The Friday after Thanksgiving has become a bellwether day for U.S. retailers and retail-sector analysts, who look at this single day’s sales figures for early indications of how the holiday shopping season will pan out. This year, expectations are positive,…
Debating the cost of airport friskings
Although public concerns about intrusive screening of air passengers didn’t result in mass protests, as some feared, the matter is hardly settled. As a public policy issue, such questions are fundamentally economic in nature because they involve decisions about how…
Foreclosure mess poses peril to all
With the latest chapters of the foreclosure mess, we have a conundrum: Being fair to some players could end up causing more pain for society as a whole. How then, should we proceed? Nearly any public policy choice can be…
Farm subsidies shouldn’t survive “tea party” scrutiny
They are not even sworn in yet, but some of the newly elected members of Congress are raising questions among agricultural economists. Incoming Missouri Congresswoman Vicki Hartzler, for example, defended continued farm subsidies on the grounds of ‘national security.’ A…