Macroeconomics

August 24, 2015

How Your Lawn is About More Than Grass

Nothing but grass, lawns began as conspicuous consumption from the English and French aristocracy and now are a middle class manicured status symbol.

August 21, 2015

Some High Speed Trading History

Depending on how fast news travels, high speed trading can be done through homing pigeons or computers but both have created information asymmetry.

August 19, 2015

How to Find More of the American Dream

Recognizing that neighborhoods with better schools and other shared characteristics affect income mobility, anti-poverty policy can become more effective.

August 13, 2015

The Values That Make Us Spend More

For major OECD countries and the U.S., the source and destination for healthcare spending reflect national values about limited government.

August 12, 2015

How to Deal With Skyscraper Shadows

Whenever a new skyscraper is built, we can ask whether its shadow violates our property rights when it eliminates the sunlight in a city's parks.

August 3, 2015

The Reason We Should Drive Around in Circles

As we improve our transportation infrastructure, the roundabout has become increasingly attractive because of safety, ease and cost.

August 2, 2015

The World’s Sanitation Gap

A production possibilities graph can display the land, labor and capital underutilization that inadequate sanitation creates and indicate a constrained GDP.

July 30, 2015

Why Major League Baseball Has a C+ Gender Grade

Because the presence of women in Major League Baseball (MLB) management positions is very small, they have diminished their talented human capital supply.

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 24, 2015

The Real Eurozone Problem

Although people in the eurozone want a single currency and their leaders want unity, monetary union problems create political distrust and disunity.

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.