On January 1, 2008 California’s minimum wage will increase once again, this time from 7.50 dollars per hour to 8.00 dollars per hour. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, that translates into a 6.7 percent increase, compared to a median wage increase of 4.4 percent for the GoldenState. That is bad news for Californians and the state’s economy.
Recently Forbes.com ran my article discussing this year's Nobel laureates in economics. The typical press treatment said their work in mechanism design theory showed the flaws in markets, but I disagree with that conclusion. Read more
A couple of months ago former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan ruffled feathers by criticizing the fiscal record of the Bush Administration. Dick Cheney himself responded in a Wall Street Journal op ed. Yet largely lost in the argument was Greenspan’s suggestion that we switch from a cash flow to an accrual method when measuring the federal budget deficit. (See this interview , about 2/3 of the way down.) In this post I explain the difference.
Over the past few months I’ve participated on panels that apply free market principles to the oil industry. We often get the question, “Will we run out of oil?” The answer is “no,” but that’s neither comforting nor alarming because the person asked the wrong question. Really what the person wants to know is, “Will energy become more or less scarce as we continue to use nonrenewable resources such as oil?” Read more
A San Francisco based internet start up is shaking things up in the microfinance world by offering online loans from volunteer individuals and the default rate is well below 5 percent. Read more
