As you read this, you probably know people who are out hunting bargains in these first days of sales promotions leading up to the holidays. If you work retail, you’ve probably already put in some long hours and can will…
Author: Ed Lotterman
Ranking states is difficult, arbitrary
When Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of “Best States for Business” placed our state in ninth position, some Minnesotans started patting themselves on the back. Others scratched their heads because warnings about a supposed hostile “business climate” have been a staple…
The plus side of defense spending
Dwight Eisenhower was no economist, but he understood basic economic concepts. In a 1953 speech, just three months after taking office as president, and three days after the death of Joseph Stalin, Eisenhower argued that “Every gun that is made,…
Deflation hurts as much as inflation
If inflation, a rising general price level, hurts people, don’t falling prices help them? If so, why is there all the news about central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, being scared of deflation? And why is Narayana Kocherlakota, the…
Weighty issues in MNsure’s rate fiasco
If you can compute some numerical measure of an economy or society but it will clearly mislead people rather than inform them, don’t publish that indicator or cite it as evidence of anything. That’s not Ph.D.-level research methodology; it goes…
Are we really in currency wars?
The effects of Federal Reserve and other central banks’ policies on exchange rates are back in the news. A Bloomberg News headline, “Currency wars evolve with goal of avoiding deflation,” is typical. This implies that changing the value of our…
Tirole’s Nobel a sweet surprise
Surprising because although Tirole is well-known among scholars of industrial organization, his area of specialization, he is hardly known to other economists and certainly not to the public. I was barely familiar with his work. His economics is not the…
Analyzing the use of antibiotics in livestock
The FDA has released its latest annual report on use of antibiotics in raising livestock. As expected — at least by those of us with a skeptical bent — use increased over the reported period despite new regulations intended to…
Rails are expected to stay clogged
Railroad congestion in the Upper Midwest has been a growing problem for some time, but things are coming to a head because we face a very large harvest and North Dakota oil production continues to grow. Five committees of the…
Epidemics can impose ‘exogenous shocks’
A big question that will unfold over the next six months is whether the Ebola outbreak in West Africa will remain a localized medical and economic problem or become a global pandemic. The experts at the CDC and WHO discount…