Published on 8 Feb 2015
What does an increase in the price of oil tell us? What does it signal? And how do we adjust to that signal? The price of oil gives users of oil an incentive to respond — by using less oil or substituting lower-cost alternatives for oil.
The key here is that we let people decide how to most effectively allocate the use of goods and resources. To solve the great economic problem, we need to solve information and incentive problems.
In this video, we take a look at how Nobel Prize-winner Friedrich Hayek described the price system and its approach to solving the information problem. We’ll also continue with our example of oil to show how the price is equal to the marginal value of oil or the social opportunity cost.
June 4, 2015
Information and Incentives
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June 3, 2015
The great Los Angeles minimum wage experiment
I missed this post a few weeks back from Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, pointing out that we won’t really know the full impact of the Los Angeles experiment with significantly higher minimum wages:
So my near neighbor of Los Angeles is poised to raise the minimum wage to $15. How should we think of that?
Personally, I’m thrilled. Not because I think it’s a slam-dunk good idea, but because along with Seattle and San Francisco it will give us a great set of natural experiments to figure out what happens when you raise the minimum wage a lot. We can argue all we want; we can extrapolate from other countries; and we can create complex Greek-letter models to predict the effects — but we can’t know until someone actually does it.
So what do I think will happen? Several things:
In the tradeable sector, such as clothing piece work and agriculture, the results are very likely to be devastating. Luckily, LA doesn’t have much agriculture left, but it does have a lot of apparel manufacture. That could evaporate completely (worst case) or perhaps migrate just across the borders into Ventura, San Bernardino, and other nearby counties. Heavier manufacturing will likely be unaffected since most workers already make more than $15.
In the food sector, people still need to eat, and they need to eat in Los Angeles. So there will probably be little damage there from outside competition. However, the higher minimum wage will almost certainly increase the incentive for fast food places to try to automate further and cut back on jobs. How many jobs this will affect is entirely speculative at this point.
Other service industries, including everything from nail salons to education to health care will probably not be affected much. They pretty much have to stay in place in order to serve their local clientele, so they’ll just raise wages and pass the higher prices on to customers.
Likewise, retail, real estate, the arts, and professional services probably won’t be affected too much. Retail has no place to go (though they might be able to automate some jobs away) while the others mostly pay more than $15 already. The hotel industry, by contrast, could easily become less competitive for convention business and end up shedding jobs.
While I’m certainly in favour of people being able to afford to live on their base income, I’m afraid that this experiment is going to hurt a lot of already at-risk poor people who will have few other options if their jobs go away. I’m especially amused that LA-area union reps are now reported to be pushing to exempt the businesses where their members work (so that unions will have an effective monopoly on low-wage jobs because non-unionized companies would have to pay a higher wage). That, after putting all their organizational muscle behind getting the minimum wage raised in the first place. That’s a high grade of cynicism.
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June 2, 2015
The Great Economic Problem
Published on 8 Feb 2015
In this video, we discuss how different markets are linked to one another. How does the price of oil affect the price of candy bars? When the price of oil increases, it is of course more expensive to transport goods, like candy bars. But there are other, more subtle ways these two markets are connected. For instance, an increase in the price of oil leads to an increase in demand for oil substitutes, like ethanol. And when the supply of oil falls, oil should shift to higher-valued uses. But, which uses? How do we decide where to use less oil?
This brings us to the great economic problem: how to most effectively arrange our limited resources to satisfy our needs and wants. Which approach — central planning or the price system — is better at solving this problem? Join us as we explore this question further.
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June 1, 2015
It’s time to end the US federal porn subsidy!
At Real Clear Science, Alex B. Berezow issues a clarion call to stop the US government’s (hidden) subsidy to pornography producers:
You might be asking, What federal porn subsidy? Fair question. Technically, there isn’t a federal porn subsidy. However, if we borrow some of the logic commonly used by politically driven economists, we can redefine the word subsidy to mean whatever we want.
Pornography is enjoyed by many people, but it comes with a very real social cost: it can break up families and perhaps even become an addiction, which are profound losses of productivity. Economists refer to these as negative externalities — i.e., bad side effects that affect people other than the person making the decision. One way to deal with such decisions is to tax them. This should, in theory, reduce the negative side effects, while simultaneously forcing the decisionmaker to bear the “true cost” of his actions. Clearly, if anyone should have to pay for this societal cost, it should be porn watchers, in the form of a porn tax. If they don’t pay such a tax, they are getting an indirect subsidy.
As it turns out, we don’t have a federal porn tax. Thus, we could say that the American government has issued a federal porn subsidy.
Obviously, that reasoning is absurd. Not only does it dubiously redefine the word subsidy, but it unconvincingly claims to be able to accurately place a price tag on every conceivable externality created by watching porn. Accepting that argument would require a nearly complete suspension of disbelief.
Yet, that is essentially the argument that a group of economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) just made about fossil fuel subsidies. (See PDF.)
[…]
The Guardian, which penned the most influential coverage, began its article with an eye-popping statistic:
“Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day…”
Wow. $5.3 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies? That sounds insane. But, how do they arrive at that number? The Guardian goes on to explain:
“The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change.”
Ah, okay. The subsidy isn’t a direct financial calculation, but is instead based on a bunch of externalities whose costs are nearly impossible to derive with any sense of believability. To give you an idea of just how much fudging exists in these kinds of calculations, a similar report issued in 2013 (PDF) concluded that the fossil fuel subsidy was $1.9 trillion. A discrepancy of $3.4 trillion should raise red flags in regard to methodology.
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May 31, 2015
Does the rise of microaggressions actually prove the world is getting better?
Steven Horwitz makes the case that the growing awareness of microaggressions — at least on campus and in the media — may actually prove that life in general is getting better:
A recurring theme of recent human history is that the less of something bad we see in the world around us, the more outrage we generate about the remaining bits.
For example, in the 19th century, outrage about child labor grew as the frequency of child labor was shrinking. Economic forces, not legislation, had raised adult wages to a level at which more and more families did not need additional income from children to survive, and children gradually withdrew from the labor force. As more families enjoyed having their children at home or in school longer, they became less tolerant of those families whose situations did not allow them that luxury, and the result was the various moral crusades, and then laws, against child labor.
We have seen the same process at work with cigarette smoking in the United States. As smoking has declined over the last generation or two, we have become ever less tolerant of those who continue to smoke. Today, that outrage continues in the form of new laws against vaping and e-cigarettes.
The ongoing debate over “rape culture” is another manifestation of this phenomenon. During the time that reasonably reliable statistics on rape in the United States have been collected, rape has never been less frequent than it is now, and it is certainly not as institutionalized as a practice in the Western world as it was in the past. Yet despite this decline — or in fact because of it — our outrage at the rape that remains has never been higher.
The talk of the problem of “microaggressions” seems to follow this same pattern. The term refers to the variety of verbal and nonverbal forms of communication that are said to constitute disrespect for particular groups, especially those who have been historically marginalized. So, for example, the use of exclusively masculine pronouns might be construed as a “microaggression” against women, or saying “ladies and gentlemen” might be seen as a microaggression against transsexuals. The way men take up more physical space on a train or bus, or the use of the phrase “walk-only zones” (which might offend the wheelchair-bound) to describe pedestrian crossways, are other examples.
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May 28, 2015
Markets Link the World
Published on 8 Feb 2015
In this video, we discuss how markets link people and places all over the world. We’ll take a look at production and consumption markets and, importantly, the role that prices play in it all. Following up on our example of a rose, we take a look at other global products such as the Apple iPhone. Where is the iPhone made? It’s produced by thousands of people all over the world, working in cooperation in order to make one product that many of us enjoy. Join us as we observe the invisible hand in action.
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QotD: The key strength of markets
This is a general and pernicious failing of the left in my view. They really, just really, don’t get what it is that markets do and do very well. What markets do do is they produce the information, through the price system, of who is willing to produce what at which price and who desires to consume what at which price. Thus we get an efficient allocation of scarce resources by our use of markets. And Hayek pretty much got his Nobel for proving that there is no other system to hand which can perform this function. The planner simply cannot gain enough information to be able to perform that function, nor process it real time (and no, computing can’t do it either, Allende and his computer to run the Chilean economy was wrong.)
It’s entirely possible to critique markets on the grounds of equity though. For example, too many people are too poor if we just leave it to the market. Perhaps we agree with that idea, perhaps we don’t: but that argues for changing peoples’ incomes through intervention, not for abolishing the market in the provision of goods. Or, as I’ve said before, if Chavez and Maduro want poor Venezuelans to be better off then send them more money. Don’t mess with the market: the result of that messing will inevitably be the sort of breakdown we see here.
As for the people of Venezuela, well, obviously, this isn’t going to work out well. Their rulers have pretty much bankrupted the country through their incompetence: and now they’re taking more economic power unto themselves?
Not going to work, is it? Even competent governments haven’t been able to make nationalised food distribution systems work…
Tim Worstall, “Amazingly, Maduro Is Going To Make The Venezuelan Economy Even Worse. Yes, Worse”, Forbes, 2015-05-03.
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May 25, 2015
Wage Subsidies
Published on 3 Feb 2015
What’s the difference between a wage subsidy and a minimum wage? What is the cost of a wage subsidy to taxpayers? We take a look at the earned income tax credit and how it affects low-skilled workers. We also discuss Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps’ work on wage subsidies.
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QotD: Deflation
Deflation occurs when there is not enough currency in circulation to meet the needs of the economy. Here again, the classical definition focuses on falling prices rather than an insufficient currency stock, but deflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon.
It is the economic version of anemia: too little blood is reaching the body. Each unit of the currency goes up in value relative to the goods and services available, but because the stock of currency isn’t growing fast enough, it starves the economy of investment capital. There isn’t enough money to build out existing business, to create new ones, or to hire new workers. (This is in part what happened during the Great Depression of the 1930’s.) Inventories shrink, but new goods aren’t being produced due to the lack of investment capital. Eventually the economy grinds to a halt as production withers away.
Specie currencies are more prone to deflation than fiat currencies for the simple reason that fiat currencies are not based on scarce (and thus valuable) resources like gold, silver, or what have you. There’s only so much gold and silver to go around, and sometimes the supply of bullion can be interrupted for long periods. (Sometimes this is even done deliberately by rival nations or speculators.) Also, because the value of gold and silver is set outside the control of government or authority issuing the currency, it limits the kinds of monetary policy the sovereign can conduct, especially during times of crisis.
Monty, “Inflation, Deflation, and Monetary Policy”, Ace of Spades HQ, 2014-07-11.
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May 18, 2015
QotD: Inflation
Inflation is a phenomenon that occurs when the value of a given unit of currency becomes debased in some way, and prices then rise to offset the currency’s loss in value. The standard definition of inflation is given in terms of rising prices rather than falling currency value, but that’s misleading. The value of goods and service don’t increase so much as the currency’s value relative to those goods and services decreases, so inflation is more of a monetary phenomenon than a market-price phenomenon.
The more the currency loses value, the higher prices denominated in that currency rise. The classical example of hyperinflation is the 1921-1924 hyperinflation in Weimar-era Germany, though in modern times Zimbabwe’s currency has undergone the same radical devaluation.
What causes a currency to become devalued? There are many causes. With specie currency like gold and silver coins, debasement is usually physical — in former times coins were “shaved” or “clipped” or adulterated with baser metals. The clippings could then be melted down and recast into new coins, but the clipped coin could still be passed off at full value (until the merchants got wise and started weighing and/or assaying the coins). This is why coins began to have milled edges — it made the practice of clipping easier to spot. A variant of the “shaving” debasement strategy is one carried out by the treasury or mint itself: reducing the amount of gold or silver in a coin, but leaving the face-value of the coin the same. This happened often to the Roman denarii — as the Imperial stocks of silver bullion waned, each coin was reduced in weight but mandated to retain the same value. (In modern fiat-money times, coins are generally manufactured out of base metals like nickel, tin, and zinc, but even so, the value of the metal is sometimes still higher than the face-value of the coin.)
In a fiat money regime, debasement is usually the result of creating too much currency for the economy to absorb. If the money supply exceeds some thresh-hold (it’s very complicated to figure out exactly what that thresh-hold is), you have more units of currency chasing the same amount of goods and services — which means that the real unit value of the currency will drop and prices will go up.
Another way a fiat currency can become debased is to arbitrarily re-value your currency relative to the market, or relative to other currencies. If an issuing authority declares the value of a quatloo to be three quatloos to a dollar, even if the market is trading at five quatloos to a dollar, the currency will be debased because it’s not actually worth what the issuing authority says it is. Prices go up, and the government usually responds by implementing price-controls, and in turn the goods and services simply become unobtainable at any price because producers won’t continue to produce at a loss.
No good or service has an absolute value. The value of a good or service is what someone is willing to pay for it. Currency is a specialized good, and is subject to the same law. If the stock of currency grows faster than the value represented by that currency in the wider economy, the currency is in an inflationary state.
Monty, “Inflation, Deflation, and Monetary Policy”, Ace of Spades HQ, 2014-07-11.
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May 15, 2015
This is why California’s water shortage is really a lack of accurate pricing
David Henderson explains:
Of the 80 million acre feet a year of water use in California, only 2.8 million acre feet are used for toilets, showers, faucets, etc. That’s only 3.5 percent of all water used.
One crop, alfalfa, by contrast, uses 5.3 million acre feet. Assuming a linear relationship between the amount of water used to grow alfalfa and the amount of alfalfa grown, if we cut the amount of alfalfa by only 10 percent, that would free up 0.53 million acre feet of water, which means we wouldn’t need to cut our use by the approximately 20 percent that Jerry Brown wants us to.
What is the market value of the alfalfa crop? Alexander quotes a study putting it at $860 million per year. So, assuming, for simplicity, a horizontal demand curve for alfalfa, a cut of 10% would reduce alfalfa revenue by $86 million. (With a more-realistic downward-sloping demand for alfalfa, alfalfa farmers would lose less revenue but consumers would pay more.) With a California population of about 38 million, each person could pay $2.26 to alfalfa growers not to grow that 10%. Given that the alfalfa growers use other resources besides water, they would be much better off taking the payment.
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May 14, 2015
Subsidies
Published on 27 Jan 2015
What is a subsidy? A subsidy is really just a negative or reverse tax. Instead of collecting money in the form of a tax, the government gives money to consumer or producers. In this video, we look at the subsidy wedge and who benefits the most from different subsidies.
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May 13, 2015
QotD: Mono-culture banking
One of the factors in the financial crisis of 2007-2009 that is mentioned too infrequently is the role of banking capital sufficiency standards and exactly how they were written. Folks have said that capital requirements were somehow deregulated or reduced. But in fact the intention had been to tighten them with the Basle II standards and US equivalents. The problem was not some notional deregulation, but in exactly how the regulation was written.
In effect, capital sufficiency standards declared that mortgage-backed securities and government bonds were “risk-free” in the sense that they were counted 100% of their book value in assessing capital sufficiency. Most other sorts of financial instruments and assets had to be discounted in making these calculations. This created a land rush by banks for mortgage-backed securities, since they tended to have better returns than government bonds and still counted as 100% safe.
Without the regulation, one might imagine banks to have a risk-reward tradeoff in a portfolio of more and less risky assets. But the capital standards created a new decision rule: find the highest returning assets that could still count for 100%. They also helped create what in biology we might call a mono-culture. One might expect banks to have varied investment choices and favorites, such that a problem in one class of asset would affect some but not all banks. Regulations helped create a mono-culture where all banks had essentially the same portfolio stuffed with the same one or two types of assets. When just one class of asset sank, the whole industry went into the tank,
Well, we found out that mortgage-backed securities were not in fact risk-free, and many banks and other financial institutions found they had a huge hole blown in their capital.
Warren Meyer, “When Regulation Makes Things Worse — Banking Edition”, Coyote Blog, 2014-07-07.
May 12, 2015
Tax Revenue and Deadweight Loss
Published on 27 Jan 2015
Why do taxes exist? What are the effects of taxes? We discuss how taxes affect consumer surplus and producer surplus and discuss the concept of deadweight loss at length. We’ll also look at a real-world example of deadweight loss: taxing luxury yachts in the 1990s.
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May 11, 2015
Who Pays the Tax?
Published on 27 Jan 2015
Who bears the burden of a tax? Buyers or sellers? Why is it that the more elastic side of the market pays a smaller share of a tax? Again, we’ll apply what we know to the example of Social Security taxes and also look at the health insurance mandate as a part of the Affordable Care Act. Who pays for the mandate? The employers or the workers? We’ll also look at supply and demand of labor. Is the demand for labor more elastic than the supply?
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