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I have some proposals for the think tank industry on how to better help struggling places. → Read More
I want to lay out a provocative argument that I am not really going to fully stand behind, but want to throw out there for future discussion: maybe we should give up on the anti-development, high priced, mega cities that have sucked up so much economic activity. → Read More
Why are we so focused on this and not other possible futures? A desire for a larger government is one plausible explanation. → Read More
There is a persistent bias towards believing scare stories about the labor market like believing that robots are going to take all of our jobs. Why is this the case? Why do people love to panic? → Read More
Jeff Bezos thinks humans need to go to the moon as a matter of necessity. He's wrong. → Read More
For years, we have heard that many people who lost their jobs in the Great Recession weren't capable of returning to work. Now that the jobless rate has fallen to 3.9%, the lowest since 2000, it's time for the pessimists to step back, admit they were wrong, and try on some optimism for once. → Read More
The idea that the government should guarantee anyone who wants one a good job is gathering just a tiny bit of steam. This idea is absurd. → Read More
Over the last few years, the Fed (along with many other economists and pundits) have drastically underestimated how far we are from full-employment. But does this matter? → Read More
Hit Makers, by Derek Thompson, is a first-rate business history book that also helps you understand why some things become popular and some things don't. → Read More
Contrary to popular perceptions, more educated and higher income individuals actually have less free time. → Read More
"Food deserts", long-trumpeted as a major cause of unhealthy eating for poor households, are dead. Or at least they should be. → Read More
A few years ago I was speaking with an executive from a real estate investment trust that does billions of dollars a year in revenue. He was telling me about how they moved from a decentralized system of landlord/property managers to set their rents to one that utilized huge datasets [...] → Read More
I believe there is a new liberal consensus on economic policy emerging and gathering strength. Department of Labor senior advisor Mary Beth Maxwell identifies it as well in a Medium post on “A ‘New’ Conventional Wisdom on Labor”. She quotes Paul Krugman, who provides what I think amounts to the basic case: [...] → Read More
This is a guest post by Stephen Bronars, a Senior Economist at Welch Consulting, Ph.D. in Economics from University of Chicago. His opinions are his own. Michael Brown’s tragic death, violent protests including the shootings of police officers, a Justice Department investigation describing a pattern and practice of discrimination in the [...] → Read More
There’s a lot of important, nuanced debate to be had between the most optimistic education reformers and those who are more skeptical. But I think there are many, though of course not all, on the education reform critic side who tie themselves in knots telling inconsistent stories about education in this [...] → Read More
With fears of an economic stagnation on everyone's mind, it's a important to remember that this is not the first time that Americans have taken a hard look at our country and wondered whether our best days were behind us. One place to see this in music. To do this, [...] → Read More
Two groups who I think share a lot of unappreciated similarities are liberal gentrification critics and conservative immigration critics. Both want to take a dynamic and free society and freeze it in time, because they like it how it is now. And both assume we have a high level of ownership [...] → Read More
I think the conventional wisdom on charter school evidence could be summed up thusly: "some charter schools appear to do very well, but on average charters do no better and no worse than public schools". But I would like to propose a better conventional wisdom: "some charter schools appear to do very [...] → Read More
Richard Forida has a piece in the New York Times today about how the migration of workers from blue states to red states is a problem for the U.S. overall. Florida's piece starts off describing some of the different trends pushing people to migrate from blue states to red states, and it isn't until [...] → Read More
President Obama announced something of an amnesty plan Thursday night for illegal immigrants with children who are citizens or green card holders. Estimates vary, but this will probably affect around 4 to 5 million illegal immigrants. Politically many are arguing this policy is an extreme move, but economically the impact on [...] → Read More