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Regulation
A Category Archive (126 entries)
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February 7, 2012
Regulators are completing a controversial proposal to shore up the $2.7 trillion money-market fund industry, more than three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sparked a panic that threatened the savings of millions of investors and forced... MORE
January 29, 2012
Energy, Environment, Resources
Arnold Kling
At The Atlantic. The U.S. Department of Energy, for example, estimates that small and environmentally friendly hydro-electric projects could generate at least 30,000 MWs of power annually. That's equivalent to the generating capacity of about 30 nuclear power plants. Moreover,... MORE
January 24, 2012
Cost-benefit Analysis
Bryan Caplan
Since 2007, Bill Gates has given away $28B, 48% of his net worth. Frugal Dad estimates that he's saved almost 6 million lives. I haven't double-checked his sources, but it's a plausible estimate.Back in the nineties, Bill Gates was experiencing... MORE
January 22, 2012
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
David Henderson
I've been trying to understand what the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would or wouldn't do. Would it simply protect intellectual property? Then I'm somewhat sympathetic. Why just "somewhat?" See my previous post and the links therein. Or would it... MORE
January 19, 2012
The aptly-named Institute for Justice is challenging another democratic achievement: Regulations requiring useless expenditures.May the government force entrepreneurs to do useless things, like build extra rooms in their stores that they do not need and will never use, just to... MORE
December 30, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
Tyler Cowen has a thoughtful answer to the question, "Does wealth equal power?" (Of course, the obvious answer is "Yes, it equals power over material things but no, it doesn't equal power over other things. It might give one power... MORE
December 29, 2011
Labor Market
David Henderson
The authors carefully build their case, first telling of the various restrictions on who can be a lawyer. All but a few state governments, they note, require prospective lawyers to have graduated from a law school that the American Bar... MORE
December 28, 2011
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
People occasionally accuse my colleague Robin Hanson of extreme dogmatism. But they don't know him like I do. When I first met Robin Hanson, he earnestly believed that voters were rational and selfish. He rejected any model that violated these... MORE
December 16, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
I finally have found time to tell the story of my "Occupy Monterey" talk last Saturday, titled "Crony Capitalism versus the Free Market." My expectations for the success of my talk, on a scale of 10, were 3 to 6... MORE
December 10, 2011
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
In my chapter on health care in my The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey, I had an extensive discussion of government regulations that drive up the price of insurance and . At the end of that discussion I wrote:... MORE
December 4, 2011
As I noted yesterday, in his Friday talk at the Hoover Institution, Alan Greenspan advocated two policies. The second is to scrap the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law and start over. The law, said Greenspan, "is unimplementable." He went on to... MORE
November 22, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership--and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded... MORE
November 17, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
My friend, Ted Levy, MD, sent me the following. It was so good that I couldn't figure out a way to cut it down or choose only a few paragraphs. So here's the whole thing. In the 19th century, one... MORE
November 16, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
As regular readers of my posts know (see here, here, here, and here, for example), I think the TSA is one of the most anti-liberty, intrusive government organizations in America. So I follow the culture to see what people are... MORE
November 7, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
How Government Intervention Helped Start the 1967 Detroit Riot Here's the [Kerner Commission] report's first paragraph on Detroit: "On Saturday evening, July 22, the Detroit Police Department raided five 'blind pigs.' The blind pigs had their origin in prohibition days,... MORE
October 31, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
Reason TV has up two parts of an interview that Nick Gillespie did recently with interviewee Ken Burns. Burns has a new 3-part PBS series out on Prohibition, which my economist/historian friend, Jeff Hummel, tells me is excellent. These interviews... MORE
October 26, 2011
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
My sometimes co-author Charley Hooper has an interesting post on how FDA regulation will hobble the shift to personalized drugs. Two key paragraphs: If each drug takes $1 billion to reach the market and 10 million people use it over... MORE
October 6, 2011
How did Fannie Mae get such political clout? This is one of the best-told stories in the book. McLean and Nocera tell how a well-connected Democrat named Jim Johnson made Fannie Mae almost invulnerable politically. Johnson, who had been Vice... MORE
September 27, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
In an article today, Lew Rockwell answers yes. See what he has to say. I'm organizing a session on this at the Association for Private Enterprise Education (APEE) meetings in Las Vegas in April and I've asked people who I... MORE
September 23, 2011
The global sovereign debt crises, and the Greek fiscal crisis, are bad enough on their own. Basel III is just making things worse. If I may summarize past comments, under the purview of Basel III banks in the United States... MORE
September 20, 2011
Politics and Economics
David Henderson
Matt Mitchell, a sharp young economist at the Mercatus Center, has come up with a 14 second video that shows the rise and fall of economic freedom over the last 4 decades. Note that the decline was precipitous under Bush... MORE
September 19, 2011
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Background: There's been a lot of discussion on the blogosphere about Ron Paul's answer to a question about health care from Wolf Blitzer: was it a softball, how should Ron Paul have answered, etc. (For a post that links to... MORE
September 14, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
They [the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency] will swoop in with turgid - and then threatening - demands that you sell no cars to the public (no matter how much the public may want those cars) until... MORE
September 2, 2011
Business Economics
David Henderson
The share prices of AT&T and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG fell sharply, while shares of No. 3 cellphone company Sprint Nextel Corp., seen as the biggest loser if the proposed merger goes through, were up nearly 6%. This is... MORE
August 28, 2011
Business Economics
David Henderson
Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry... MORE
August 19, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
Commenter Thomas Boyle points out the following counterexample to Steve Horwitz's claim that the price of almost everything, in labor hours, has fallen: In 1947, the airplane [the Piper Cub] sold for $2,400, or about $25,000 adjusted for inflation to... MORE
August 15, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
Today is the 40th anniversary of President Nixon's announcement of price controls on the American economy. He imposed an immediate freeze on all wages and prices that lasted for 90 days. Then he went through the various phases of control,... MORE
July 27, 2011
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Then there's the issue of off-label promotion. A drug's "label" is the drug's FDA-approved prescribing information--those complicated package inserts that we've all seen. Any approved use is on-label, while any use not listed on the insert is considered off-label, even... MORE
July 6, 2011
Growth: Causal Factors
David Henderson
Summed up in a nutshell I'm giving a presentation at the Mont Pelerin Society meetings in Istanbul in October and I'm staying over a few days to see the country and visit former students. The Turkish students I've taught have... MORE
July 2, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
I've posted before on the TSA (here, here, here, here, and here.) I had some hope for a little assertion of federalism from Texas. The Texas legislature, after the U.S. Attorney John E. Murphy threatened that the TSA would ban... MORE
June 28, 2011
This story got picked up by several outlets. Soon, "mystery shoppers" may come to medicine. And doctors are outraged. The Department of Health and Human Services proposes using them to figure out why so many new patients are having problems... MORE
June 23, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
I'm visiting a friend who does due diligence for his private equity fund's investments in various U.S. companies. As a result, he talks to businessmen every week. For many months now, he has found businessmen complaining about the Obama administration's... MORE
June 16, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
Steve Horwitz has written an excellent article in which he claims, credibly in my opinion, that the United States is now a police state. Read the whole thing. It isn't long. And while you're at it, read my article from... MORE
June 8, 2011
My review of Jeff Friedman's edited book, What Caused the Financial Crisis?, was published in Policy Review last week. Some excerpts from my review: The most important chapter is the first. This 66-page segment is editor Jeff Friedman's overview of... MORE
June 6, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
Follow us on banana. French anchors on television can't mention specific social networking sites unless a story is about them because of a 1992 law, highlighting the difficulty of legislating in the Internet age. The host of a news or... MORE
May 13, 2011
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
Don't miss this great post by the great Robin Hanson. The heart of it:[R]egulations hold some things to higher standards than others, even when the relevant consequences seem similar. For example we seem to prefer: Individuals over firmsNon-money over money... MORE
May 4, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
In a comment on my most-recent post, Arnold Kling seems to set up a straw man. I had made the point that if you looked at Osama bin Laden's goals, you would conclude that he achieved a good portion of... MORE
Regulation
David Henderson
I just finished reading the best piece by Ezra Klein that I've ever read by him. Klein argues that Osama bin Laden achieved many of his goals. One of bin Laden's main goals, claims Klein, was to bankrupt the U.S.... MORE
April 21, 2011
The Institute for Justice is suing to overturn Nashville's sedan and limo price floors:Can government force transportation businesses to charge a minimum price to protect politically connected companies from competition? That is the question the Institute for Justice (IJ) and... MORE
March 13, 2011
Labor Market
David Henderson
LET THEM WORK In essence, we have seen the rise of a large class of "zero marginal product workers," to coin a term. Their productivity may not be literally zero, but it is lower than the cost of training, employing,... MORE
March 8, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
Citing America's Declaration of Independence and the Maine Constitution, the ordinance proposed that "Sedgwick citizens possess the right to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing." These would include raw milk and other dairy products and... MORE
March 7, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
One might think that the ideal regulations would be those that find the right numbers for these portfolios, not too small and not too large--the Goldilocks of risk. Surprisingly enough, it is not possible. It turns out that no algorithm... MORE
March 1, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
I hadn't known until reading Arnold's post this morning and then the Wall Street Journal article that he referenced that Jack Calfee, a health economist at AEI, had died. I didn't know Jack well--we talked on the phone only about... MORE
February 7, 2011
Central Planning vs. Local Knowledge
David Henderson
Are you tired of having naked pictures taken of you and/or being groped at the airport in this "land of the free," but still worried about a terrorist hijacking of the airplane you're on? Is there a way out of... MORE
February 2, 2011
Labor Market
Arnold Kling
Or something like that. Via Greg Mankiw, I learn that the Hamilton Project has launched a prize competition to identify new and innovative thinking about policies to create jobs in the United States and enhance productivity. My suggestion would be... MORE
January 11, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
It has become so standard, when a family has had a tragedy, for a family member to advocate some further restriction on freedom even if that restriction would create more tragedies than it would prevent. It's kind of understandable. When... MORE
January 2, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
My friend and fellow UCLA alum, Tom Hazlett, has a beautiful appreciation of Fred Kahn in the Financial Times (HT to Don Boudreaux). Tom is one of the best writers in economics. I learned so much from this relatively short... MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
David Henderson
Tyler Cowen posted a while ago about some advice for a future regulator. I thought the best comment adding advice was this one: Do your best to fight for freedom by attempting to combat any proposed new regulations and undermine... MORE
December 29, 2010
Payday lenders like Advance America are pushing hard to lure away customers from traditional banks. The effort is getting a boost from the industry's loan crunch, especially for borrowers with blemished credit, and toughened regulation of fees and interest rates... MORE
December 28, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
Alfred Kahn, the Cornell University economist who, as head of the Civil Aeronautics Board, got airline deregulation moving, died yesterday. I won't try to tell you what you can get from the various news stories today. Instead, I'll tell you... MORE
December 18, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
My wife, Rena Henderson, is a cancer survivor who follows the FDA more than most. A local lawyer, Neil Shapiro, has a regular column in our local newspaper, the Monterey Herald, and it's usually quite good. However, in his most... MORE
November 28, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
New York Times columnist Roger Cohen has an excellent column pointing out the real issue with TSA, naked pictures, and groping. In a column aptly titled, "The Real Threat to America," Cohen writes: I don't doubt the patriotism of the... MORE
November 26, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
David Friedman asks how we can trust TSA when it has shown itself untrustworthy. He gives two examples: To take the earliest and most striking example, the TSA used to, for all I know still does, interpret the rule against... MORE
November 21, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
I've been working on what TSA really stands for and the title above is the one I've narrowed in on. I'd be interested in hearing yours. A few developments. First, TSA has backed down on groping or taking nude pictures... MORE
November 20, 2010
Politics and Economics
David Henderson
This is from an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The "he" referred to is John Pistole. [Ayn Rand was accused of overdoing it when she used less-obvious names for villains.] "If you have two planes, one where people are... MORE
November 15, 2010
Central Planning vs. Local Knowledge
David Henderson
Art Carden has an excellent article on Forbes.com in which he advocates abolishing the TSA. I give a segment on this in my econ class when I discuss, at length, Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society." How does Hayek's... MORE
November 10, 2010
The GMU Econ Society wants me to debate the drug war in the spring, but I can't think of any decent debating partners. The ideal opponent is a smart, civil, high-status prohibitionist who lives in the DC area.Your suggestions?... MORE
October 30, 2010
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
Robin Hanson points out yet another way that, contra left-libertarians, big business faces exceptionally and unreasonably harsh regulation:Many of our regulations apply to big firms more strongly than small firms, and and even less to homes. For example, many regulations... MORE
September 24, 2010
Growth: Consequences
David Henderson
Somewhere along the way, during the last 50 years, the critique of capitalism changed from condemning its failure to spread the wealth to condemning the very opposite. Suddenly the great sin of capitalism was that it was producing too much,... MORE
September 9, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
[Libertarianism] is hopeless intellectually, because the values people hold are many and divergent and some of these values do not merely allow, but demand, government protection of weak, vulnerable or unfortunate people. Moreover, such values are not "wrong". The reality... MORE
August 27, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
On a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., in 1981, I sat beside a U.S. foreign service officer who had just finished a stint in Moscow. He told me that although he had enjoyed the job, he needed to get... MORE
August 7, 2010
Fiscal Policy
David Henderson
In this five-minute interview with Karen Gibbs, Jerry Jordan lays out nicely the "regime uncertainty" (Bob Higgs's term) that we face. That is, business people, and the rest of us, for that matter, don't know what future tax rates or... MORE
August 6, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
In the current issue of Regulation magazine, I have a review of two books, Overdose, by Richard Epstein, and Leviathan's Drug Problem, by John R. Graham. Both are excellent. Although Epstein's book came out in 2006, it didn't make much... MORE
August 4, 2010
Economic Education
David Henderson
In a previous post, I praised Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek for spreading economic wisdom to people in letters to the editor. This is the story Don told me about how he got hooked on economics. I tell this story... MORE
July 27, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
The above title should have been the title of my previous post. The title I gave it, "Mark Thoma Doesn't Get It," was unnecessarily provocative, as one of my co-bloggers has pointed out. I know the myth of male power,... MORE
Regulation
David Henderson
Government as Deux Ex Machina Almost all economists recognize that there are some market failures that must be corrected by government intervention, the disagreement is over their prevalence. Some economists see widespread and costly market failures, and that government can... MORE
July 25, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
That's not the title of a piece in today's San Francisco Chronicle by my friend and Hoover colleague, Joe McNamara. But it could be. One excerpt: Who would buy pot on dangerous streets if they could get it at regulated... MORE
July 4, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively... MORE
June 28, 2010
Monetary Policy
David Henderson
Russ Roberts has a nice op/ed on Hayek's main ideas in today's Wall Street Journal. He highlights four contributions of Hayek. I agree with all four, but he gave a poor example for one of them. The four are: 1.... MORE
June 22, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
I've read a lot of judges' decisions, but I've rarely read any that are so blunt as the one issued by Martin Feldman today, a decision that overturns the Obama administration's moratorium on offshore oil drilling. Some excerpts: Much to... MORE
June 18, 2010
Politics and Economics
David Henderson
Yesterday, Republican leaders John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence issued a statement castigating their fellow Republican Congressman Joe Barton. Barton had apologized to BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, for the shoddy treatment he received from Congressmen of both parties. He... MORE
June 5, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
I'm at a weekend conference at which we're discussing various works by economists and philosophers. One of the readings is "The Foundations of Liberal Policy," a chapter in Ludwig von Mises's book, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, published in 1927. Of... MORE
May 20, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
That is the conclusion of Asli Demirgüç-Kunt and Enrica Detragiache, two economists with the International Monetary Fund. All in all, we do not find support for the hypothesis that better compliance with BCPs [Basel Core Principles] results in sounder banks... MORE
April 25, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
In the January 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle, one of the clues was "Sassy reply to criticism." The answer: "It's a free country." Why do I find this so striking? For two reasons. First, when I grew up... MORE
March 12, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
In this morning's Monterey Herald are two articles from the Associated Press, the first co-authored by Ken Thomas and Natasha Metzler and the second co-authored by Ken Thomas and Natasha Metzler. First article headline: Roadway deaths fall to lowest level... MORE
January 23, 2010
Indeed, one of the major contributors to bank failures during the Great Depression was the National Banking Act of 1864. That law, according to monetary historian Jeff Hummel, an economist at San Jose State University, banned any branching (interstate or... MORE
January 5, 2010
Regulation
David Henderson
I don't know when it happened, but my review of Page's and Lopatka's excellent book on the Microsoft antitrust case is on-line. It appeared in the Fall issue of Regulation. It's both here and here. My two favorite paragraphs from... MORE
WSJ article gets a lot right and a little wrong. A recent article by David Luhnow in the Wall Street Journal, "Saving Mexico," contains a lot of good economic analysis of the market for illegal drugs, as well as a... MORE
December 28, 2009
Deborah Spar's The Baby Business is, by far, the best overview of the cutting-edge technology and sociology of having babies. If you want to learn about in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, cloning, and international adoption, Spar's book is a one-stop shop. ... MORE
December 27, 2009
From Arnold and Nick: "In many poorly governed countries, ordinary businesses are as tenuous as drug-dealing in the United States."... MORE
December 7, 2009
I posted last month on one part of Russ Roberts' interview with Charles Calomiris. Some of the commenters highly recommended the whole podcast and I agree. I've listened to it twice all the way through and taken notes. Calomiris often... MORE
December 6, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
In some ways, Canada has much less freedom of speech than we have in the United States. Specifically, someone can be fined, told to apologize, and prohibited from speaking on the subject again if he engages in certain kinds of... MORE
November 14, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
That's not the headline, of course. The headline in the New York Times is, "F.D.A. Says It May Ban Alcoholic Drinks With Caffeine." When I read it, I thought, "Oh, no. The FDA is about to ban rum and coke."... MORE
November 11, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
An excellent news story in today's New York Times highlights the problems with government regulation of health insurance in Maine, problems that, the reporter notes, would likely occur if the U.S. Senate's and the U.S. House of Representatives' versions of... MORE
November 8, 2009
The paper concludes that the probability of default by the GSEs is extremely small. Given this, the expected monetary costs of exposure to GSE insolvency are relatively small -- even given very large levels of outstanding GSE debt and even... MORE
November 7, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
As Bryan has mentioned, Monday, November 9 will be the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Chapter 3 of my book, The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey, I tell that story and integrate it with... MORE
November 5, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
The Broward Sherriff's Office is engaging in entrapment operations to catch unlicensed contractors. On this tape, at about the minus 1:45 point, Detective Daniel Belyeu explains that right now many people are desperate for work. His solution? Make them more... MORE
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
My student, Mike Williams, sent me the following last night: I don't know if you watch Law and Order Special Victims Unit but they had a rather frustrating take on the pharmacutical companies tonight. In the episode one of their... MORE
October 11, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
This morning, after a highly-productive Liberty Fund seminar in Santa Fe, I went over to Pasquale's for breakfast. I sat with a woman who runs a Mexican restaurant in a small town in Colorado. We talked about various things, including... MORE
September 26, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
An Indiana woman was recently charged with a crime for buying cold medicine. It's due to a bill signed by that great believer in freedom, George W. Bush, in 2006. Many state governments, including Indiana's, followed suit with their own... MORE
September 23, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
From yesterday's Wall Street Journal, two good old-style news stories on the consequences of regulation. To Outfox the Chicken Tax, Ford Strips Its Own Vans BALTIMORE -- Several times a month, Transit Connect vans from a Ford Motor Co. factory... MORE
September 21, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
Not the Fed, as in Bernanke, but the Feds, as in the federal government. Here are excerpts from an AP news story that just came in: The government is investigating a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors... MORE
September 20, 2009
Tyler's complex pluralistic take on local regulation perplexes Matt Yglesias:[W]hy on earth isn't the libertarian take on this that we should permit high density construction and let the market decide what happens? The answer to Matt's question is surprisingly simple. ... MORE
September 18, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
The Wall Street Journal reports the following today: Policies that set the pay for tens of thousands of bank employees nationwide would require approval from the Federal Reserve as part of a far-reaching proposal to rein in risk-taking at financial... MORE
September 7, 2009
Now that my baby situation is under control, I'm ready to respond to Matt Yglesias. Last week, he wrote, "Bryan Caplan specifically cites America's large houses and ample parking spaces as the benefits of our free market approach when they... MORE
August 26, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
My Hoover colleague, Thomas G. Moore, has a letter on his office wall from Senator Kennedy thanking him for his contributions to transportation deregulation. As many bloggers have noted (here and here), the late Senator Kennedy had a large role... MORE
July 16, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
In the latest issue of Regulation, my review [.pdf] of Jeff Madrick's The Case for Big Government appears. One of my favorite grafs: If economic freedom works, he argues, our economy should be doing very well because we have had... MORE
July 8, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
To save money for consumers, Waxman is willing to allow certain drugs, called biologic drugs, to enter the market without clinical testing that proves their efficacy. He realizes that requiring clinical testing for efficacy will slow things down and needlessly... MORE
June 25, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
FTC Takes First Step in Regulating Internet Alarming Development on Internet Catches Government's Attention What some fail to realize, though, is that such reviews can be tainted: Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500... MORE
June 13, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
The New York Times today carries a story about how the Federal Reserve Board is making decisions about who gets loans and who doesn't. The reporter, Edmund Andrews, writes: But the financial crisis has drastically changed the role of the... MORE
June 2, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
Today's Wall Street Journal carries an article that highlights how strange regulation can be. Before reading, recall that one of the major alleged goals of regulation of cigarettes was to handle the problem of second-hand smoke. The idea was that... MORE
May 22, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
The essence of price theory is that relative prices affect allocation and that various shifts in supply and demand, mandated or otherwise, affect relative prices. On Wednesday, I posted on the short-term auto boom that Obama's proposed fuel-economy standards, if... MORE
May 19, 2009
Here's a bizarre set of predictions about the effect of new credit card regs:...Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And... MORE
April 28, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
In today's Wall Street Journal, travel reporter Scott McCartney has a story that is rife with unintended consequences of government policies. Titled "From Paradise to Hellish Hours on the Tarmac," it's a story about passengers kept on Delta flight #510... MORE
April 15, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller has introduced a bill that would give presidents the power to shut down the Internet. It was introduced on April 1, but it appears to be serious. According to the eweek article above: According to the... MORE
April 1, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
His view is that most people who complain about Spirit fail to grasp how it's different from other airlines -- like visiting Wal-Mart and expecting Nordstrom-level service. You want Spirit's fares? You'll have to play by Spirit's rules. This is... MORE
March 28, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
Kiss the Emperor's Ring The Dallas cop who prevented the NFL player from seeing his mother-in-law before she died has gotten a lot of press. Various people have taken various sides. Bill O'Reilly, true to form, said last night that... MORE
March 22, 2009
Fiscal Policy
David Henderson
Last Wednesday, I did a 23:00 minute interview on MCAM TV23 in New Hampshire. I can't tell the ideology of these two interviewers, which I find refreshing because at the same time they do have strong views. We talked about... MORE
March 20, 2009
I just finished watching my DVR of President Obama on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." There were some interesting highlights. Of course, Obama was charming: he does that very well. If I judged him only by looks, tone,... MORE
March 11, 2009
My favorite Wall Street Journal writer, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., has an excellent piece today on Buffett's views of Mark-to-Market. It seconds what I quoted Less Antman saying last week and what commenter Patrick Sullivan pointed out. Sullivan linked to... MORE
February 23, 2009
Public Choice Theory
David Henderson
Yesterday, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was on Face the Nation to defend President Obama's bailout program for mortgage holders. The questioner, CBS's Bob Schieffer, asked some good questions. One of his best... MORE
February 17, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
Today, the Wall Street Journal published two excellent letters on the mark-to-market regs that banks are under. IMO, too little has been written about this by economists. The second letter tells a horror story; the first makes a constructive suggestion... MORE
February 12, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
The best sentence of the day: "If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence," a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. In other words, the fact that there is violence in Latin America means the drug war is... MORE
January 29, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
On a recent talk show, I made the point that although Obama's fiscal "stimulus" is likely to destroy wealth, at least he is not making four major mistakes that Herbert Hoover and FDR made: (1) substantially raising tariffs (Hoover with... MORE
January 25, 2009
Politics and Economics
David Henderson
In my latest Forbes.com article (co-authored with my book co-author Charles Hooper), I (we) take on Naderite Sidney Wolfe's views on safe drugs and on conflicts of interest. We point out that despite Wolfe's view that consultants to drug companies... MORE
January 18, 2009
Regulation
David Henderson
With Martin Luther King day being celebrated tomorrow, it's appropriate to read or reread his "Letter from Birmingham Jail,'' written in April 1963. Some powerful passages are below. On why he went to Birmingham even though he wasn't from Birmingham... MORE
January 11, 2009
Central Planning vs. Local Knowledge
David Henderson
In coastal California, where I live, various cities have weekly publications that are distributed at a zero price, have a cutting-edge, vaguely (sometimes explicitly) leftist slant, and almost always are uncritically "environmentalist." They rarely take on any policy that most... MORE
December 31, 2008
Energy, Environment, Resources
David Henderson
My favorite Wall Street Journal columnist, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., has another good column today on how the Corporate Average Fuel Economy law hampers the Detroit-based auto companies (note: not the U.S. auto industry.) Jenkins points out that in an... MORE
December 21, 2008
Regulation
David Henderson
Lesley Stahl did a moderately good job on "60 Minutes" this evening in her story on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Why good and why just moderate? Good for two reasons. First, she actually interviewed a critic who pointed out... MORE
December 10, 2008
Regulation
David Henderson
On Meet the Press last Sunday, President-elect Obama showed some of his fuzziest thinking and some of his clearest thinking on economics. First the bad. In a discussion of the auto industry, interviewer Tom Brokaw said: As soon as gas... MORE
December 7, 2008
Regulation
David Henderson
In the latest issue of the Cato Institute's Policy Report, I have the lead article. It's title: "Are We Ailing from Too Much Deregulation?" In it, I quote from articles by Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Gosselin and Washington Post... MORE
November 16, 2008
Regulation
David Henderson
On CBS's "60 Minutes" this evening, almost the whole time was devoted to an interview with Barack and Michelle Obama. They are an incredibly charming couple and it's hard not to like them, especially him. But at the end, interviewer... MORE
November 15, 2008
Regulation
David Henderson
That should have been the headline on George W. Bush's op/ed in today's Wall Street Journal. The title the Journal gave it is "The Surest Path Back to Prosperity." And the decline (that's the line underneath the title that sums... MORE
November 6, 2008
Regulation
David Henderson
My favorite writer/thinker at the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins, had a marvelous article yesterday on how to save Detroit. His solution is to tweak CAFE standards. CAFE, you might recall, stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. Imposed by President... MORE
October 31, 2008
Regulation
David Henderson
My co-author and former student, Charles Hooper, has written an excellent article on today's Forbes.com. In the article, Hooper calls himself a "drug killer," telling why he advises firms to "kill" even drugs that have promising uses. Here's a quote:... MORE
October 27, 2008
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Economists often talk about Pareto-optimal moves, that is, changes in policy that make some people better off without making anyone else worse off. But we have trouble coming up with any real examples. It's an easy exercise to show that... MORE
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