The Obama administration and many in Congress apparently believe that the U.S. health care system is “Pareto-inefficient.” That’s what economists call the most basic criterion for identifying resource waste, a situation where you can make some people better off without…
Changing structure of dairying only prolongs sector’s agony
Virtually all animal agriculture faces hard times right now, but dairying is especially hard-pressed. Milk prices have fallen by half since last year, to their lowest level in 30 years — even without adjusting for inflation. Although feed prices have…
Limit bank size and you limit financial blowups
Banking is like manufacturing explosives. However carefully you manage it, there are inevitable blow-ups. But if you keep production units small and sufficiently separated, you can minimize the overall damage that any eventual accident will cause. Ravi Jagannathan, a finance…
Credit McNamara for the way we operate
Robert McNamara’s mistakes as Secretary of Defense have eclipsed forever his other contributions, including his participation in the genesis of operations research. This important field at the intersection of applied economics, engineering and mathematics has affected the world more than…