Economic Thinkers

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.

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 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.

May 13, 2015

Why the Social Security Crisis Has Begun

Caused by aging baby boomers, expanded criteria and the remnants of the great recession, SSDI entitlement spending is approaching insolvency.

May 7, 2015

Love, Marriage and Inequality

As female labor force participation increased since the 1970s, so too has the income inequality that resulted from assortative mating of higher earners.

April 6, 2015

Why a Dollar Coin Might Not Be Money

In the U.S. the Federal Reserve tried to introduce metal dollar coins into the money supply but currency demand indicates that people prefer paper.