Government actions often help more people than intended. On Monday, the National Hurricane Center classified Hurricane Felix as a Category 5 storm and predicted it would hit Honduras and Belize in two days. Earlier, the center had warned Aruba, Bonaire…
Public good is also good for business
Insurance is a great human invention, but people should understand how it works. In particular, they need to understand the incentives insurance can create, both for the good of society and for ill. We face those questions after recent flooding…
Housing price expectations as strong on the way down
Every cloud has a silver lining. Yes, housing prices are dropping at the sharpest rate in decades. Yes, existing home sales just fell for the fifth consecutive month. On the other hand, I have great new examples of demand shifters…
Over time data can prove unreliable
Much of our prosperity stems from our ability to identify important relationships from masses of data. This is as true in economics as in the sciences. Generally, the more information, the easier it is to determine important relationships. But data…