Robert Waldmann I think that a popular approach to welfare economics requires simultaneously holding two contradictory beliefs. 1) Utility is not comparable across individuals so we can only say whether…

…especially since too often it is all that some of our leading citizens remember, 30 years later, of their college course in economics.” (Paul A. Samuelson, Economics: an introductory analysis,…

…Keynesian economics from an introductory economics textbook. Unlike real Keynesians they do not understand trade deficits. For example, Obama’s primary economic advisors Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner think that one…

Halloween’s Voodoo Economics (Business Week) Americans will spend 50% more in 2006 than they did last year on Halloween jack-o-lanterns, spooky costumes, and ghoulish decorations. From haunted houses to horror…

…messiness. Update: [Charles] Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn’t apply to the poor. When we’re…

…health coverage, good schools, a chance to attend college, job retraining, affordable child care, and good public transportation to and from the job, for starters. But as we learned a…

…adopting market based economics. Then again – Mr. Tamny has yet to figure out that the Federal Reserve is concerned about other stabilization matters and not just the inflation rate….

…rest for confusing the Chinese economy with the U.S. economy as he was trying to explain high oil prices. But Dr. Canto at least did not confuse economics with religion….

…for what former OECD Chief Economist David Henderson has termed “Do-it-Yourself Economics” (DIYE), which he defines as “firmly held intuitive economic ideas and beliefs which owe little or nothing to…

Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand. You put the supply out there, and demand will follow. — Rick Perry, U.S. Secretary of Energy While the media is having…