Over the last three decades, large cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toledo have seen their populations shrink, while areas like Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, Tampa, and Phoenix have seen their populations grow rapidly. Examining the policy differences between high-growth and low-growth areas can provide evidence that may help declining cities reverse their fortunes.
In their book on property rights, Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney (2003: 13) make the following statement: The idea that property rights might themselves be a distinct and explicit area of economic inquiry is relatively recent. In classical economics, well-defined and secure property rights were typically assumed to exist, not analyzed or explained.
Public policy often regards pollution and other measures of poor environmental quality as public bads that result from market failure and require government intervention through regulatory policies and more stringent environmental standards. In this article, I argue that pollution and environmental quality should instead be regarded from a property rights perspective, in which institutions of clearly defined and enforced property rights create incentives that lead to reduced levels of pollution and an overall improvement in environmental quality. Using cross-country data, I examine the relationship between property rights and environmental quality.
This article investigates the recent monetary experience of Zimbabwe with dollarization. It shows how dollarization has allowed Zimbabwe to quash hyperinflation, restore stability, increase budgetary discipline, and reestablish monetary credibility. Zimbabwe's hyperinflationary past and the stabilization measures taken by the government are outlined, and the consequences defined. Problems arising from a lack of financial integration, an error in the choice of currency to dollarize under, and the inability of the government to enter into a formal dollarization agreement are discussed.
The role of inflation expectations on the part of economic agents is being increasingly recognized and incorporated into frameworks for the setting of monetary policy (for example, Piger and Rasche 2008, Hetzel 2008). In this article, I describe how expectations are also critical in the implementation of monetary policy. According to the textbook view, the Federal Reserve controls the federal funds rate by varying the supply of reserves available to the banking system. I will argue, however, that fluctuations in the supply of reserves are not the full explanation, thus providing additional support for Taylor (2001), who found that federal funds trade at or around the Federal Open Market Committee's target rate in part because market participants expect that if they don't, the Fed will step in and react.
Rational choice presupposes that people do what they like better than any available alternative. If, however, we mistrust what they declare to like or what psychology is supposed to tell us about it (a pardonable enough mistrust), we can only infer what they like from observing what they do. We must be content with revealed preference. The theory of choice is locked into the tautology of “they do what they like because they like what they do,” and requiring their preferences to be orderly and consistent is of little practical help. In its elegance, modern choice theory, as represented in neoclassical economics, is too smooth and slippery to be very useful.
The combination of the recession and financial crisis of the last few years has led to quite the outpouring of books by economists purporting to explain what happened and why, and how to avoid a repeat performance. This very crowded field has seen a range of quality, but a good number of these books have been quite well done. Alchemists of Loss by Great Britain's Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchinson is another very good treatment of the issues. The authors bring a wealth of experience to their book. Dowd has had a long career as an academic, with much of his work focusing on the history and theory of “free banking” and other forms of financial deregulation. Hutchinson is a longtime financial journalist and has worked in the merchant and investment banking industries in Britain. They have written a comprehensive, fairly detailed, and surprisingly entertaining account of the historical context, theoretical framework, and actual events of the crisis.
Nearly every presidential election in my lifetime appeared to be the most critical in the nation's history, with America's very survival hanging in the balance—at least according to the candidates involved. In truth, however, only two campaigns for the White House could be described as historically transformative.
In many ways, George Washington represents the most difficult of the Founders to approach. His importance in the American Revolution and the central role he played in the formation of the Republic is beyond dispute. Yet, as so many have pointed out, he becomes more the marble statue than a real man. Thus, it may not be surprising that the most recent spurt of scholarship and popular history concerning the American Founders tends to focus on reinterpretations of the agreed-upon intellectual greats (Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton) and a rediscovery of neglected Founders (Mason, Morris, and Pickney). Alas, what are we to do with Washington beyond revere?
This is a valuable book for anyone who wants to gain an understanding of the key forces that have made China the world's second largest economy and opened the door for millions of people to lift themselves out of poverty. The book is divided into four parts, with the first three devoted to economic analysis of China's peaceful rise and the fourth reflecting on the U.S. economy and its future.