Economic History

January 8, 2015

Understanding a New Tax Issue

With the House requiring dynamic scoring of tax legislation from the CBO, the bigger tax debate resurfaces on how much redistribution and spending.

January 4, 2015

What a Blind Taste Test Showed About Beer

Behavioral economic ideas show that product differentiation and consumer preference are more from branding than the taste of colas or beers.

December 28, 2014

Why the Metric Switch is so Tough

The expense and complexities of switching to the metric system have prevented the change, and have affected how standard weights and measures help globalization.

December 22, 2014

The Seven Ways We Pay For Free Parking

Including congestion, wasted gas, time and emissions, cheap parking creates negative externalities that variable pricing of parking spaces can eliminate.

December 16, 2014

Why Academy Award Winners Might Live Longer

Relating income inequality to the stress felt by low status Bolivian Tsimane men and academy award losers, researchers said that stress that harms health.

December 15, 2014

Italy and the EU: An Internet Story

Looking at internet connectivity as a part of the EU's information infrastructure, we can see how Italy is behind and reflects member nation contrasts.

December 9, 2014

Expanding How We Measure Inflation

Our CPI measure of the inflation rate has been debated because it could be calculated using a chained CPU, could be real time, and excludes some seniors.

November 30, 2014

Three Graphs That Tell the Whole Oil Story

Following the law of supply, U.S. shale oil firms will lower output because OPEC is letting price plummet but airlines on demand side like lower prices.

November 27, 2014

A Bigger (Thanksgiving) Pie or Equal Slices?

Increasing income inequality by moving from communal farming to individual plots, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford changed income redistribution.

November 25, 2014

What An Unemployment Rate Does Not Tell You

A single statistic like the unemployment rate for Japan, the European Union and the U.S. can be misleading until we look more closely at what it represents.

November 13, 2014

Should Water Be Free?

Although protestors in Detroit and Ireland say water is a human right, economists, citing a definition of a public good and a tornado alarm, would disagree.

November 12, 2014

Dodd-Frank: When Is A Law Too Long To Obey?

With debated impact, a little more than half of the thousands of rules necessary for implementing the financial regulation in Dodd-Frank have been written.