Continuity rather than change is the theme at the Federal Reserve this week. In the short term, its policy-making Open Market Committee decided to continue gradually reducing its long-established stimulus program of expanding the nation’s money supply through bond purchases.…
Water tax could save California from its drought
It is hot and dry in California. Water is scarce and is likely to get scarcer over the next months unless there is substantial precipitation. With an eighth of our nation’s population and an enormous agricultural sector, severe water shortages…
When the costs of war don’t always ensure peace
I can’t help but notice that some increasingly sharp geopolitical skirmishing over islands in the South and East China Seas coincides with this year’s centennial of the outbreak of World War I. If Europe could stumble into a war that…
Knowledge is key to reducing the damage of ‘external costs’
Resources get wasted when a society does not develop effective ways to manage the damage that can occur when the economic activities of one person or company harm another — what economists call “external costs.” It is inevitable that this…