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Could vaping and e-cigarettes reduce the toll of death and illness due to smoking conventional cigarettes? The most recent issue of the Annual Review of Public Health (April 2018) has a nice pro-and-con. On one side, David B. Abrams, Allison M. Glasser, Jennifer L. Pearson, Andrea C. Villanti, Lauren K. Collins, and Raymond S. NiauraContinue reading “Both Sides of the Vaping Controversy”

Some people, like me, like reading and listening to interviews with economists. It’s energizing, invigorating, exhilarating. On the suspicion that readers of this blog might have a higher-than-average propensity to share this preference, I commend to your attention an interview project ongoing at Goldsmiths, University of London, run by Ivano Cardinale and Constantinos Repapis. They haveContinue reading “Interview Bonanza: Dow, Harcourt, Goodhart, Lawson, Nelson, Chang”

About a year ago I reported on “The Economics of Horseshoe Crab Blood, referring to an article by Caren Chesler, “The Blood of the Horseshoe Crab” in Popular Mechanics (April 13, 2017). The subtitle of the story reads: “Horseshoe crab blood is an irreplaceable medical marvel�and so biomedical companies are bleeding 500,000 every year. CanContinue reading “More From Your Horseshoe Crab Blood Economics Leader”

With all the controversies over the US imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum (discussed here and here, for example), it’s perhaps useful to consider an overview of what import restraints the US economy already has in place, and what effects they have had. Every three or four years, the US International Trade Commission publishes aContinue reading “Some Economic Effects of US Import Restraints”

Back in 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), commonly known as “welfare reform.”  The Winter 2018 issue of Pathways, published by the Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality, offers nine short and readable essays by social scientists and a few politicians on what happened, and what shouldContinue reading “Welfare Reform: Legacy and Next Steps”

Warren Buffett is of course as the golden-touch investor who is chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Each year he writes a letter to his shareholders, and along with an update on just what the firm did the previous year, he often discusses some broader point. In the last couple of years, Buffett’s annual letterContinue reading “Index Funds vs. Hedge Funds: Buffett’s Bet, 10 Years Later”

Tomorrow, May 5, will be the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. Here’s a characteristic little taste of his writing I ran across the other day. It’s from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which were a set of essays written in 1844, not necessarily intended for publication themselves, but an early attempt at sortingContinue reading “Marx on Economics: "Its True Ideal is the Ascetic but Rapacious Skinflint and the Ascetic but Productive Slave"”

I was hired back in 1986 to be the Managing Editor for a new academic economics journal, at the time unnamed, but which soon launched as the Journal of Economic Perspectives. The JEP is published by the American Economic Association, which back in 2011 decided–to my delight–that it would be freely available on-line, from theContinue reading “Spring 2018 Journal of Economic Perspectives is Online”

Economists have long argued that it’s very hard to build your way out of traffic congestion–regardless of whether the building means adding lanes to roads or adding mass transit. The fundamental issue is that many of the people commuting to work have three adjustments they can make: some of them can adjust the time theyContinue reading “The Stockholm Congestion Charge”

With Senator Bernie Sanders in the forefront, some Democratic members of Congress are planning a bill to guarantee jobs that pay $15 per hour, not including mandatory benefits packages, for all Americans. Legislative details have not yet been announced (!), but several sets of plan have been published recently, including on the website of theContinue reading “The Job Guarantee Controversy”