Topic: Economic Theory

The Mating of Economic Ideas and Bitcoin

“As Bitcoin is a highly decentralized and antifragile system with no real-world backed assets that can be seized to shut it down, appears to be the only realistic candidate to introduce something that government cannot stop.” ~ Emile Phaneuf III

The Essential Ethic of Socialism

“In a socialist regime, I must seek the permission of others — whether state officials or one’s fellow workers — before I serve them in a novel way.” ~ Adam Martin

Reconstruction of Economics

Industrial Policy Does Indeed Fall Victim to the Knowledge Problem

“Prices, asset values, and profits and losses determined in open markets in which people spend and invest their own (and only their own) money are the only sources of information in a modern economy about which resource uses are worthwhile and which resource uses aren’t worthwhile.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

Economists’ Meaning of “Consumption”

“Because ‘to produce’ means ‘to increase humans’ opportunities to consume,’ Adam Smith is correct: consumption is indeed the sole end and purpose of all production.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

Lessons from the Phillips Curve

“The exploration of the Phillips Curve has taken many different paths and yet somehow ended up in the same place. The world could have been spared much of this meandering with a more firm grounding in what theory does and does not tell us.” ~ Joshua R. Hendrickson

The Division of Labor and the Diminution of Man

“Every job is more than just a job. It is also an opportunity to help another human being develop as a member, a contributor, and perhaps even a leader in a society dedicated to freedom and responsibility.” ~ Richard Gunderman

Wanted: Economic Literacy

“Economics is in a very real sense a way of thinking that is continuously enlightening to whomever masters that science. It is not about memorizing lemmas or models, or of learning technically sophisticated methods. It’s something much more fundamental: an understanding of how the world works.” ~ Per L. Bylund

Stratification Economics?

“We don’t know the reasons why the economics JEL committee denied Stratification Economics its own niche, but the facts amply justify their decision. The real fault, of course, is the fragmentation of social science that has allowed such problems to arise.” ~ John Staddon

Proposing a Hank Williams Jr. Economic Misery Index

“Another problem is that the misery indices, like definitions of recession and stagflation, focus on unemployment to the exclusion of real wages. But real wage declines are painful, and not fully captured by inflation alone.” ~ Robert E. Wright

Micro-Microeconomics

“A renewed examination of the most basic economics—the theory of the good—might yet generate a revolutionary micro-microeconomics.” ~ Caleb S. Fuller

Monetarism Remains a Useful Guide on Inflation

“If the Federal Reserve raises interest rates too quickly, sharply declining M2 growth will signal the risk of recession. Monitoring M2 growth can help in making sure the Fed tightens monetary policy at the appropriate pace, not too fast and not too slow.” ~ Peter N. Ireland