Economic Logic

China is currently amassing large foreign reserves while imposing internally capital controls. Does this make sense? Wouldn't an economy...

This was certainly a busy week for anyone following some of the ethics sagas in our profession. First, there was the non-renewal and temper ...

A few weeks ago, I had a post entitled Bruno Frey, the epilogue , thinking that now that the University of Zurich made him a gigantic gift b...

Why do people volunteer? Obviously it must be because they find some satisfaction in it. But they may be forced to do it (say, by peer press...

I have highlighted in the past some exceptionally bad examples of forays of physicists into Economics (search for "Econophysics")....

The rational expectations hypothesis has somehow fallen into disrepute because it is viewed as somehow failing to predict or account for the...

US universities care a lot about donations, as much of their operations are financed by endowment revenue. Foundations also spend considerab...

It is well known that income taxes are distorting in a way that is not welfare improving, as it discourages labor supply. But as we need gov...

I mentioned yesterday that we do not know whether capital punishment is a deterrent or not. What about imprisonment sentences? That is much...

Whether to enforce or not capital punishment is one of those never-ending debates Europeans and Americans cannot grow tired of. In theory (a...

There is common perception that more competition can lead to lower quality, as firms try to lower prices. Of course, this presupposes that b...

It is sometimes difficult to imagine why some people take decisions that make no economic sense. Take those that accept to receive payday lo...

If you are an economist and maintain a blog, the best way to get an audience is to get into fights with pundits and journalists, and you the...

The question on how to best tax people according to some criterion is the fundamental question of much of public economics. But it is little...

In financial markets, risk is generally rewarded with higher returns. On labor markets, this is much less obvious. While some public jobs li...