Economist Channel

David Henderson and I wade in to perilous waters in the July 31 Wall Street Journal. We try to stake out a different and more productive conversation than the usual shouting match between alarmists and deniers.Climate change is often misunderstood as a package deal: If global warming is “real,” both sides of the debate seem to assume, the climate lobby’s...

Dan Thornton has an interesting essay, ``The Limits of Monetary Policy: Why Interest Rates Don’t Matter.’’Just why do we think that the Fed raising and lowering interest rates has a strong effect on output (or inflation)? Just why does the Fed control short-term interest rates...

See below for an excellent opportunity to work with our colleague Suzanne Kingston and her team.UCD Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Level 1 or Level 2, UCD School of Law (Temporary Maternity cover)  - Economics/Psychology/Environmental GovernanceApplications are invited for a temporary postdoctoral researcher, UCD Sutherland School of Law. The successful...

The July 13 Wall Street Journal editorial updates yesterday's ray of hope.One remaining debate is over Ted Cruz’s “freedom option.” The Texas Senator’s amendment says that any insurer that offers at least one ObamaCare-compliant plan could also sell other types of coverage off the exchanges. The expectation is that a more competitive and dynamic insurance...

Kristina Peterson, covering the senate health bill in in the July 11 Wall Street Journal reports a ray of hope for our legislative and policy process:“If we’re going to subsidize Americans who can’t afford health insurance, do it directly. Don’t do it through the premiums of others,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) Few wiser words were...

Farzon Nahvi, writing in the New York Times, reiterates the tired argument that health care can't be left to the free market, because people in comas can't negotiate.As an emergency medicine physician in a busy urban hospital, I have patients brought to me unconscious several times a day...Well, if the Times can recirculate tired stories, I can recirculate...

Bryan Caplan has a nice post at ecconlib. The last part is an ode to the value of simple economic theory, much disparaged in public debate. Bryan's central point: Economic theory lets you vastly broaden the range of experience that you can bring to one question -- the effect of minimum wages in Seattle, for example. Economic theory also forces logical...

In case you stay up at night worrying about the next financial crisis, the good folks at the Financial Stability Board have produced a nice soothing little video (original link in case the embed doesn't work, and so you can see that no, I'm not making this up),The short summary:Safer, Simpler, Fairer 3 July 2017 A decade on since...

One of the frustrations -- or perhaps challenges -- of studying monetary economics and monetary policy is howFed talk and writing on economic mechanisms, causal channels, and effects of policies is far ahead of our actual, scientific knowledge. And writers outside the Fed go leaps and bounds beyond the Fed in advocating strong policies based on the...

I am often asked to opine about whether automation will destroy all the jobs. Yes, we talk about tractors, which brought farm employment from something like 70% of the country at the beginning of the 20th century to about 3% today. And cars, which put the horse drivers out of business....