We show here that the usual textbook declaration that there is no such thing as a "supply curve" for a monopoly can be confusing for students and is at least somewhat misleading. The perfect competition case corresponds to a "one-parameter" demand curve facing the firm; varying that parameter...

We describe how to usefully incorporate inventory holding behavior into supply and demand as usually presented in undergraduate economics courses. The approach taken adds considerable realism that will appeal to certain students of economics

The standard textbook description of relationship between the LRMC and the SRMC for output levels below the optimum for a particular plant size is typically misleading and imprecise. Students are frequently confused as to how the SRMC can ever be below the LRMC since everything is variable in...

The burden of taxation is usually discussed in terms of elasticity of demand and supply. We show here that, at least for many students, merely using the slopes of demand and supply to yield the same conclusions will be more intuitively satisfying

We show here that the return to education and several other concerns in the labor earnings literature are substantially impacted by amenity variation. Moreover, the nature of the impacts are in some cases counter-intuitive. For example, if higher education households move to nicer amenity...

If labor is fairly mobile, as it is in the United States, one would expect that households would move from less desirable areas toward more desirable areas until all areas are equally desirable. The way that areas become equally desirable is through tthe impact of movers on wages and rents (and...

Many great economic thinkers, including Alfred Marshall and William Stanley Jevons discussed the importance of joint production, or productive complements, and there are important applications. Yet many students today could complete an economics major and never be introduced to this important...

Election fraud can threaten democracy if many ineligible people are allowed to vote. The usual policy prescription is to increase monitoring cost. However, this is very costly. This paper proposes a more cost effective strategy: substitute tougher and consistent statutes across states against...