Author Archives: Susann Lees

Being “middle-class” is a perception that includes more than a certain range of numerical rankings in the distribution of income. For example, it includes a sense that one’s job is reasonably stable heading into the future, a sense that income from the job is sufficient to purchase the goods and services associated with middle-class socialContinue reading “The Squeezed Middle Class: An International View”

Globalization can be loosely defined as increases in the flow of goods, services, finance, people, and information across national boundaries. It has been generally on the rise in recent decades, although this trend experienced a substantial hiccup around the time of the Great Recession. Steven A. Altman, Pankaj Ghemawat, and Phillip Bastian have written  “DHL GlobalContinue reading “Globalization: More Than Before, But Less than You Think?”

Back in 2015, the trust fund for the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund was in deep trouble, scheduled to run out of money by 2016. A short-term legislative fix bought a few years more solvency for the trust fund, by moving some of the payroll tax for other Social Security benefits over to theContinue reading “Did Disability Insurance Just Fix Itself?”

There’s a common presumption in American politics that special interests are more likely to hold sway during secret negotiations in back rooms, while the broader public interest is more likely to win out in a transparent and open process. People making this case often quote Louis Brandeis, from his 1914 book Other People’s Money: “PublicityContinue reading “When Special Interests Play in the Sunlight”

When import tariffs are proposed, there’s a lot of talk about unfairness and helping workers. But when the tariffs are enacted, the standard pattern is that consumers pay more, profits for the protected firm go up, and jobs are reshuffled from unprotected to protected industries. Back in 1911, satirist Ambrose Bierce defined “tariff” this wayContinue reading “Washing Machine Tariffs: Who Paid? Who Benefits?”

“Financial advisers in the United States manage over $30 trillion in investible assets, and plan the financial futures of roughly half of U.S. households. At the same time, trust in the financial sector remains near all-time lows. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer ranks financial services as the least trusted sector by consumers, finding that onlyContinue reading “Financial Managers and Misconduct”

A “household equivalence” scale offers an answer to this question: How much more income is needed by a a household with more people so that it has the same standard of living as a household with fewer people? The question may seem a little abstract, but it has immediate applications. For example, the income levelContinue reading “Two Can Live 1.414 Times as Cheaply as One: Household Equivalence Scales”

As we move toward the end of the academic year for many colleges and universities, it is perhaps useful for students to be reminded that the final grade for any given course is quite unlikely to have a long-lasting influence on your life. Here are some thoughts from the syndicated newspaper column written by CalvinContinue reading “The Statute of Limitations on College Grades”

I wrote a few weeks back that the American Statistical Association has published a special issue of it journal, the American Statistician, with a lead article proposing the abolition of “statistical significance” (“Time to Abolish `Statistical Significance’”?). John Ioannidis has estimated that 90% of medical research is statistically flawed, so one might expect him toContinue reading “One Case for Keeping "Statistical Significance:" Beats the Alternatives”

In 1840, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a poem called “The Village Blacksmith.” In my humble economist-opinion, not his best work. But the opening four lines are very nice: Under a spreading chestnut treeThe village smithy stands;The smith, a mighty man is he,With large and sinewy hands … When I was a little boy, and myContinue reading “When Did the Blacksmiths Disappear?”