I’ll never forget hearing that the 1980 Nobel Prize in Economics had been given to Yale economist James Tobin. I was staying at a little 15-family sheep farm some 14,800 feet above sea level near Cerro de Pasco, Peru. Bleary…
Any benefit to soybean growers would be global
In contrast to many conservative economists, I don’t think Robin Hood’s redistribution policies were necessarily bad. My conservative colleagues are right, though, when they say there is no way to prove that taking from the rich and giving to the…
Steel tariffs cave to politics, but are bad economic policy
President Bush, who ran on a platform of eliminating “tariffs and terriers” that restricted international trade, has ceded to political pressures and imposed tariffs on a significant proportion of U.S. steel imports. This is a bad economic policy, and the…
Qwest actions raise old issues
Where is Ida Tarbell when we need her? The recent disclosure that Qwest, the largest telephone service supplier in the Upper Midwest, granted favorable treatment to certain firms is reminiscent of the charges the famous muckraker leveled against the Standard…