Behavioral Economics

July 29, 2015

Paying More at the Gas Pump

Because of a low gasoline tax, the Highway Trust Fund does not have enough money to maintain the transportation infrastructure of highways and mass transit.

July 28, 2015

How Much Your Sleep Costs You

Personal income relates to how long we sleep. Less sleep can diminish the productivity that brings a higher wage. But also, less sleep means more work time.

July 23, 2015

Exposing What You Hide in Your Garbage

Weighing cost and benefit for Seattle's recycling environmental regulation involves privacy, dollars, time, and respect for the law and our environment.

July 22, 2015

Why a Hungry Country Might Have Enough Food

Focusing on production and distribution, economists look at the role of markets and of government when they try to determine what causes and ends famines.

July 7, 2015

The Tax We Should Like

Among the least popular forms of taxation, property taxes are the most desirable because of their incentives, whom they target and their resilience.

June 30, 2015

Why Children Are More Expensive Than We Think

To the dollars families spend on children, we can add the cost of stress from the time we devote to developing a child's human capital.

June 22, 2015

An Unintended Consequence of Football Helmets

Regulation can have unintended consequences. With football helmets or seat belts or even financial regulation, protection can create more reckless behavior.

June 14, 2015

The Cost of the Squeegee Men

Through a cost and benefit approach to crime control, the limited money available for municipal spending can be spent most efficiently.

June 5, 2015

A Poaching Problem that Regulation Hasn’t Solved

The market solutions and regulatory approaches used to solve the problem of elephant poaching have not worked for wildlife conservation in Africa.

June 1, 2015

India’s Height Mystery

Long assumed to have a direct relationship, the connection between height and GDP becomes more complex when we compare India and Africa.