Category Archives: Economics

Who Says Economists Are Selfish?

Posted on September 15, 2010 | Comments Off on Who Says Economists Are Selfish?

And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety.

-Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 25.

That sentence is more important to understanding how markets work than most people realize. The ability to feel empathy is part of what makes us human. It is also what makes market economies possible.

Without empathy, killing the customer would be at least as common as serving him. Mutual exchange — trade — is an act of peace. That wouldn’t be possible without the human ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes and feel for them. After all, it’s a lot easier to hit someone and take their stuff. And yet few people do. Empathy is a big reason why.

Adam Smith was one perceptive guy. Others have filled in gaps in his thought, and proven him wrong on some details. That does not take away from the fact that he was as perceptive as any thinker in history.

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Posted in Economics, Great Thinkers, Philosophy

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Clearing the Way for High-Tech Jobs

Posted on September 15, 2010 | Comments Off on Clearing the Way for High-Tech Jobs

Over at RealClearMarkets.c0m, my colleague Ryan Radia offer some ideas for how to create more high-tech jobs. Our main points:

-Do more with less. This often involves cutting workers who aren’t productive enough to offset their wages. Sounds like bad news. But it’s actually crucial to job creation. That’s because in the long run, automation frees up resources — and employees — for new opportunities.

-Hiring new employees means jumping through countless regulatory hoops. According to a 2005 study by economist W. Mark Crain, compliance costs average $5,282 per employee at large companies. Small businesses pay $7,647 per employee. Some of those resources could have been spent hiring more employees. Over-regulation causes unemployment.

-Politicians can’t create jobs. But they can help to foster better conditions for wealth and job creation. Regulations cost businesses and consumers $1.17 trillion last year alone. Congress should roll them back. Some companies fear potential clampdowns on their businesses. Congress should leave them alone. Some failing businesses are eating up resources that could be better used elsewhere. Congress should stop bailing them out.

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Posted in Business Cycles, Economics, regulation, Technology

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The Real Cost of TARP

Posted on September 14, 2010 | Comments Off on The Real Cost of TARP

Russ Roberts nails it over at Cafe Hayek:

Please remember that the cost of the TARP isn’t the cost to taxpayers. Even if banks paid back every single penny, the cost of the TARP is that it reduces current and future prudence.

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Posted in Bailouts, Economics

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One Way to Create High-Tech Jobs

Posted on September 14, 2010 | 2 comments

My colleague Ryan Radia and I recently sent this letter to The New York Times:

Editor, New York Times:

Catherine Rampell’s September 7 article, “Once a Dynamo, the Tech Sector Is Slow to Hire,” mourns the recent decline in U.S. data processing jobs. She blames much of the decline on the automation of previously tedious tasks.

May we suggest one way to get those jobs back: No more automation. Ban the use of computers for data processing. Imagine how much information flows through today’s global economy in an average day. Computers handle most of the load. That costs millions of jobs.

The effects would reverberate far beyond the tech sector. The paper, pen, and pencil industries would also boom.

Companies are dead-set on doing more with less. True, that creates more jobs in the long run by freeing up resources — and employees — for new ventures. But if only they would consider doing less with more, they could create more data processing jobs.

Ryan Young and Ryan Radia
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.

2 Comments

Posted in Business Cycles, Economics, The Market Process

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Shifting the Burden of Explanation

Posted on September 14, 2010 | Comments Off on Shifting the Burden of Explanation

A lot of people get angry when somebody suggests privatizing some or other government service. For example, someone who opposes government-run schools is accused of opposing all education, period. Not a rigorous line of thought. But it’s common.

Why do some people propose privatization? It’s not because they’re against the service. It’s because they think the private sector will do a better job providing that service.

If anything, because theory and data usually side with privatizers, the burden of explanation actually lies on those who favor government provision of many services. Why support more expensive and less effective schools, or mail service, or health care, or rail travel?

Mises briefly touches on that disconnect in his short 1927 book Liberalism (that is, liberalism as the word originally meant):

If I am of the opinion that it is inexpedient to assign to the government the task of operating railroads, hotels, or mines, I am not an “enemy of the state” any more than I can be called an enemy of sulphuric acid because I am of the opinion that, useful though it may be for many purposes, it is not suitable either for drinking or for washing one’s hands.

-Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, p. 18.

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Posted in Books, Economics, Great Thinkers

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Study: Cash for Clunkers Didn’t Work

Posted on September 13, 2010 | 1 comment

A new NBER working paper from Atif Mia and Amir Sufi finds that the Cash-for-Clunkers program didn’t work. Here’s part of the abstract:

We find that the program induced the purchase of an additional 360,000 cars in July and August of 2009. However, almost all of the additional purchases under the program were pulled forward from the very near future; the effect of the program on auto purchases is almost completely reversed by as early as March 2010 – only seven months after the program ended. The effect of the program on auto purchases was significantly more short-lived than previously suggested. We also find no evidence of an effect on employment, house prices, or household default rates in cities with higher exposure to the program.

In other words, cash for clunkers didn’t change how much people spent. It only changed when they spent. Sales were higher than normal during the program, and lower than normal after.

As the data come in, they are proving what theory predicts: fiscal stimulus doesn’t work. President George W. Bush tried Keynesian stimulus in 2001. It didn’t work. He tried again in 2003. It didn’t work then, either. President Obama’s stimulus programs aren’t faring any better. It’s time for a different approach.

1 Comment

Posted in Economics, Stimulus

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Economics Doesn’t Have to Be Boring

Posted on September 8, 2010 | Comments Off on Economics Doesn’t Have to Be Boring

Economics is a genuinely exciting subject to study. But introductory economics classes are genuinely boring.

Maybe they’re designed that way to weed out the weak. But that means fewer people are learning the economic way of thinking. This is a mistake. Everyone should know at least the basics.

I’m not talking comparative statics or Edgeworth boxes, or any of that nonsense that scares off lay people. Leave that to the academics. I’m talking fundamentals. The stuff that everyday people can understand and use. Such as the fact that people respond to incentives, and by being aware of that, you can read a lot into why people behave the way they do.

Or the role that the price system plays in conveying information and affecting behavior. Or the fact that millions of Parisians and New Yorkers are fed each and every day, even though nobody is coordinating the process. Which really is a miracle if you think about it.

That’s why Bill Easterly is one of my favorite economists. Tasked with teaching Econ 1 this semester, he’s decided not to follow the usual (boring) pedagogy:

Sorry, I’m not all that concerned with “how individuals, blah, blah, optimal choices, blah, blah, scarcity, blah, blah…” I’m concerned why some people are so rich and other people are so poor. I want to understand why some economies work and others don’t, and why even the ones that work still don’t work for everyone. I want to understand how other Americans and I got 64 times richer than our ancestors.

I want to know why Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney, makes $140,000 a day, and why some rock-breakers I met in Ghana make $1 a day. I think a differential of 140,000 times is pretty important to understand…

Economics principles are a set of tools that have evolved to transcend scarcity into abundance. When students use these principles to solve problems in an Econ class, they are recreating the process of historical problem solving in which poor people discovered the principles to become rich people.

If there were more professors like Easterly, maybe economics would have a livelier reputation, not to mention more students. The subject matter is the very stuff of life. But the average lecturer’s performance is the very stuff of death. Or at least of sleep.

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Posted in Economics

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Speaking Truth to Power Rarely Works

Posted on September 6, 2010 | 1 comment

Telling the truth to one’s superiors is hard. Especially when the stakes are high. Christina Romer comes to mind. Brilliant economist. She’s done excellent work on the role of monetary policy during the Great Depression.

A partisan Democrat, she was summoned to Washington soon after President Obama’s election to advise him. All of a sudden she endorsed the Bush-Obama views on stimulus. This is a 180 degree turn from her previous views. Romer’s own academic research shows that fiscal stimulus’ effects are too small to do measurable good.

Romer the economist believes that most business cycles have monetary causes. Not fiscal. Monetary. Romer the economist had been very consistent in expressing that view. But that view changed as soon as she arrived in Washington and Romer the economist transformed into Romer the political advisor. Suspicious.

This is not a new phenomenon. Politicians from both parties have been using economists for as long as economists have let themselves be so used. Politicians love the air of legitimacy that pointy-headed academics can give to their proposals. And economists love the sudden rush of attention and name recognition — and the professional prestige that will long outlast the current administration. They are happy to sell out. Or is it buying in?

That thought was sparked by reading about F.A. Hayek mourning the death of some of his colleagues’ integrity back during the Reagan years:

“You can either be an economist or a policy advisor.

I have seen in some of my closest friends… how a few years in government corrupted them intellectually and made them unable to think straight.”

–Cato Policy Report, Vol. 5, No. 2, February 1983.

1 Comment

Posted in Economics, Stimulus

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Expensive Jobs

Posted on August 27, 2010 | 4 comments

Through June, the government spent about $620 billion of stimulus money. The Obama administration claims that the spending has saved or created 2.3 to 2.8 million jobs.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume those job creation numbers are true. In fact, let’s pick the rosiest number — 2.8 million jobs.

At a price of $620 billion, that comes out to $221,428.57 per job. Startlingly inefficient.

Now consider that that $620 billion had to come from somewhere else. Some of that money came from taxes. That leaves less money left over for consumers and businesses to spend. Some of the stimulus money was borrowed. That leaves less capital for private companies borrow.

The private sector tends to spend less than the government to create a job. Since stimulus spending is spending more money to create fewer jobs than the private sector, it is actually causing net harm to the job market.

In place of the spending stimulus, I humbly offer a deregulatory stimulus. CEI VP Wayne Crews and I offer some specific proposals here.

4 Comments

Posted in Economics, Spending, Stimulus

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Money for Nothing

Posted on August 27, 2010 | Comments Off on Money for Nothing

A man collected 12 years of salary and benefits from his government job in Norfolk, Virginia. Nothing unusual about that… except that he “had not reported to work in years.”

Yes, this is an outrage. But maybe the world would be a better place if more government employees took that approach to their jobs.

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Posted in Political Animals, Public Choice

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