Broback's Blog

Serious Economists universally agree that some goods are better allocated via markets and others are better managed by state distribution. The distinction generally has to do with the nature of the good being considered. These attributes include things like excludability and rivalry. Public goods are generally regarded as items where state allocation is best suited. […]

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The RAND Health Insurance Experiment is referenced in the academic literature as a “gold standard” study, and the main conclusion it reached aligned perfectly with what Econ 101 teaches us — when people have to pay for stuff, they buy (significantly) less of it. It also confirmed that “outcomes” were not worse for those poor […]

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There’s been a lot of negativity of late surrounding the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. The core issue according to The Hill is: “Now, the U.S. Treasury expects banks in every country worldwide to report funds held by “U.S. persons” (not all are U.S. citizens) beginning in 2015. If they do not, foreign financial institutions […]

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Almost as if it was choreographed, it was only minutes after reading the passage below from the Economist that I discovered that the respected blog The Oil Drum was to be no more. “Scratch the surface of the planet and the chances that hydrocarbons will spew forth appear to grow by the day.” This reality […]

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The recent collapse of the carbon trading market in the E.U. has prompted me to put in writing something I’ve been convinced of for some time — that skeptics of man-made catastrophic global warming should just keep quiet. My opinion is that they need to spend less time talking about the economics of carbon taxes […]

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The blogosphere has been roiling of late over a report titled What Does Bowdoin Teach? The 360-page document profiled in the WSJ makes the case that the Brunswick college has abandoned its historical “commitment to Western Civilization” and instead has focused on “reshaping America in the image of progressive politics.” In my mind, a school […]

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My pal Steve reminded me of his thought-provoking post he made a while back asking the question “Why Hasn’t Europe Caught Up?” Gallup may have a partial answer in this report issued in 2007. The results echo what the class concluded in an Economics course I took years ago. The overarching topic was an evaluation […]

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Been playing with oldtweets, which searches an archive of the first year of statuses posted on Twitter. Makes it easy to see who tweeted what first. Was pleasantly surprised to see an old conference cohort of mine — Jeffrey Veen, was the first person to tweet the word “Seattle.” Not only that, that it mentions […]

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Three charts.

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A little validation for us Huskies from the folks at SmartMoney and their sources — The College Board; U.S. Department of Education and Payscale.com. It will be likely reassuring to UW students and parents who view college through an (arguably narrow) “vocational” lens. While its intuitive that — holding all other variables as equal — […]

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