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Microeconomics
A Category Archive (103 entries)
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October 26, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Mankiw calculates that McCain's tax plan slashes his return to work by 83%. Obama's plan slashes his return to work by 93%. Doesn't anyone in politics want Greg to keep working? The funny thing about his post is that it... MORE
October 18, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
This past year I've often found myself in the company of avid barhoppers. Since I don't drink, it's no surprise that I don't appreciate the experience. But I'm surprised by how truly awful the experience is - why pay good... MORE
September 4, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
When phone companies, ISPs, cable companies, and the like offer "teaser rates" ("$50 for the first three months"), I assume the worst. If their regular rate were good, they would tell me upfront. So if they won't tell me what... MORE
June 29, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Here's another margin of gasoline price-elasticity to add to Greg Mankiw's list: Netflix now advertises "Save Gas. Let us deliver your movies." P.S. The fact that these margins are hard to foresee is another reason why we probably tend to... MORE
June 16, 2008
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Ezra Klein writes, It's an article of faith for some on the right that unions wreck productivity. Not in the private sector. I would be surprised if you had lower productivity in unionized firms. You can't have both lower productivity... MORE
May 7, 2008
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Megan McArdle likes to tell a story with charts. I like to tell it this way. There is a wholesale market for gasoline, and there is a retail market for gasoline. Gas stations buy in the wholesale market and sell... MORE
May 6, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Amazon has been charging $19.77 for my book for almost a year. But very recently, they cut the price to $19.47. Why $.30? Why now? Ideas? P.S. If someone who actually works for Amazon knows the answer, won't you please... MORE
April 13, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
In The Logic of Life, Tim Harford tries to figure out why rents in New York and other trendy urban locations are so high. You might think that the rents are high because the wages are high. But adjusting for... MORE
April 10, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Following up on my last question, what would it take to make you take a spammer seriously? Imagine that one email scam in 10,000 was genuine. How could a complete stranger from Micronesia convince you even to read his email,... MORE
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I've previously argued that you usually need extensive educational credentials just to get an interview for anything more than a low-status job. It strikes me that there is a similar problem if you have a new product and want to... MORE
March 30, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Remember Joel Waldfogel's The Tyranny of the Market? Waldfogel's thesis, as he explains in Slate: "For small groups with preferences outside the norm, the market often fails to deliver." That sounds like bad news for me, because I'm a member... MORE
February 12, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Suppose you signed a contract to pay a worker $100k a year for life. Then a competitor shows up an offers to do the same job for $50k. You can't get out of the contract. What is the best way... MORE
January 20, 2008
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Last week, Alex Tabarrok (who is co-authoring a principles textbook with Tyler Cowen) asked me for good examples of non-monetary incentives. Perhaps the best response is: "Do what I want, and I'll be your friend." Depending upon who makes the... MORE
December 6, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Gary Becker strongly suggests that it is:If taxpayers responded only to the expected cost of evading taxes, evasion would be far more widespread. The reason is that only about 7 percent of all tax returns are audited (over a 7... MORE
October 31, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
For Halloween, here's the true, spooky story of how I met Fabio Rojas: In the Fall of 1989, young Rojas, a freshman at UC Berkeley, was assigned the roommate from hell. (No, not me!) The roommate was emotionally abusive and... MORE
October 17, 2007
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
He's not a Nobel Laureate, but Al Roth gave a recent lecture at Google on the topic. He talks about job matching and kidney sales as examples. Bonus question: can you name the economist who introduces Roth? Thanks to Greg... MORE
September 7, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I hope I'm misunderstanding Ed Glaeser, but I don't think I am:Since the rich should not be subsidized, the transfer payments should be means tested and limited to families earning less than $75,000 per year. There should also be income... MORE
September 4, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
At a recent GMU lunch, two economists sparred over the optimal quantity of cash to keep in one's wallet. Economist A holds very little cash, on the grounds that you can pay for virtually everything with credit cards. Economist B... MORE
August 23, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
How often has an Hispanic asked you for spare change? I've lived around LA, San Francisco, NYC, and DC, all of which have lots of Hispanics and lots of beggars. But as far as I can remember, I've never encountered... MORE
August 13, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Today Alex makes a point that I drill into my graduate students: The assumptions underlying the standard market efficiency theorems are sufficient conditions for market efficiency, not necessary ones. Dani Rodrik and the many econ textbooks that claim that market... MORE
August 6, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch? At least in downtown D.C., they're not hard to find. Just go to a reception at a think tank and chow down. But this is not without its hazards, as... MORE
August 3, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Behavioral economists often emphasize nominal rigidities - such as the tendency of list prices to stay the same in the face of shifts in supply and demand. Neoclassical economists often emphasize the Law of One Price - the tendency of... MORE
July 9, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Even if you think my earlier posts on HBO's Big Love were gratuitous, you can't deny the economic relevance of one of the latest story lines:Bill hears about a new investment opportunity. A slot machine manufacturer wants investors, and doesn't... MORE
July 6, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Richard Dawkins and I have something else in common: We're amazed by dogs:If mutation, rather than selection, really limited evolutionary change, this should be true for artificial no less than natural selection. Domestic breeding relies upon exactly the same pool... MORE
June 24, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I've heard the question before, but this time, it's personal: Amazon just sharply slashed the price of my book to $19.77. The standard answer is that the (absolute value of) elasticity of demand is higher for more popular books. The... MORE
June 10, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
True story: Twin brothers Raymon and Richard Miller are the father and uncle to a 3-year-old little girl. The problem is, they don't know which is which. Or who is who. The identical Missouri twins say they were unknowingly having... MORE
May 27, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Believe it or not: This blog has given life to a baby girl! Michael Stastny, better known as Mahalanobis, has the story: My wife had a baby today, which implies with high probability that I had a baby today too.... MORE
April 30, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Bismark is often quoted as saying that "People who like sausages and legislation should never watch either being made." (The actual line isn't as catchy: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.") If your... MORE
April 25, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Two resolutions of the take-out paradox that I'm not buying: 1. Fairness, best expressed by Nathan Smith: Maybe different prices for take-out and dine-in would be perceived as "unfair" by customers, and undermine business. Or maybe the restaurateurs themselves feel... MORE
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Thanks for some excellent comments on the take-out paradox. On reflection, Arnold's beverage-centric explanation seems more important than the one Tyler and I agreed on over lunch. But you be the judge: Dine-in patrons provide an important advertising benefit for... MORE
April 24, 2007
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Bryan asks why don't people open high-end restaurants without a dine-in option? As far as I can tell, such restaurants are virtually non-existent. I'll make my guess. In restaurants, the analogy with "follow the money" is "follow the beverages." For... MORE
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Almost every restaurant does take-out these days. Funny thing is, they usually charge as much for take-out as they do for dine-in. How is that possible? Dine-in requires servers and a lot more real estate. Shouldn't it be cheaper? As... MORE
April 20, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Another great section in Landsburg, from the chapter "What I Like About Scrooge": This is a law of arithmetic: if Scrooge eats less, there's more food for someone else. This is a law of economics: if nobody else wants that... MORE
April 8, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
It was 85 degrees in Fairfax last Monday. When I bought an ice cream cone at Ben and Jerry's, I asked the owner how much extra business he was doing that day compared to the typical day in January. What... MORE
March 27, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Did tax cuts in the '80's spur Internet entrepreneurship twenty years later? I can't prove it. But it seems very plausible, and no one's proven otherwise. After all, when marginal tax rates are 70%, the dream of striking it rich... MORE
March 6, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
True story: Last night, I was playing Candyland with my four-year-old sons. The green gingerbread man token is always in excess demand, so the house rule is that the boy who plays green goes second. (It's never too soon to... MORE
March 5, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Sociologist Fabio Rojas just introduced GMU economists to diagrams of social networks. These diagrams provide a neat way to quickly show who knows who, who knows people who know people, and who knows everybody. Rojas presented new data on networks... MORE
February 20, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
My family subscribes to both XM and Sirius satellite radio. The reason is that XM has a deal with the manufacturer of my car, and Sirius has a deal with the manufacturer of my wife's car. When I heard of... MORE
February 6, 2007
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I grade on a curve. So if all of my students studied 50% less, they might learn less economics, but their grades would stay the same. The students keep studying because they are in a Prisoners' Dilemma - their lives... MORE
December 20, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I just made my life's final purchase from Tower Records. Perhaps it's insensitive to be pondering economic puzzles while my favorite store is on its deathbed, but I can't resist. Here goes: How come the prices for Rap/Hip-hop were slashed... MORE
December 2, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Big finding as the Titanic goes down: The greater the demand for a CD at its regular price, the greater the elasticity of demand for that CD. When everything is 50% off, CDs that normally sell 1 per week may... MORE
November 19, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Jane Galt raises a great question: [H]ow bad would something have to be before I would challenge it? I have, on occasion taken stands against bigotry that were potentially dangerous to myself--telling my project manager, for example, that his racist... MORE
November 9, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I've been beating up on Analytical Egalitarianism quite a bit lately (see here, here, and here). Now Sandra Peart, a leading proponent of this view, has risen to the challenge. According to Peart, scholars should assume equal human abilities because... MORE
October 29, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Arnold writes: The draft is a cruel tax, but the volunteer army does create a disconnect between the people who are fighting and the people for whom they are fighting. What are the effects of this "disconnect" supposed to be?... MORE
October 27, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Econlog reader (and former Avian Flu blogger) Silviu Dochia writes: I'm with Scott Clark on this one. Levy’s point has nothing to do with nature vs. nurture. Then why the Smith and Mill quotations, which are specifically about nature vs.... MORE
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Scott Clark, an Econlog reader, responds to my critique of analytical egalitarianism: The way I viewed analytical egalitarianism when i was in Levy's class was not that everyone is the same as everyone else. But when analyzing and making policy... MORE
October 26, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
There's a peculiar doctrine coming out of George Mason in recent years. It's called "analytical egalitarianism," and has been energetically promoted by my brilliant colleague David Levy, his co-author Sandra Peart, and quite a few others. (See here and here... MORE
October 10, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Here's a question for libertarians (though of course others should feel free to answer): What currently illegal thing do you personally really want to be free to do? Set aside "not pay taxes"; that's too easy. For me, anyway, the... MORE
October 9, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I'm not sure that I've ever been really sad to see a store go out of business. Until today, when I saw the signs up at Tower Records. What is there to do except listen to Morrissey (or maybe Götterdämmerung)?... MORE
September 19, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Whenever I'm stuck in a line, I grumble about the need for peak load pricing. Raise the price during popular times, cut the price during off-times, and watch the world's blood pressure fall. At the same time, however, I understand... MORE
September 14, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
In blogging as in most things, I prefer the timeless to the transient. I read history books, not newspapers. And if a blog entry won't be interesting in a month or a year, I'd rather not write it. In this... MORE
September 6, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
My website has had non-stop problems for the last month. Now, at last, it's fully operational. I've lamented my evil web hosting company - name withheld to protect the guilty - for years. I've often dreamed of taking my business... MORE
September 5, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
One of economists' favorite things to say is: "Economics only makes predictions at the margin. We can't tell you how much people will buy, only that they'll buy less when the price goes up." Sometimes this is true. But there... MORE
August 29, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Several readers basically share my solution to the haircutting puzzle. Namely: Hair length per se is irrelevant to the demand for haircuts. What matters is the acceptable range of hair length - roughly speaking, the difference between the shortest acceptable... MORE
August 28, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Puzzle: When is demand for haircuts higher? When short hair is in fashion, or long hair? Or is the relationship more complex? I'll post my preferred answer tomorrow.... MORE
July 30, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Is it "easy" to enter the market for tomatoes? In a sense, yes: Just plant some tomato seeds, pick the ones that grow, and you're "in the market." But in another sense, no: You'd have to grow a lot of... MORE
May 23, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Economic theory says that allowing polygamy makes life better for women. As Tim Harford explains: A lot of the knee-jerk reactions against polygyny are from people who can't add up. In a society with equal numbers of men and women,... MORE
March 12, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
This month on Econlib, Donald Cox has a great column on economics for parents: Ever since I started the mind-bending journey that is parenthood—my wife and I have a daughter in first grade and a son in preschool—my appreciation for... MORE
March 5, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Why did so many comic books during the Silver Age features gorillas? (Didn't know that they did? Neither did I!) According to Wikipedia: There are several rumors surrounding the wide use of gorillas in comic books at the time: 1.... MORE
February 28, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I just found out that my Internet service provider sells its services on a lifetime basis. For a $300 lump-sum payment, I will never have to worry about quarterly service fees OR domain registration for my website again. Should I... MORE
February 22, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
The high bidder called my wife this morning, suggesting that his price could come down. When he found out the price we paid, he asked a lot of questions, and exclaimed "You got a great deal!" So perhaps his strategy... MORE
February 21, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
A dead 80-foot tree was leaning precariously toward our house, so my wife asked three tree-cutting firms to submit bids. The spread was absurdly wide: $1900, $875, and $3200 for the same job. How is this possible? The quality and... MORE
January 24, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
How economics is changing: A few years ago, the Financial Times discussed my article on systematically biased beliefs about economics. A few days ago, the Financial Times discussed my blog on the economics of dental hygiene.... MORE
January 23, 2006
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Whenever I go out in public, I notice pairs of mothers and daughters. Once kids hit adolescence, you rarely see mothers and sons, fathers and sons, or fathers and daughters spending much time together. But mothers and daughters of all... MORE
December 17, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I've learned a lot more about the economy from introspection than I have from statistics. If someone shows me statistical evidence that people buy more chocolate when its price goes up, my reaction will be "I've bought lots of chocolate,... MORE
December 13, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
A common objection to hereditarian theories of intelligence is that "Intelligence is SO important, evolution would have eliminated genetic variation." A simple fruit fly experiment (discussed in newscientist.com) shows how wrong this is: The team first bred a group of... MORE
December 10, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Keynes famously wished that economists would one day become as useful as dentists. But every time I go to the dentist, it's clear that knowledge of economics would be useful to to dentists. The whole idea of cost-benefit analysis seems... MORE
October 11, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
While of course all of George Mason's Department of Economics was once again desperately rooting for Gordon Tullock to win the Nobel Prize, Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann are welcome substitutes. They don't teach at GMU, of course, but our... MORE
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Eureka! I've been wanting to blog on my renewed love of the Hero System role-playing game for a while, but only five minutes ago did I find a solid econ segue way. In the spirit of Tyler Cowen's "Markets in... MORE
September 20, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I've been arguing for quite a while that most people - including us dads - would be selfishly better off if they had more kids. Parents focus too much on how exhausted they are now, and forget how lonely they're... MORE
September 1, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
The gougers are the most beastly, the coarsest, the most savage exploiters... These bloodsuckers have waxed rich during the hurricane on the people's want, they have amassed thousands and hundreds of thousands... These spiders have grown fat at the expense... MORE
August 30, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
What does a psychiatrist call it when you pay people to stop consuming alcohol and/or drugs, and run frequent tests to make sure they are holding up their end of the deal? Contingency management. According to "Contingency Management: Incentives for... MORE
August 22, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
In response to my framing puzzle post, Tyler Cowen asks: My puzzle is different: why is framing so expensive? The frames are just finished wood, which you could import or buy cheap at a lumber yard. The framing labor is... MORE
August 20, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Here's a puzzle I'd like to resolve before I teach Industrial Organization again: Why are there so many framing stores? It seems like there is a place that puts your artwork into frames on practically every street corner. According to... MORE
August 6, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
The other day I was reading Martha Stout's The Sociopath Next Door. Although it's engaging, it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. But it did remind me of a question I've wondered about before: Is homo economicus a... MORE
July 23, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Intelligent critiques of evolutionary theory are extremely rare, but they do exist. Probably the best of the lot is philosopher David Stove. Stove has zero sympathy for religion; his complaint about evolutionary theory is that it makes false predictions. One... MORE
July 12, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I was intrigued by Arthur Robson's explanation for why "intelligence and longevity were simultaneously exaggerated in humans." ("The Biological Basis of Economic Behavior" 2001. Journal of Economic Literature 39: 11-33): Not only has human brain size increased dramatically over the... MORE
July 7, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I recently argued that economics could help evolutionary psychology explain why parents and their children disagree. If your actions have externalities for your siblings or other kin, the optimal choice for your parents' genes differs from the optimal choice for... MORE
July 4, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Watching War of the Worlds reminded me of one of the big puzzles in evolutionary psychology: Why do parents and their children disagree? "I only want what's best for you" is every parent's slogan, and if Darwin is right, how... MORE
June 28, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Today I had a debate (well, more of an amiable public dialogue) with Alex Tabarrok at the Wall Street Journal's Econoblog. The topic: Non-Levitt freakonomics. Check it out here.... MORE
May 23, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Perhaps the greatest truth about human nature that you do not find in the typical economics textbook is that people are sheep. Most human beings don't like to be different from the others around them; they want to fit in... MORE
May 10, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I wear shorts about 10 months per year, and I live near Washington DC. Judging from the number of funny looks I get, and the number of times perfect strangers stare at me and ask "Aren't you cold?," my behavior... MORE
March 6, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Tyler Cowen has a number of hypotheses about why all movies cost the same price. As a frequent movie-goer, I'd like to know, but I don't find any of his answers too convincing. A lot of the problem gets solved... MORE
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
The Larry Summers controversy (see here and here) is probably going to make it even harder to do no-holds-barred research on the fascinating subject of gender identity. But fortunately, academia is probably still too competitive for obscurantism to triumph. Evolutionary... MORE
March 3, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I finally saw The Aviator, and it's hard not to scream "Scorsese was robbed!" Larry White has already done a great job of analyzing the bread-and-butter economics of the story. What's fascinating to me, however, is the exploration of Hughes'... MORE
February 14, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Economists have a favorite cynical explanation for the slow-growth movement: Property owners are trying to raise real estate prices by restricting supply. I'm no mind-reader, but I doubt that's the real motive of most opponents of further development. But in... MORE
February 7, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
"People with kids care more about the future than people without kids." Who could take offense at this truism? "Gays are substantially less likely to have kids than straights." Angry yet? "Gays probably care less about the future than straights."... MORE
January 29, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
I was overjoyed last year as I anticipated the opening of the Cinema de Lux at Fairfax Corner. If you haven't been there, go - the theater is beautiful, the seats are extremely comfortable, and the screens are enormous. But... MORE
January 19, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Steve Landsburg has some powerful moral arguments for having another kid. (See the chapter "People Wanted" in Fair Play). Contrary to organizations like Zero Population Growth, the externalities of another productive human being are positive, not negative. But like most... MORE
April 13, 2004
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Andrew Chamberlain points to a Ph.D thesis by Matt Lewis on search costs and asymmetric price adjustment. The idea is that firms face a kinked demand curve (more elastic for price increases than for price cuts), because consumers search when... MORE
April 5, 2004
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
I extended my thoughts on bundling with this essay. What George Stigler showed is that ordinary intuition about bundling is wrong. Your intuition is that the reason that the seller engages in bundling is to force you to buy something... MORE
December 14, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Everett Ehrlich invokes Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase as Ehrlich interprets the success of Howard Dean in terms of reduced transactions costs in setting up a political organization. the Internet has changed all that in one crucial respect that wouldn't surprise... MORE
November 11, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok asks, If we graphed use of price discrimination against profits would we find a positive slope across the economy as a whole? I doubt it, yet this is what the theory would seem to predict. Send me your... MORE
November 10, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Water is generally viewed as a resource that requires centralized government management. However, Jacob Sullum shows that government does not necessarily allocate water rationally. Since cotton is a water-intensive crop, the middle of a desert seemed a strange place to... MORE
September 18, 2003
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Marc Brazeau asks (see Steve Antler's site), Two common arguments against raising the minimum wage are possible inflationary effects and job loss. Why aren't these issues raised in relation to executive compensation? I think that the conventional wisdom is that... MORE
August 28, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
London's congestion charge, which seemed like such a good idea from an economic perspective, may have run afoul of elastic demand, according to an article by Iain Murray. economists...estimated that a reduction in traffic of 15 percent would require that... MORE
August 18, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
About a year ago, the big story in our local suburban newspaper was the adoption of a "living wage" bill in our county. This summer, the big story was the shortage of teenage jobs here. I was tempted to write... MORE
August 5, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
The New York Times profiles Steven Levitt, the recent Clark Medal winner. Using data from more than 50,000 home sales in Cook County, Ill., he compared the figures for homes owned by real-estate agents with those for homes for which... MORE
April 23, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Reading this story about unemployment among computer programmers left me feeling amused and vindicated. "This is the worst I've seen," said ... an out-of-work systems integration analyst, who has been involved in the tech industry since 1974. "I'm running into... MORE
March 17, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Charles Duhigg, a student at Harvard's Business School, reviews some disadvantages of employee stock ownership. A 2000 study by economists at the University of South Alabama found that when the amount of stock held in an ESOP increases, ''management will... MORE
March 13, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Hal Varian compares the potency of two types of incentives to save. One incentive is a tax break for savings. The other is a non-economic incentive, in which it becomes easier for an employee to sign up (or harder not... MORE
March 4, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Economists Shin-Yi Chou, Michael Grossman, and Henry Saffer attempt to weigh in on the issue of why obesity is spreading. These data show that more household time is going to market work. There is correspondingly less time and energy available... MORE
February 17, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
The first day of London's "congestion tax" began well, according to this report. There were complaints and small demonstrations around London, but traffic was lighter than normal and did not appear to back up around the edges of the restricted... MORE
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