Be suspicious whenever you hear pundits proclaim that some change in taxes or regulation will cause either disaster or stupendous success in our economy. These factors of tax laws and varied government regulation of economic activity are important to how…
Recessions help weed out businesses not making it
Doctors used to call pneumonia ‘the old man’s friend’ because it afforded a quiet and relatively painless death to aged people already fated to die from a more unpleasant malady. Recessions perform the same function for businesses that have been…
Politicians weigh own opportunity costs in re: jobless benefits
The question of how unemployment benefits affect the unemployment rate is one where one must pay close attention to the magnitude of incentive effects as well as what direction they are. In this case, the direction is clear from economic…
8th-grade grads invented, Ph.D.s explained their inspirations
University of Minnesota economist Vernon Ruttan, who died in 2008, understood the economic factors that motivated his contemporaries, brothers Louis and Cyril Keller, two rural Minnesota blacksmiths, to invent the skid-steer loader a half-century ago. Louis Keller died this week…