Regulatory Policy

October 18, 2015

Deciding If We Should Be More Like Denmark

While Denmark has universal healthcare, family benefits and pays for college, its social welfare system requires high taxes and other sacrifices.

September 30, 2015

Part 1: Understanding the Student Loan Crisis

The characteristics of the student loan crisis include a high default and delinquency rate, huge amounts of money and a personal and macroeconomic impact.

September 15, 2015

Why Doing Good is Not Always Easy

By recognizing the tradeoffs of recycling, preserving endangered species and improving world health, doing good could become more productive.

August 30, 2015

Why a Life Needs a Price Tag

Although it seems callous, for safety regulation like speed limits and for victims' compensation like 9/11 we need to quantify the value of a life.

August 25, 2015

Using a Fat Tail to Describe Stock Market Risk

When the unexpected occurs and changes our view of stock market risk, we call it a black swan or fat tail because it is far from the mean of a bell curve.

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 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.

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.