I argue that the U.S. Mint should stop producing pennies. The Mint is losing money on penny production and new evidence from a multi-state convenience store chain shows that eliminating the penny will not impose a “rounding tax” on consumers. Eliminating the penny will have a negligible...

THE BENEFITS OF CRITICAL COMMENTARY ARE MANIFEST. Indeed, all of human understanding depends upon it. Coelho, De Worken-Eley, and McClure (2005) document that critical commentary declined as a share of the pages published in five highly-ranked economics journals between 1963 and 2004. They argue...

This article presents the results of a 2007 policy-views survey of a random sample of members of the American Economic Association. The new survey contains questions about many policy issues not treated by previous surveys. The questions treat such issues as trade restrictions, social insurance...