Economic Logic

Now that Congress seems due to pass this horrible bailout bill, let us reflect a little on one provision that seems to have sweetened the de...

We are getting poll results every day on the presidential election. Even at other times, polls are used on a regular basis to elicit which w...

Much of public economics relies on the assumption that people vote with their feet, following the idea of Charles Tiebout (Yes, there is li...

There is an obvious correlation between GDP and democracy. Just think about OECD countries, all democratic, which are much richer that Third...

US kids are taught a myth in civics classes, that every vote counts. In presidential election this is certainly not true. The fact that the ...

The June 2008 issue of the American Economic Review has a nice set of articles in political economy that are an interesting read with the cu...

A fundamental building block of a developed economy is trust. You need trust to make transactions happen, to enforce contracts, to create a ...

One of the big lessons Adam Smith has taught countless generations of economists is that homo oeconomicus is all its selfish glory can be q...

While almost every economic or financial blogger has given his opinion on the current financial troubles, I have resisted because I do not t...

I received this letter the other day. Fill in [...] with a name I am withholding: Dear Parents of [...] Congratulations! [...] has been nomi...

Following up on yesterday's post on how little time unemployed people spend searching for a job, I claim that we need to model unemploym...

When we model economic behavior with micro-foundations and are interested in unemployment, we need to take a stand about what the unemployed...

Classes have started, students have bought the assigned textbooks, and they have thoroughly complained about the cost of the textbooks. It i...

Following the axions of rationality and self-interest, it is diffcult to fathom why someone would be driven to suicide bombing. This is espe...

This is the second installment in our continuing series on the Economics of toilets. After the issue of whether the seat should be left up,...