Economists are not known for their literary imaginations. Flip through any economics textbook and you’ll find a barrage of terms like the ‘Philips curve’ and the ‘Fisher effect’. The jargon is simple enough — empirical relations are usually named after the person who discovered them....

Think of this question as a sword — a sharp piece of steel that cuts through bullshit. In this post, we’ll use it to slice through business-press bullshit about the stock market. You know the stuff — the ubiquitous puff pieces that gush about rising stock prices, as though they benefit...

There’s an old joke that economics is too important to be left to economists. In the same vein, I think rich people are too important to be left to the self-help industry. Yes, the popular appeal of you-can-get-rich-too books is obvious. But what’s not obvious is why so few social scientists...

FROM THE ARTICLE: At the end of November 2023, the New York Times published an editorial: Why Are Nonprofit Hospitals Focused More on Dollars Than Patients? It is certainly a valid question. Most people might assume that not-for-profit (NFP) organisations focus on providing a public benefit...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY *** Concerns about the market power of large corporations are growing. There are good reasons why monopoly now features so prominently on the political and economic agenda. Mounting evidence shows that corporate concentration stifles innovation and investment, resulting in...

It turns out that like the rest of us, billionaires experience wealth inequality. (Individuals who top the Forbes billionaire list are far richer than those at the bottom of the list.) Interestingly, this billionaire wealth concentration fluctuates over time … in tight correlation with the...

The increased representation of minority students on the campuses of predominantly White universities in the United States presents increased opportunities for intercultural contact. Studying dating experiences across racial and ethnic lines has been used to determine the existence of a...

This paper looks at the implications for monetary policy of the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which is sometimes called the "fourth industrial revolution". The paper reviews experiences from the previous three industrial revolutions, developing a template...

As our trading world becomes more globalized, who benefits and who gets hurt? This paper relies on the Ricardian model to explore the effects of technological improvements in underdeveloped countries on the welfare of developed countries. For example, trading between the United States and China,...

This paper examines the controversy involving international trade by employing a simple model. It analyzes the effects of unilateral technological improvements in one entity on the welfare of that entity and its trading partners. Improvements in one country are irreversible and lead to...