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Why Aren’t They Leveraging Their Awesome Market Power?

March 15th, 2014 · No Comments · Uncategorized

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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It’s Not Just Buildings, They Can’t Keep Track of Cars Either

March 15th, 2014 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized

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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Solving Global Warming: Are the Democrats Really Constrained by the GOP?

March 12th, 2014 · No Comments · Uncategorized

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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Options Have Value, or Why Voting is Rational

March 9th, 2014 · No Comments · Uncategorized

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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Conflict of Visions: #Ukrainefail and the Smart Set

March 4th, 2014 · No Comments · Politics

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26 Hours on an Aircraft Carrier at Sea: Unexpected Takeaways

January 27th, 2014 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized

I returned from a whirlwind trip to San Diego 48 hours ago. Thanks to my friend Dennis Hall, I was able to experience spending a day (and overnight) on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Going into it I knew that I would be having the experience of a lifetime — a tailhook landing at […]

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Taleb on Statistics

December 31st, 2013 · No Comments · Economics

A favorite of mine from Fooled by Randomness: “It is a mistake to use, as journalists and some economists do, statistics without logic, but the reverse doses not hold: It is not a mistake to use logic without statistics.” I frequently see conclusions from those who lean on tortured data sets in order to reach […]

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Krugman and The Fallacy Of The Crucial Experiment

December 2nd, 2013 · 5 Comments · Uncategorized

Krugman decided to write about the minimum wage today. As one would expect, he is all for raising it. He provides non-controversial assertions that: It’s low by historical standards. Foreign competition is not a relevant factor. He likes the E.I.T.C. and it compliments the minimum wage nicely. The public favors it. A higher minimum wage […]

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Counting Your Chickens Before They Hatch

November 27th, 2013 · No Comments · Politics

A little less than a month ago, my pal Steve engaged in a little triumphalism via posts documenting the decline in Republican favorability: It’s Working: Pubs’ Polls Plummeting Congressional Republicans’ Approval Ratings in Freefall. Dems Hold Steady I’d be remiss to not update him with the latest headiness and charts, and adapt one of his […]

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About that Medicare Efficiency…

November 27th, 2013 · No Comments · Uncategorized

I’ve been meaning to write up a response to the oft-repeated claim that Medicare is much more efficient than private insurance but then the Wall Street Journal hit the high points for me. Usually that canard is put out when I advocate for markets in the medical sphere — and I used to fall for […]

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