Who’s going to win the Nobel Prize: Our Picks… In Case You’re Interested

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Studies is awarded on Monday, October 8, 2018, and your favorite commentators from ReasonablEconomics are here to give their predictions for who will take home the prize, glory, and potential $1.4million.

Kidneys: If You Can’t Sell Em, Marry Em

Selling your kidney to someone in need is illegal in the United States. Apparently, giving up an organ at a market price is deemed unethical, or “repugnant.” As a result, the market doesn’t work because the price is too low. Well, it’s effectively zero.

A Williamson-esque Approach To Moving In With Your Hunny

Every time we find out about a big company swallowing up a smaller company for a ridiculous amount of money, we get a feeling something fishy is going on. They’re probably just trying to squash the competition and become enormous monopolies to force us lowly consumers into paying higher prices for their products, right?

Dale T. Mortensen-You Gotta Work Before You Work

Lately I’ve been knee deep in the process of job searching. Let me tell you guys, this is an ordeal. Although most people don’t think about it this way, finding a job is very costly! It’s a difficult process with a lot of what economists would call unseen costs. There are the costs of finding jobs that match my interests and skills. Then the cost of sending out my resume and applications to as many job opportunities I can get my hands on. Next, there are the costs of interviews to see if I’m a good match for the position. This takes a lot of time and sometimes I’m just not motivated to overcome all these costs.

Elinor Ostrom and the Case of the Black Kettle

When I moved into my house last August, the first thing I noticed about the kitchen was a blue kettle with a black bottom, sitting on the stove. Even from afar, I could tell the kettle was dirty.  The color was faded from grease stains and overuse.  It was dinghy, but I still loved how it added color to the kitchen. 

Bernie Sanders is Angry About Deodorant and Sneakers

During the height of the Democratic primary season in 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders made news by lamenting “You don’t necessarily need the choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this county.” Bernie asks an interesting economic question – why do we have so many choices between products that are essentially the same thing? Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in 2008 in part for answering this question.

Edmund Phelps: Find Your Natural Rate of Body Fat This Year

As the New Year inches closer and closer, many of us start rushing to come up with resolutions we wish to achieve in the next year. Some of us want to write more thank you notes. Others want to lose weight.

The Tax Bill, Floodplains, and Time Inconstistencies

Depending on whom you ask, the tax bill recently passed by Congress will either be the driver of amazing prosperity or the worst bill the country has never seen. No matter the philosophical merits or faults of lower tax rates, history suggests that the correlation between tax cuts and economic growth is a bit muddied.

James Buchanan: Surprisingly, Politicians Are Humans

With a simple discussion on how stuff gets done in the political arena, it is easy to understand why it’s so hard to achieve the intended outcomes of that “stuff.” Everything is riddled with side-deals, loopholes, and compromises that detract or cause larger problems than the one(s) they are trying to solve.

Robert Engle III: Predicting Bitcoin’s Volatility

Oh, Bitcoin. It has people more divided than our commander-in-chief. On one side, we have the aspiring (or closet) millionaires — the Bitcoin enthusiasts — preaching the good word of cryptocurrencies. And on the other side of the aisle, we have the finance millionaires — or the financial establishment — waiting somewhat patiently for Bitcoin’s inevitable expiry.