Category: Other

Greece, Puerto Rico share some of same issues

The juxtaposition of this past week’s news headlines, “Greece will not pay IMF loan due on Tuesday” and “Puerto Rico governor says island can’t pay” brought a much ignored truth home. Just as Greece’s economy is an unsustainable element within…

As a group, raisin growers will pay the price

In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled last week that the 1940s-era “Federal Marketing Order” for California raisins as currently implemented violates the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. constitution. This is good news for raisin consumers, and I myself…

Of agents, principals and their principles

When we read “The Courtship of Miles Standish” in grade school, I had not yet studied economics, so I didn’t understand the theory underlying John Alden’s quandary or that Priscilla Mullins’ famous suggestion to “speak for yourself, John” constituted “collusion”…

Rising egg prices provide lesson in markets’ elasticity

Every cloud has a silver lining and while the avian flu epidemic hurts virtually all consumers and many producers, it has teachers of introductory economics positively chortling in delight. Examples of real-world resource allocation decisions in response to changing incentives…

Trade agreements are rarely about actual trade

It would be wrong to say the acronym of the much-disputed TPP (or TPTP) signifies something about tempests and teapots rather than trade and the Pacific. The underlying economic and political issues behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership are legitimate. But rhetoric…