Why We Need Sunday Shopping

To fuel French economic growth, productivity and employment, a controversial law will allow more Sunday shopping but the business/leisure debate continues.

Why We Want New iPhones

A competitive strategy, planned obsolescence is controversial. It can spur innovation and growth or represent corporate waste and consumer manipulation.

The Reason One Starbucks Can’t Ask Your Name

Even for a huge multinational like Starbucks, competing globally requires knowledgeable monopolistic competition and knowing local tastes and habits.

Why Would a Firm Not Want 50 Employees?

Economist Casey Mulligan says that the Affordable Care Act will impact labor markets by diminishing productively through perverse incentives.

How Much Do You Care About Your Independent Book Store?

The price floor in France’s Anti-Amazon Law protects independent booksellers and their cultural contribution but diminishes efficiency and raises prices.

Why should you care about a tiny grain of sand?

Because commercial globalization needs standardized weights and measures, the mystery of the kilogram prototype getting lighter needs to be solved.

The Best Reason For Women to be on Corporate Boards

Our Monday Gender Issue: Last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had long opposed female quotas on corporate boards, capitulated. Ms. Merkel’s labor minister, a physician and mother of 6, held firm to demands that her boss accept quotas. Merkel…

Which Countries Want You to Have a Baby?

It is a recipe for demographic disaster when you have too many old people and not enough babies. The problem is the size of the working age population. When countries like the US are affluent enough to provide support to…

B(T)FF… Best Trading Friends Forever

We can say that Mexico believes her top trading partner is the United States because the value of her exports to the US (2013: $370,826,831) added to the value of her imports from the US (2013: $370,746,056) is exceeded by none of her other…

Do “Millionaires’ Taxes” Work?

I’ve been wondering about the impact of France’s “millionaires tax.” At first a 75% tax on individual incomes above €1 million ($1.37 million), the proposal had to be tweaked when France’s Constitutional Council said it was unfair. Returning to the…