Broback's Blog

Monopsony power (a supplier of labor who can set wage prices) is cited as a primary reason for labor price floor decrees, especially to justify minimum wage hikes or cartelization of workers. Monopsony provides a reasonable theoretical justification that effectively bypasses the issue of inefficiency (the theory gets to the “right” price) etc. The problem […]

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I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time, and Alex Tabarrok’s post about the NPR piece: “Government’s Empty Buildings Are Costing Taxpayers Billions” has inspired me. Tabarrok says: The NPR article is excellent but it vastly underestimates the size of the problem. In addition to empty buildings, the Federal government owns/controls millions […]

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Tim Carney quotes NYT climate-change reporter, Coral Davenport who asserts: “The members know that serious climate change legislation stands no chance of passage in this divided Congress.” If the congress were not divided, what would happen? In 2009 the Democrats held the majority in the house and senate. Of course, they also held the presidency. […]

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For as long as I have been studying economics, economists have been proclaiming the act of voting is irrational. The conventional wisdom is that since the odds of your vote making a difference are essentially zero, it makes no sense to do it. But since people DO vote, many explanations have been proffered for for […]

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