It looks like the 2014 harvest of major field crops like corn and soybeans is going to be very large. It certainly will approach previous records and may set new ones. That is bad news for crop farmers since prices…
Keep Fed free to act within its discretion
Congress is considering a bill requiring the Federal Reserve to adopt a mathematical rule, such as the “Taylor Rule,” for determining monetary policy. More about the Taylor Rule later in this column, but on balance, this is a bad idea.…
Water dispute shows complexity of problems
If you are attracted by the libertarian ideas of Rand Paul, or those of Ted Cruz or Paul Ryan for that matter, you should pay attention to a little brouhaha over water rights in Nebraska. It isn’t a refutation of…
When minimum wage honesty is not the best policy
Conventional economic theory assumes that people are highly rational in many life decisions. Common sense and a growing body of formal research show this is not true, in both work and spending. Beyond this, people’s reactions to the economic actions…