Finance
Monopoly power at the emergency room
There is a lot of monopoly power in healthcare in the US, and it has been driving up prices by decreasing competition. Research shows that greater consolidation in the hospital industry causes higher prices, but it is hard to explain…
Posted in Health, Public Finance
Antitrust Regulation
Monopoly power (aka “market power” or “pricing power”) is simply the ability to raise prices without losing all customers. The US economy is increasingly dominated by large firms and all medium-to-large firms have some monopoly power. That is one of…
Posted in Public Finance
Shoulda bought Bitcoin a year ago…
The WSJ found a great way to show how much bitcoin has risen this year: Their video is fun too. Many bitcoin fans argue that this price rise is based on the fundamental value of bitcoin. I agree with the…
Posted in Macro
Medianism 