Immigration certainly is in the news. President Bush recently addressed immigration in a major speech. In Minnesota, the Pawlenty administration released a quickly controversial report on what illegal immigrants cost state and local governments. And immigration is emerging as an…
How feedback can affect retail sales
Thanks to innovations in technology, measuring holiday spending is easier and faster — and the resulting news stories can influence decisions by retailers and shoppers. The upshot is that both parties behave differently from how they did 20 years ago.…
Beyond “Freakonomics”
Books on economics seldom make the New York Times best-seller list, but Steve Levitt’s “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” has been there for 34 weeks. Levitt, 38, grew up in the Twin Cities and graduated…
Housing boom bound to run out of steam
News that the Twin Cities area housing market cooled in October is no surprise. Sale prices for existing homes had increased sharply for two years. New construction had boomed. Neither trend was sustainable over the long run. The most important…