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Fed meetings occur every 6 or 7 weeks and the fed funds target is adjusted in quarter point (25 basis point) increments. In the past, I’ve argued that this procedure is inefficient. I don’t favor interest rate targeting. But if the Fed insists on that policy tool, I’ve suggested that the rate be adjusted much .. MORE
Featured Comment
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Should the Fed placate the markets? Yes and no. Let’s start with the no. Today’s Bloomberg has a piece by Mohamed El-Erian with the following title and subtitle: The Fed Should Resist Placating MarketsThe central bank needs to avoid being rushed into another policy mistake by making an emergency interest-rate cut. The Financial Times has .. MORE
Labor Market
In the last 5 weeks, I’ve written two articles on the draft for the Hoover Institution’s on-line publication Defining Ideas. The first made the case against the military draft; the second made the case against universal national service. In responses on the Defining Ideas site, some commenters argued that one advantage of the draft is .. MORE
Free Markets
Most people don’t have a reasoned theory to understand how the state and politics work. Many believe mythological stories they caught at home or in school. Many think their own country is unquestionably the best in the world, and their intuitions and beliefs flow from that. We must not disparage ordinary people. The poorer the .. MORE
Economic Education
The list this week is quite short. It reflects only slightly less reading. Mainly, it reflects less thinking about what I’m reading because I’m dealing with some personal issues. Top Five US Commercial Partners by Timothy Taylor, Conversable Economist, July 29, 2024. Now to the excerpt: In discussions of US international economic ties, it sometimes .. MORE
Finance
Interest rates are important, but not in the way that most people assume. To see why, it might be helpful to start with an analogy. Why does inflation matter? If you ask the average shopper, they’ll tell you that inflation is obviously bad because the public has to pay more for the stuff they buy. .. MORE
Liberty
In my Defining Ideas article last month, “The Draft Is Still a Bad Idea,” I made the case against a traditional draft to obtain military manpower. A related proposal is for a universal draft of young people, male and female, that would give them a choice between military and civilian service. That kind of draft .. MORE
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Bloggers David Henderson, Alberto Mingardi, Scott Sumner, Pierre Lemieux, Kevin Corcoran, and guests write on topical economics of interest to them, illuminating subjects from politics and finance, to recent films and cultural observations, to history and literature.
Browse our archive of posts by author last nameBooks: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Economics education has major problems. Doctoral programs are churning out applied mathematicians and statisticians with little to no knowledge of price theory. At the undergraduate level, social control (“market failure!”) and activism (“inequality!”) have replaced careful reasoning about markets and politics. Very few programs instill in students an appreciation for the power and universality of .. MORE
Economic Education
The list this week is quite short. It reflects only slightly less reading. Mainly, it reflects less thinking about what I’m reading because I’m dealing with some personal issues. Top Five US Commercial Partners by Timothy Taylor, Conversable Economist, July 29, 2024. Now to the excerpt: In discussions of US international economic ties, it sometimes .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
In his excellent post titled “To Fix Economics, Try Teaching Economists,” Alex Salter does a nice survey of the some of the best books for teaching introductory economics, intermediate microeconomics, and advanced economics. I largely agree with his evaluations but I have a few differences on the introductory economics and intermediate economics categories. Introductory Economics .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics, edited by Edwin Dolan.1 What’s so Austrian about “Austrian economics?” The label was originally a pejorative, coined by Gustav Schmoller, a harsh critic of Carl Menger’s work. It was an attempt to attach Menger’s ideas to a “provincial” or unsophisticated area. If he .. MORE
It was Don Lavoie, not Friedrich Hayek, who coined the term “knowledge problem” in his seminal 1985 National Economic Planning: What Is Left?1 (itself a more accessible and policy-focused distillation of Lavoie’s thesis, under Israel Kirzner, entitled Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered). Lavoie reformulated and clarified the knowledge problem as developed .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour by Helmut Schoeck.1 I’ve been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that is equal, where there’d be nothing to envy your neighbor. But there’s always something to .. MORE
A Book Review of Rules and Order, by Friedrich Hayek. Jeremy Shearmur, ed.1 Fifty years ago next year, F.A. Hayek, soon to be awarded a Nobel Prize in economics, published Rules and Order, the first volume of his trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty.2 Two thousand and twenty-two marks the publication of a new consolidated edition .. MORE
Maybe it will be forgotten, but it looks rather like exactly what is needed, proposals of how to reform DEI in service to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Thomas L Hutcheson, August 5