Author Archives: Susann Lees

The reason behind the tariffs that President Trump has announced for steel and aluminum is an unusual one. The legal justification for the tariffs is based Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which gives the President the power to impose tariffs if “national security” is at stake. As Chad Bown of theContinue reading “The National Security Argument for Steel and Aluminum Tariffs”

Tourism intrigues me in economic terms, because it’s a larger industry than many people realize. It’s also treated as an export industry, in the sense that if a German tourist comes to the US, the spending is essentially in economic terms an export of “services” produce in the US and consumed by a non-American–even thoughContinue reading “Economics of Tourism: The Future of Direct Contact with Other Countries”

On 14 June 2012 the three appellants were convicted in the Crown Court at Southwark of a major Value Added Tax (“VAT”) fraud involving a total loss to the public purse of 39 million. The mechanism of the fraud was a Missing Trader Intra Community (‘MTIC’), with carbon credits as the purportedly traded commodity. TheContinue reading “Dosanjh & Ors v R”

A considerable body of evidence suggests that people’s decisions are affected by how a choice is presented, or what the default option looks like. There’s a reason that grocery stores put some products at eye-level and some near the floor, or why the staples like milk and eggs are often far from the door (soContinue reading “Nudge Policies”

Many employers provide parking to employees who commute to work, which can be viewed as an untaxed fringe benefit of their jobs. The value of this benefit depends on where the parking is located. If the employer is in a uncongested suburban or rural area, where parking is generally free for everyone, then the valueContinue reading “The Commuter Parking Tax Break”

One hundred years ago,  the leading British economics journal (edited by John Maynard Keynes) published an article and a response from two women authors: Eleanor Rathbone and Millicent Fawcett. Despite writing in the Economic Journal, neither had professional training in economics. But they were clearly recognized as experts with opinions that economists hear. Eleanor RathboneContinue reading “Equal Pay for Equal Work: Rathbone and Fawcett in 1918”

There’s a lot of talk about the opioid crisis, but I’m not confident that most people have internalized just how awful it is. To set the stage, here are a couple of figures from the 2018 Economic Report of the President. The dramatic rise in overdose deaths, from about 7000-8000 per year in the lateContinue reading “Opioids: Brought to You by the Medical Care Industry”

High-income countries vary considerably in the share of households that own their own homes, The US rate of homeownership was about average by international standards 20-25 years ago, but now is below the average. Here are some facts from Laurie S. Goodman and Christopher Mayer, “Homeownership and the American Dream” in the Winter 2018 issueContinue reading “Homeownership Rates: Some International Comparisons”

Economists are often queasy about the idea that preferences can be measured by surveys. It’s easy for someone to say that they value organic fruits and vegetables, for example, but when they go to the grocery, how do they actually spend their money? However, in some contexts, prices are not readily available. A common exampleContinue reading “Contingent Valuation and the Deepwater Horizon Spill”

The Congressional Budget Office has published the latest version of its occasional report on “The Distribution of Household Income, 2014” (March 2018). It’s an OK place to start for a fact-based discussion of the subject. Here is one figure in particular that caught my eye. The vertical axis of the figure is a Gini coefficient, whichContinue reading “The Distribution and Redistribution of US Income”