Economic Logic

Universities engage in research and put result in the public domain because it fosters the public good. In recent years, though, they have p...

How to provide for a public good is a classic problem, because of the free-rider problem. If you cannot compel users, say, by forced taxatio...

In densely populated areas, road congestion is a fact of life. As time lost in traffic has an economic value, it is then quite obvious that ...

The litigation saga between Apple and Samsung over minute and obvious details of their respective phones makes good entertainment but has li...

The biggest waste of public resources probably comes from irregularities in procurement practices. When the bidding process is rigged, or th...

Some students in Quebec have now been on strike for over three months over a law that would increase the tuition in all universities (they a...

In the last years, much of the debate on fiscal stimulus vs. austerity was centered on the measurement of government spending multipliers. A...

It is obvious that the US government is currently spend more than normal. It is also obvious that the current level of deficits is not susta...

Poor people are more generous than rich people when giving to charities. Their donations to churches are proportionally also higher. That se...

I find it surprisingly difficult to encourage my colleagues or my employer to go for open-source software. It appears to be very difficult t...

Why do people give to charity? It could be because they care about others. It could be for tax reasons. It could be to offload some guilt. I...

IP addresses face exhaustion, at the least those under the standard IPv4 format, and by some reports they should have been all used up alrea...

We have previous established that the Internet, contrarily to conventional wisdom, makes people more social. Does this also mean that people...

One aspect of government purchases the current crisis has highlighted is how volatile they can be. Quite obviously, they are influenced by p...

By now, everyone must be aware that populations are getting older and that this puts some serious strain on pension systems. Unless one plan...

The image of the basement-dwelling World-of-Warcraft-playing loner is often shown as an example of the adverse impact of the Internet on soc...

Many countries have state operated banks that support local development or other objectives that deviate somewhat from those of usual for-pr...

It is a firmly established conventional wisdom that natural resources are best preserved when there are well established property rights. It...

It is obvious that federal fiscal deficits will have to be addressed sooner or later in the US, and seeing how difficult it is to raise taxe...

The Republican strategy in the US has been since Reagan to starve the government to prevent it from growing. The master at this has been Bus...