In the January 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle, one of the clues was “Sassy reply to criticism.” The answer: “It’s a free country...” Why do I find this so striking? For two reasons...

In a story Friday about the student protests of budget cuts, The Herald reported, "Some professors took students from their classrooms to the rally.". . .

When economics professors teach the basics of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), we usually caution our students that it is not a good measure of welfare. . . .

In 2006, Princeton University economist and former Federal Reserve vice chairmanAlan Blinder made a splash with his claimthat 30 to 40millionAmerican jobs could become vulnerable to offshore competition over the next two decades. . . .

On Thursday, the Obama administration introduced its proposal for dealing with the "too big to fail" problem for banks. . . .

Formany years,DanielCallahan, cofounder of the Hastings Center, has been writing about medical ethics and bioethics. . . .

No government agency—or private entity—computes the dollar value of goods that people in the rest of the world sell to or buy from Californians. . . .

The late Nobel laureate's mathematical approach to economics has been a mixed blessing. . . .

Yesterday's award of the Nobel Prize in economics to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson at first struck me as a good choice. Now I think it's a great choice...

Even Google didn't believe it...

It had to happen...

When Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wants to get new drugs into the hands of patients quickly and cheaply, he knows just what to do--waive some or all of the Food and Drug Administration's clinical trial requirements...

Critics across the political spectrum are having a field day blaming the current economic crisis on former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who they allege carried out an excessively expansionary monetary policy following the recession of 2001...

It's become conventional wisdom that Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve was responsible for the housing crisis...

When Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke proposed the $700 billion bailout last September, many mainstream economists who spoke out lined up in favor, although about as many economists were critical...

When President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown meet tomorrow, one of the main items on the agenda will surely be the economy and economic policy...

Since Barack Obama was elected, there has been much hopeful talk about addressing this country's health care problems...

Most people in the incoming Obama administration--and, indeed, most people-- believe that the Keynesian model of the economy is basically correct...

President-elect Obama has appointed Lawrence Summers, former President Clinton's last Treasury secretary, to head his National Economic Council...

Unemployment benefits extension will extend unemployment...

Last Tuesday on Forbes.com, I compared the economic policy proposals of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama...

Predicting and analyzing the economic policies of either a President McCain or a President Obama is difficult for two reasons...

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced yesterday that the 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is Paul Krugman...

Many of the people who say they hate taxes are advocating yet another tax on Monterey County residents...

One idea that has swept economics in the last 20 years is game theory...

Giving a great deal of discretionary power to one man, as the bailout bill does, is not generally a good idea. Under the bill, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would get to spend $250 billion, immediately if he wishes, and up to $700 billion, on buying unnamed financial assets...

Why do people judge the Federal Reserve, whether under Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke, to be a major cause of the subprime bust? ...

For quite a while now, the spot price of oil -- that is, the price at which you can buy or sell oil for delivery today -- has been well above the futures price...

Voters in Pacific Grove will have a chance Nov. 6 to vote on whether to impose three new taxes on others and themselves...

The idea that an increase in economic growth leads to an increase in inflation -- and that decreased growth reduces inflation -- is reflected endlessly in the media...

The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is an income tax monstrosity that denies middle-to-high-income people deductions that would otherwise be legitimate....

One of the principles Charles Hooper and I state in our book, "Making Great Decisions in Business and Life," is that in solving a problem, any alternatives you consider must be feasible...

The Food and Drug Administration spends your money and acts in your name to regulate medicines...

In the late 1970s, supply-side economists and journalists, many of them writing on this page, began and won a debate in economics...

We've got a deal for you...

In expressing its strong reservations about the proposed merger between Sirius and XM, the Federal Communications Commission seems to think that there are only two competitors and that a merger would reduce the number to one...

Is the share of income of the top 1% in the United States high and rising?

This is the final installment of my three-part review of Alan Reynolds's excellent new book, Income and Wealth...

On Monday, Arnold Schwarzenegger presented his proposal for reducing the number of Californians who lack health insurance...

Some economists and journalists—I'll call them "the real-wage pessimists"—have claimed that average real wages have fallen during substantial time periods over the last 30 or so years...

How often have you heard that the vast majority of families' incomes in the United States are rising little or not at all, that the middle class is shrinking, that real wages are stagnating, that the top 20%, or 5%, or 1% are getting the lion's share of the gains in the U.S. economy, that average CEO pay is getting to be a couple of orders of magnitude larger than average people's pay, or that mobility across income groups has declined?

In May 1970, a few days after graduating from the University of Winnipeg with a major in mathematics, I flew to Chicago to look into getting a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago...

Most sports fans and sports analysts, for all their hours examining their teams, are fundamentally wrong about one important aspect of sports…

Recently, the Census Bureau reported its findings on 2005 household income for the United States...

In two major newspaper articles, one in last Monday's New York Times (August 28, 2006) and one in last Wednesday's Washington Post (August 30, 2006), two of the nation's leading newspapers do their readers a huge disservice...

Hurray for Frank Quattrone...

In a recent article, "Will the U.S. Defend Itself?", economist Walter Williams seems to make a case for nuclear war on Syria and Iran. His case cries out for a response...

Hurray for Frank Quattrone…

In his Aug. 16 Letter "Who Wants to Work for $5.15 an Hour?" responding to my criticism of the minimum wage ("If Only Most Americans Understood," editorial page, Aug. 1), Robert A. Steinberg makes up three quotes that he claims were from my article -- and then goes on to attack his fabricated quotes...

"The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00…

Sometimes, something happens that is so awful that we find ourselves rationalizing it, talking as if it had to happen, to make ourselves feel better about the horrible event…

You'd think that a reputable company has at least the same chance of a fair trial as an accused murderer. But as the recent Angleton, Texas, jury's verdict against Vioxx shows, you'd be wrong.

A tax increase on people who already get a lousy deal from Social Security is wrong.

One result of price control programs and liability laws has been that the number of vaccine producers has fallen in thirty years from twenty-five down to five.

Many people are convinced that high gasoline prices are due to oil companies' greed. But that explanation is insufficient.

Many users of such dietary supplements rushed to stock up on their supplies before the ban begins.

The history of economic growth is the history of people making more with less and shifting into new jobs that were unheard of in the previous generation.

There is little evidence that Hussein is mad, and his rational response to the dangerous incentives President Bush has set up should make us afraid.

Moreover, the United States government is effectively supporting left-wing terrorists in Colombia.

"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech." What part of "no law" does Congress not understand?

The people who actually pay the higher cost of employer-provided benefits are employees.

Taxes should be cut independent of the current growth of the economy.

Last May, Senator Paul Wellstone said of pharmaceutical companies, “We have an industry that makes exorbitant profits off sickness, misery, and illness of people and that is obscene.”

Interviewed recently by a Miami Herald reporter, Ms. Lopez has a message for people in the United States and other wealthy countries who are nervous about buying goods from "sweatshops": "I wish more people would buy the clothes we make."

[I]f one's goal is to reduce distribution, why not take the next logical step: make Social Security non-distributive. How would you do that? End it...

The stock of money fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc. This is from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph, a British publication...

Over at Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok points out that much of the discussion of the Civil Rights Act is so 20th century...

This morning, Scott Sumner has an excellent post on economic growth and the extent to which it is due to what he calls "neoliberal" reforms...

Kentucky candidate for U.S. Senate Rand Paul has made waves lately by saying that he would not have supported the part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that violates private persons' freedom of association...

In a post two months ago, I pointed out the important distinction between being high-income and being rich. I gave an example of a friend, and a couple of the commenters suggested that my friend guest blog about his situation...

Three days ago I posted on part of Bruce Bartlett's excellent chapter, "The Rise and Fall of Supply-Side Economics," in his book, The New American Economy. I promised to get to the fall part...

Bruce Bartlett's The New American Economy is currently my "Starbuck's book..."

I was wondering when I would first see someone make the error that arises from using the modern usage consistently. I just did...

This is from Mark Lilla, "The Tea Party Jacobins," in The New York Review of Books. I'm not sure Lilla is right about the cultural trends. But if he is, this is good news indeed...

In a post a few days ago, I pointed out that many people on both sides of the new Arizona immigration law are being collectivists. A particularly flagrant example popped up in Highland Park, Illinois...

In which the author shows himself to be more Caplanesque than Caplan...

It's not hard for me to take sides on whether police in Arizona should be able to stop people simply on suspicion that they're in the United States illegally. I think this is one more step on the road to a police state...

I came across the following memo that I wrote while a senior economist with President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers...

Bottom line: to argue for anything, there's no avoiding counterfactuals. And it's symmetric...

Last week, I watched Michael Moore's latest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, with two of my students. I took notes and we stopped at various points to discuss it. Some highlights...

Last week the New York Times blog had a post referencing an article on Adam Smith by Amartya Sen. Those of Sen's thoughts that sounded correct were not news and those that sounded like news were ones that I wasn't sure were correct...

Tyler Cowen has written an excellent review of Daniel Okrent's new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition...

Bryan's question (When you were actually living through the Seventies, did public policy and the overall health of the economy seem worse than today? The same? Better?) is tough to answer...

After my discussion this morning on KQED, I had an "aha" moment....The aha moment was in noticing the difference between my approach, on the one hand, and Michael Krasny's and Sylvia Allegretto's, on the other...

Arnold has commented on Tyler Cowen's post on the steps the Canadian government took in the 1990s to reduce budget deficits and turn them into surpluses. The government did it mainly with reductions in the growth of government spending and secondarily with tax increases.

I heard a very good speech by Tyler Cowen at the Association for Private Enterprise Education conference in Las Vegas today. It was titled "Why Is It Such a Deep and Long Recession?"

Co-bloggers Arnold and Bryan have posted recently on their view that "libertarian paternalism" would be more attractive if its advocates pushed to replace existing paternalist policies with softer "nudging" paternalist policies. Scott Sumner has said something similar.

On Monday, I sent a letter to the Wall Street Journal about its editorial, "The Separation of Health and State." Here it is...

Next Tuesday, April 13, I'll be making a presentation in Las Vegas at the annual meetings of the Association for Private Enterprise Education (APEE). My topic is "Is the Middle Class Disappearing?" Unusually for me, I actually have the final draft complete a week before presenting.

A few months ago, in the comments on one of Bryan's posts, Bob Murphy asserted that real income per capita would rise by a large double-digit percent within a year or two if the size of the government were scaled back by about 90 percent.

One of my favorite legal scholars, Jonathan Turley, has weighed in on the constitutionality of the Obama health insurance scheme.

Large parts of the Senate bill on health care that went into law were written behind closed doors. And it shows.

On his blog today, Tyler Cowen responds to the question, "What is the biggest flaw in the labor theory of value?". . . .

In today's Wall Street Journal, Alan Reynolds has an excellent piece on how much revenue can be expected from the Obama tax rate increases to pay for Obamacare. . . .

Bryan writes: I'm a big fan of means-testing the welfare state, but many of my favorite people disagree.

Ben Stein writes: But among the glorying, there was little or no mention of my former boss, Richard M. Nixon, and this was a monstrous wrong, one of an innumerable number of wrongs directed at Mr. Nixon. . . .

In today's Wall Street Journal, Hoover's Peter Robinson reports on an interview with Gary Becker. . . .

"My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it." . . .

On March 22, on a radio talk show, Detroit-area Congressman John Dingell stated that it would take a long time to get the regulations together to implement Obamacare because, in his words, "it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people." . . .

I think Bryan has done an admirable job of explaining how the immediate ban on pricing for pre-existing conditions will cause major adverse selection and will break down health insurance as insurance. . . .

In his pitch for the Obama health care restructuring, Paul Krugman quotes a Reuters story about a young man who was denied benefits for a pre-existing condition even though he didn't have such a condition when he got his health insurance. . . .

Walter writes: I readily admit that "capitalism" has a bad press, and its historical use is none too salutary either. . . .

Commenters on my post last night pointed out something I had not been aware of: the special treatment local governments give Bass Pro Shops to set up. . . .

Driving home from skiing today--it was a gorgeous day in California, by the way--I saw a Bass Pro Shops in a city called Manteca. . . .

This is from "Social Security to Start Cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs," by the Associated Press today. . . .

In this morning's Monterey Herald are two articles from the Associated Press, the first co-authored by Ken Thomas and Natasha Metzler and the second co-authored by Ken Thomas and Natasha Metzler. . . .

Last night, I was a guest of San Jose State University's economics department on a bus ride through Pebble Beach, complete with drinks and hors d'oeuvres. . . .

President Obama Walks Into His Own Trap. . . .

The FDA is getting worse and worse. . . .

On the comments yesterday on my post on the effect of unemployment benefits on unemployment, Noah Yetter wrote: You have to pay taxes on unemployement benefits? . . .

Last week, I addressed the issue of how much of the current unemployment is due to the many extensions of unemployment benefits. . . .

Bryan, in his earlier post today, refers to an excellent quote from Walter Block that I hadn't been aware of. . . .

Arnold called for a real health care debate between him and Daniel Callahan and quoted from his book. . . .

Veronique de Rugy recently published an excellent article on the perils of a value-added tax (VAT). . . .

Though participants agreed there was considerable slack in resource utilization, their judgments about the degree of slack varied. . . .

Jacob Hornberger had an insightful blog post on Friday in which he applied basic game theory to the issue of sanctions. . . .

The Greek government doesn't plan to cut spending by 4.8 billion Euros. . . .

I came across this memorandum I wrote while I was the senior economist for health policy with the Council of Economic Advisers. . . .

John Goodman writes: The two most serious defects of ObamaCare were never discussed at the Health Care Summit or in the President's speech this afternoon. . . .

My favorite part of the introductory philosophy course I took at the University of Winnipeg was the segment on logic, especially on logical fallacies. . . .

In going through memos I wrote at the Council of Economic Advisers, I came across the following memo that I wrote to Jeff Frankel, who replaced Paul Krugman as the International Finance economist at the CEA. . . .

I've been watching the health care summit on C-SPAN and I followed the live blogging on Cato's site done by Arnold Kling and others. . . .

The New Yorker carries a long puff piece on Paul Krugman that gives you some insight into the man and his work, especially his New York Times column. . . .

The chapter, "Reforming Health Care," in the Economic Report of the President February 2010, is chock full of interesting facts and arguments. . . .

Brad DeLong, in a belated comment at the end of my post, writes: So is your argument really that if not for the stimulus package wages would be falling--and falling wages would be inducing employers to hire lots more workers? . . .

At the event I was at on Saturday, Ralph Nader gave an excellent speech. . . .

Yesterday, I was at an all-day meeting of "left and right" in Washington to see if we could put together a coalition against the various wars that the U.S. is in but not in. . . .

I'm a congenital optimist. . . .

Whenever I've talked to college audiences over the last 10 years, I've told them that the biggest domestic political issue for the whole rest of their adult lives is likely to be spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. . . .

My friend Ted Levy sent me the following story: I'm walking through a local Phoenix mall and pass a kiosk for Rosetta Stone, the language-learning software. . . .

On the KQED interview I did on the federal budget, I made the following statement: I'm actually an advocate of having the defense budget be the defense budget, not the offense budget. . . .

Bryan, in posting on Arnold's view of what Ben Bernanke is doing, wrote: Arnold's story fits the facts, but it just seems too conspiratorial. . . .

My Hoover colleague, Thomas Sowell, has come out with yet another book. Titled Intellectuals and Society, it has been sitting on my pile for about two weeks. . . .

On Wednesday, Tom West asked: Let me ask you again, David. Are they any non-fraudulent contracts between capable parties that you believe *should* be disallowed by law? . . .

The maximum hours question returned to the United States Supreme Court three years later in Muller v. Oregon with this twist--Oregon's maximum hour statute applied only to women. . . .

In going through some articles this weekend, I found the following, reprinted in full. It's titled, "Cubans Want Freedom, Not Welfare" and was published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 30, 1994. . . .

In a post a few weeks ago, I stated that I had coined a term in 1994 to describe the effects of a ban on pre-existing conditions clauses in health insurance: adverse selection by law. . . .

While I do think that future budget deficits will push us towards some version of means testing, I can't agree that it's awesome. . . .

I just finished filling out my survey on my views of the Food and Drug Administration's monopoly on approvals of drugs and medical devices. . . .

A few days ago, Steven Horwitz wrote the following: Even with those flaws, the Administration's accounting is still one-sided. . . .

Co-blogger Bryan posted on one part of Scott Sumner's recent post on non-blog blogging. . . .

This is from Northwestern University law professor Fred McChesney's Econlib article, "Government Pensions: Such a Deal," posted today. . . .

This is from Aram Bakshian's review in today's Wall Street Journal of Andrew Young's The Politician, the just-released book about former Senator John Edwards. . . .

My review of Jagdish Bhagwati and Alan S. Blinder, Offshoring of American Jobs, appears in the latest issue of Regulation. . . .

Over at the "Division of Labor" blog, Art Carden has a great post on President Obama's State of the Union address. . . .

The economist who laid out most clearly the devastating effect of the minimum wage on black labor was Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal in his classic 1483-page study, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Volume 1, 1944. . . .

Apparently-serious people are suggesting that Bill Clinton be made the aid czar. . . .

It's hard to tell whether Pelley gets the irony of the U.S. Congress "helping" Samoa by destroying its tuna industry. . . .

Finally, Krugman admits the problem with a ban on pre-existing conditions clauses in health insurance. . . .

Indeed, one of the major contributors to bank failures during the Great Depression was the National Banking Act of 1864. . . .

In his latest TV ad for subsidies for wind-generated power, T. Boone Pickens states words to the effect: Much of our oil is imported from countries that hate us. . . .

Jacob Hornberger has an interesting post today comparing Obama and FDR. . . .

Just before Christmas, I read somewhere that Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the U.S. Senate, had made it easier for Harry Reid to pass the ugly Senate health care bill. . . .

Here's what Megan McArdle advocated today: eliminate the tax-deductibiity of health insurance benefits for people making more than $150K a year in household income, $100K for singles. . . .

As I've posted about earlier, to understand why socialism must fail, you need to understand Hayek's argument (which he drew from Ludwig von Mises and elaborated on) that the information that's most valuable is information held in the hands of millions of individual actors. . . .

A standard thing we teach our students is that it's more efficient to give money to people than to give stuff. . . .

My review of bio-ethicist Daniel Callahan's new book, Taming the Beloved Beast: How Medical Technology Costs Are Destroying Our Health Care System, was posted on-line yesterday. . . .

Jonathan Gruber has gotten some negative press for not revealing that he received substantial payments from the Obama Administration while also writing a Washington Post article favoring Obama's proposed government interventions in medical care. . . .

Over the Christmas holiday, I was talking to a young man I know who works for Facebook. . . .

One of my favorite parts of Milton Friedman's and Anna J. Schwartz's modern classic, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, is a lengthy footnote on pp. 463-64. It's their explanation of why they think the reported amount of gold in the United States, prior to FDR's confiscation order, was unrealistically low. . . .

My review of Pete Leeson's book, The Invisible Hook, is on the web at Regulation magazine. . . .

I'm glad Arnold called our attention to this piece on Palin by Jennifer Rubin. . . .

This is from my defense of Avatar from charges by some free-market critics. . . .

We still have enough freedom of speech in this country that someone can present another person's paper, properly identifying it as such. . . .

A recent article by David Luhnow in the Wall Street Journal, "Saving Mexico," contains a lot of good economic analysis of the market for illegal drugs, as well as a few statements that a completely economically literate writer would not have made. . . .

"Perfect rationality" as a statement of human nature, as distinguished from a theoretical device, makes for evolutionary nonsense. . . .

Co-blogger Arnold focused earlier this morning on part of Alan Blinder's Wall Street Journal article, "The Case for Optimism on the Economy." . . .

My article on Paul Samuelson's work is in today's (Tuesday's) Wall Street Journal. . . .

Today's lead unsigned editorial on health care in the Wall Street Journal is one of the best they have run. . . .

I posted last week on Andrew C. Revkin's and John M. Broder's New York Times news story, to show how clever journalists can bias the reader at every turn. . . .

I posted briefly on Anne C. Heller's book, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, and have now finished it. . . .

Some students and I, in a special readings class, were working our way through some chapters of David Friedman's law and economics book, Law's Order. . . .

Murphy compares the cost of doing nothing about global warming with the cost of Waxman-Markey and writes: Of the estimates in the eleven studies published since the year 1995, the worst case is a global GDP loss of 1.9 percent. . . .

Last week, I blasted CBS's show 60 Minutes. . . .

If you want to see a great example of a purported news story in which the reporters try to bias the story one way, check out today's New York Times story on Climategate. . . .

In some ways, Canada has much less freedom of speech than we have in the United States. . . .

Co-blogger Bryan asked for candidates for ridiculous sentences on economic policy. . . .

In a Washington Post story today, reporter Philip Rucker bemoans the fact that the expansion of demand for medical care that would follow from the passage of Congress's health care bill would butt up against a restricted supply of doctors. . . .

The predecessor to The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics was The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. . . .

This is from Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller. . . .

In the lead segment of "60 Minutes" last night, CBS did the unusual: it presented an incoherent story. . . .

In his excellent post on price discrimination and how pervasive it seems to be, Arnold states: The manufacturer would like to charge $400 to JS and $200 to BZ. However, to do so blatantly would be illegal. . . .

Ever since I was an assistant professor at the University of Rochester's B-school (now called the Simon School) in the late 1970s, I have believed in the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. . . .

Musician Dave Carroll recently posted a video on YouTube after United Airlines refused to take responsibility for one of its employees' having wrecked his Taylor guitar. . . .

This is my third post (see the first two here and here) on Levitt and Dubner's SuperFreakonomics. . . .

Taxpayer funding of higher education is a forced transfer to the relatively wealthy. . . .

Like Bryan, I received the same request from the same friend: what question(s) would I want to put on a survey of economists. . . .

In Bryan's excellent recent post on why most economists aren't Bayesians, he writes that the position of economic theorists is: If no one has proven that Comparative Advantage still holds with imperfect competition, transportation costs, and indivisibilities, only an ignoramus would jump the gun and recommend free trade in a world with these characteristics. . . .

The headline in the New York Times is, "F.D.A. Says It May Ban Alcoholic Drinks With Caffeine." . . . .

One of the standard claims made about the 1970s is that a major contributor to inflation and low growth was OPEC. . . .

An excellent news story in today's New York Times highlights the problems with government regulation of health insurance in Maine, problems that, the reporter notes, would likely occur if the U.S. Senate's and the U.S. House of Representatives' versions of health insurance "reform" were implemented. . . .

This is from a recent story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. . . .

Mark Spitznagel has a piece in the Wall Street Journal on Ludwig von Mises' classic book, The Theory of Money and Credit. . . .

Calomiris points out that Joe Stiglitz, Jonathan Orszag, and Peter Orszag were hired by Fannie Mae to write a paper in 2002 defending the claim that the odds of Fannie Mae ever getting into financial trouble were extremely low. . . .

The Broward Sherriff's Office is engaging in entrapment operations to catch unlicensed contractors. . . .

In this month's Featured Article, Fred McChesney pays tribute to the work of Armen Alchian and makes the case that he deserves the Nobel prize in economics...

In fighting Measure J, the measure on the Pacific Grove ballot that went down to defeat last night, I optimized...

While many people dismiss insights from public choice, what's striking is its casual acceptance in conversation and discussion...

A few weeks ago, Carl Mounteer, a local lawyer, and I were invited to present our views on a local tax issue to the Monterey County Weekly, the local left-wing weekly...

The congressional leadership has been very vocal lately about the need for competition in health insurance...

One of the views I had accepted uncritically is that all of the people at Enron charged with crimes really were guilty...

As I work my way through SuperFreakonomics, I'm starting to take back my claim that it's better than Freakonomics...

Hey, it’s baseball playoff time and the article is in the New York Times and so of course I'm going to use a baseball metaphor...

I'm only 27 pages into Levitt's and Dubner's new book, but already I'm liking Super Freakonomics better than Freakonomics...

Back in July, Bryan had an excellent post on adverse selection, pointing out that the textbook idea that adverse selection is an important problem in insurance is simply wrong...

Further highlights from Daniel Griswold's new book, Mad About Trade, which I first blogged about here...

From President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, "The Economic Case for Health Reform," June 2009:...

In arguing with the recent study done by Price Waterhouse Coopers for the American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the White House bloggers say the following:...

That was the title I gave my Wall Street Journal article on the Nobel prize that appears on line now and will appear in print tomorrow...

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding...

The doctor then takes a history and physical, spending about 30 minutes with me, for which the flat fee is $50...

This morning, after a highly-productive Liberty Fund seminar in Santa Fe, I went over to Pasquale's for breakfast. I sat with a woman who runs a Mexican restaurant in a small town in Colorado...

In a positive article, almost a puff piece, on Bruce Bartlett, New York Times reporter David Leonhardt highlights Bruce's advocacy of a value-added tax for the United States...

As events have unfolded during the past year and a half, a growing number of people have asked me what I think of the economy...

Not everyone, however, is convinced that preparing for a 17-day sports event is the best way to undertake socially responsible urban planning...

Once we start using the word "privilege" where what we really mean is "wealth," we start applying this term to those who came by their wealth without special privilege-the Bill Gateses of the world, sure, but also the more-common successful businessmen or professionals who are earning a few million dollars a year down to a few hundred thousand dollars a year and who don't show up on any "richest people" lists...

It seems to me that there are two ways of thinking about how monetary policy would react to fiscal stimulus...

In his New York Times column this morning, Ross Douthat considers various ways of reducing income inequality...

I've been enjoying Daniel Griswold's new book, Mad About Trade...

I mentioned in Tuesday's post that one of my favorite passages from Scott Shane's Dismantling Utopia is the passage about shoes...

I started my Executive MBA economics class today that I teach in front of a camera to 3 remote locations: D.C., Norfolk, and Oceana...

From the September 22 Wall Street Journal: Those countries running current account deficits, most notably the U.S., would have to define ways to boost savings...

From yesterday's Wall Street Journal, two good old-style news stories on the consequences of regulation...

My wife had breast cancer in 1986 and is an active consumer of information about breast cancer...

Not the Fed, as in Bernanke, but the Feds, as in the federal government...

When I read that President Obama would make the rounds of all the major network news shows except that of Fox News Channel, I was skeptical that any hard information would come out...

The Wall Street Journal reports the following today: Policies that set the pay for tens of thousands of bank employees nationwide would require approval from the Federal Reserve as part of a far-reaching proposal to rein in risk-taking at financial institutions...

In the spring of this year, President Obama argued that one reason for health care reform was to get long-term spending on government health care under control...

That's a question asked by Louis J. Prues and answered by the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Greene in the weekend Journal...

One of the terms most misused in recent years is the charge of ad hominem...

Today's Wall Street Journal contains an interesting front-page news story about mandated health insurance, focusing on the case of Massachusetts...

I've been following the discussion of the tea parties, intellectuals, etc...

And celebrity is no shield against Fed excommunication...

Three commenters on my post last night (ed, mark, and Karl Smith) pointed out, correctly, it turns out, that I missed Obama's point...

Finally, I have something positive to say about Obama's economic policy...

As noted in my previous post on this, Tyler Cowen and I have converged: we agree that Bernanke's and Friedman's views on the causes of the Great Depression differed and that, although there is some ambiguity, there is no clear evidence that Friedman would have favored the Paulson-Bernanke bailouts...

Here are two segments of Obama's speech this evening...

The present recession has increased private-sector unemployment to over ten percent, and feckless attempts by government to ameliorate the recession have greatly expanded government employment...

In the back and forth between Tyler Cowen and me, with a lot of heavy hitters commenting, we have actually made progress...

University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, in his latest NBER piece, finds greater than 100 percent marginal tax rates across a large swath of the U.S. population...

Casey Mulligan's blog is a gold mine...

My co-blogger, Arnold Kling, posted yesterday on American Jews and politics...

My co-blogger, Bryan, posted an excellent piece on the origins of monopoly...

In my responses (here and here) to Tyler Cowen's posts (here and here) on whether Milton Friedman would have supported the bailout of banks, I let myself be distracted by Tyler's use of the word "pretend."...

Early this morning (PDT), C-SPAN carried an interesting interview and call-in show with Dr. Ouelett, outgoing president of the Canadian Medical Association...

Not my father: David Goldhill's father...

My Hoover colleague, Thomas G. Moore, has a letter on his office wall from Senator Kennedy thanking him for his contributions to transportation deregulation...

There is more than one way to make economics fun, and I hope that future research will compare and contrast the effectiveness of different approaches...

On his blog today, Tyler Cowen, who does not usually use harsh language, does use it when referring to libertarians...

I sat in on Jeff Hummel's graduate course in Monetary Theory at San Jose State University last night...

Those who read Brad DeLong's blog will recognized his oft-asked question...

Ronald Coase won the Nobel prize for, in part, what has become known as the Coase Theorem...

How's that title for alliteration?...

Is the recession over? If so, what does that mean for those struggling to find work and keep their homes...

Should we cut down taxes for small businesses? . . .

President Obama's $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting October 1st includes cutting spending on federal programs and raising $2 trillion in taxes. . . .

One year ago today, the global financial services firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy...

The United States shifted from a relatively porous state military draft in the nation’s early years to a harsh federal draft in 1917. This development had three major causes...

Do savages have rights? . . .

Recent economic data indicate that the economy may be slowly creeping out of recession...

Berkeley economist Emmanual Saez has won the 2009 John Bates Clark Medal, awarded bi-annually by the American Economic Association since 1947 to "that American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."...

My book review of John Taylor's latest book, Getting Off Track, appeared on Forbes.com yesterday.

"Americans May be Losing Faith in Free Markets" reads the title of a July 16 "news analysis" by Los Angeles Times reporter Peter G. Gosselin...

This just in: To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate:...

Anyone who's ever used a copy of the 1993 "Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics" knows how handy and readable it is...

David Henderson, editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics and a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about when and why economists disagree...

Are you ready for a novel that appeals to your intellect and your heart at the same time?