Imagine for a moment what it would be like not to have a bank account, or a credit card–much less, say, the ability to make online payments, get interest on savings, take out a loan, have a credit score, have direct deposit of a paycheck, or have a retirement account or a mortgage. Being part … Continue reading Financial Inclusion The post Financial Inclusion first appeared on Conversable Economist.| Conversable Economist
Ships play a central role in the global trade of goods, but they also make noise–which might affect undersea creatures like whales that depend on sound for communication and navigation. M. Scott Taylor investigates this issue in “Saving Killer Whales Without Sinking Trade: A market solution to noise pollution” (Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), … Continue reading Save the Whales by Pricing the Ship Noise Externality The post Save the Whales by Pricing the Ship Noise Ext...| Conversable Economist
The problem of “mortgage lock-in” arises when a homeowner has a mortgage that was obtained a few years back at a lower interest rate. If that homeowner wants to move to another place (often by using the equity in their current home for the down-payment), it would be necessary to obtain a new mortgage at … Continue reading Mortgage Lock-In The post Mortgage Lock-In first appeared on Conversable Economist.| Conversable Economist
Every government faces a temptation to make two popular choices at the same time: hold taxes lower and raise spending higher. But of course, the result is higher debt. Thus, a number of countries have been attempting to set up rules that would prevent governments from giving into temptation. One immediate challenge for such rules … Continue reading Do Rules to Limit High Government Debt Work? The post Do Rules to Limit High Government Debt Work? first appeared on Conversable Economist.| Conversable Economist
The International Federation of Robotics is a nonprofit but industry-based trade group. Each year the IFR issue a World Robotics Report, which costs way too much for me to get a copy. However, the report is accompanied by a useful press release with slides showing big-picture trends in the spread of robots around the world. … Continue reading Snapshots of the Global Robot Population The post Snapshots of the Global Robot Population first appeared on Conversable Economist.| Conversable Economist
How can economists measure the benefits of high-skilled immigration? The challenge is to use real-world data to separate this immigration from other factors, recognizing that some anecdotes about particular high-skill immigrants doesn’t offer real evidence, and that corellation is not causation. Economists often tackle questions like this by looking for a “natural experiment”–that is, some … Continue reading Measuring Benefits of High-Skilled Immigration The post Measuring Benefits ...| Conversable Economist
Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, both for its contribution to the standard pollutants like particulates and sulfur, but also because it emits more carbon per unit of energy produces than natural gas or petroleum. Thus, it’s good environmental news that, in the last couple of decades, US coal has declined to just … Continue reading 50 Years Ago: When the US Encouraged Coal Use The post 50 Years Ago: When the US Encouraged Coal Use first appeared on Conversable Economist.| Conversable Economist
The Biden administration appointed people to key antitrust positions in the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division at the US Department of Justice who, in general, promised to make antitrust regulation tougher. I've written here before about questions of doctrine: that is, how should antitrust cases be evaluated? But there's also a more basic| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
The IMF has updated its Global Debt Database, and Vitor Gaspar, Carlos Eduardo Goncalves, and Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro point out a few of big-picture changes in a short article “Global Debt Remains Above 235% of World GDP” (IMF Blog, September 17, 2025). Here’s an overall view of global debt since 1950, measured as a share of global … Continue reading Some Trends in Global Debt from the IMF The post Some Trends in Global Debt from the IMF first appeared on Conversable Economist.| Conversable Economist
The exercise of US foreign policy (along with the European Union and the United Nations) has been increasingly characterized by the use (or threat) of trade sanctions. What do we know about how such sanctions work? Gabriel Felbermayr, T. Clifton Morgan, Constantinos Syropoulos, and Yoto V. Yotov review the evidence in “Economic Sanctions: Stylized Facts … Continue reading Economics of Trade Sanctions The post Economics of Trade Sanctions first appeared on Conversable Economist.| Conversable Economist
Back in November 2022, Dean Karlan took the job as the first "chief economist" for USAID. In that position, he had a staff of about 30 whose task was to figure out the benefits and costs of different aid programs, with the goal over time of refocusing aid on problems and situations where the payoff| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
Economists have been thinking for a long time about the operation of buying and selling in markets. However, they have traditionally spent less time studying what happens inside a firm–a setting in which forces of supply and demand are replaced by managerial decision-making. Anyone who has had both a good boss and bad boss knows that it makes a difference, but how and why? Alan Benson and Kathryn Shaw tackle the research on this question in “What Do Managers Do? An Economist’s Perspect...| conversableeconomist.com
Compared to workers in most other high-income countries, Americans tend to work more hours per year. Here's a figure from the OECD, which is based on taking the total number of hours worked in an economy and dividing it by the number of workers for the most recent year available. Because different countries will measure| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
In the long run, the standard of living for people in an economy rises as the amount of output produced per hour of work--that is, productivity--rises. There's reason for concern when productivity in an industry falls for a sustained period of time. In partiuclar, productivity seems to be falling in construction of housing, at the| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
Scott Wolla of the St. Louis Fed interviews Gary Hoover on his thoughts about teaching economics ("Gary Hoover: Teaching with Purpose," July 1, 2025, transcript available). Here are a few excerpts, but there's more in the full version: How he got interested in economics I’m a student who is in high school, and I’m watching| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
Here's the economic problem of antiquities: All over the world, there are historical artifacts buried under land or submerged underwater, or both. Also, there are museums and rich collectors all around the world who would like to possess these antiquities. But of course, the situatin here is more complex than basic supply and demand. Antiquities| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
A person does not really read Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary (1764)--or at least I don't --but instead surfs through it from time to time, trying to hit some of the high spots. Here are a couple of comments for reflection on a summer's day, from the 1901 translation by William Fleming. In the entry under "Presbyterian,"| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
There's a well-known approach in politics when one agency wants another agency--not under its direct control--to do something. You first try to soften up the resistance of the other agency by accusing them of stuff. It's even better if the accusations have some substance behind them, but really, all that matters is that the accusations| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
Back in 1974, in the aftermath of the OPEC oil embargo, the National Maximum Speed Law was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon. It required all states to enact a maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour, or else to face a cutoff of federal highway funding. The goal was to reduce US oil consumption. At the time, advertising campaigns to inform the public of the new speed limit said, “It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.”| conversableeconomist.com
Back in 1974, in the aftermath of the OPEC oil embargo, the National Maximum Speed Law was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon. It required all states to enact a maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour, or else to face a cutoff of federal highway funding. The goal| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.” In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.” In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of c...| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
Short answer: comparative advantage is a plausible candidate. This story is an old one, but perhaps it has become old enough that some readers will not be familiar with it. It's told in a 1969 address by Paul Samuelson (Samuelson, Paul A. 1969. “Presidential Address: The Way of the Economist.” In P. A. Samuelson (ed.),| Conversable Economist - In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an amb...
