Author Archives: Susann Lees

As the US goes through one of its periodic paroxysms over how the small minority of high school graduates who attend a selective four-year undergraduate college is chosen, it’s worth taking a moment to remember everyone else.  US high schools graduate about 3.6 million students each year. That’s a big group, with a wide arrayContinue reading “Alternatives to the Four-Year College Track for Everyone Else”

Hites Ahir interviews Paul Cheshire in the March 2019 issue of his Housing Watch Newsletter (interview here, full newsletter here). Here are a few of Cheshire’s comments that caught my eye: The Economic Gains from Cities “There are many types of agglomeration economies in consumption and we really know very little about them still butContinue reading “Paul Cheshire: "Cities are the Most Welfare Enhancing Human Innovation In History"”

Labor markets are in some ways fundamentally different from markets for goods and services. A job is a relationship, but in general, the worker needs the relationship to begin and to last more than the employer does/ John Bates Clark , probably the most eminent American economist of his time, put it this way in hisContinue reading “Some Peculiarities of Labor Markets: Is Antitrust an Answer?”

Greg Mankiw is the author of two leading undergraduate economics textbooks: one for the introductory principles of economics course and the other for intermediate macro. At his blog, he linked an essay he has just written, “Reflections of a Textbook Author” (March 6, 2019).  Those teaching or taking either principles or intermediate macro will find itContinue reading “Greg Mankiw on Textbooks, and Some Reactions”

The story of William Lee and his knitting machine pops up now and again. For example, the 2019 World Development Report from the World Bank has a mention near the start of Chapter 1: “In 1589, Queen Elizabeth I of England was alarmed when clergyman William Lee applied for a royal patent for a knittingContinue reading “The Story of William Lee and His Knitting Machine”

Each year the Environmental Protection Agency produces an Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks. The draft version of the report for 1990-2017 was published in February 2019.  Here’s a figure showing gross emissions of greenhouse gases in the US. Emissions that are not carbon dioxide have been converted to its “equivalent.” Several themes jumpContinue reading “Sources of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions”

Early in 2018, President Trump began instituting a series of tariffs on international trade. As he tweeted in March 2018: “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billionContinue reading “US Imposes Tariffs, and the 2018 Trade Deficit Rises: Lessons?”

Daylight savings time starts this weekend. Here’s a post from two years ago on its intellectual origins.___________ The idea that adjusting the time of day can result in energy savings traces back to a whimsical essay written by Benjamin Franklin back in 1784. Franklin claims in the essay that while living in Paris and attending parties everyContinue reading “Benjamin Franklin and the Origins of Daylight Savings Time”

With the shift to Daylight Savings Time taking place this weekend, it seemed appropriate to rerun this post from a three years ago on the subject: Where I live in Minnesota, the short days of December have less than 9 hours of daylight, with sunrise around 7:50 am and sunset around 4:40 pm. In contrast,Continue reading “Economics of Daylight Savings Time”

Since 1970, the Brookings Institution has been publishing the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity twice a year. The papers are invited and policy-relevant, and although they often contain a dose of statistical and theoretical analysis, some effort is made to keep the main themes readable to the patient generalist reader. It is fairly common thatContinue reading “Economic Tidbits: BPEA — Spring 2019”