All Posts Tagged With: "opportunity costs"
Staying Out of the Corner
In a world of pervasive scarcity, every choice has a cost. Recognizing this fact about the human condition should lead us to see the world in terms of marginal benefits and costs.
24Mar2011 | Steven Horwitz | 9 comments | ContinuedStimulate the Catallaxy?
Last fall and winter’s brouhaha over the so-called economic stimulus package got me thinking about how far off target most people are when they talk about “the economy.” To hear the politicians and commentators tell it, the economy is a big machine located somewhere in Washington, D.C. That machine requires a skilled operator, and elections [...]
1Jul2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedWill Medical “Reform” Cut Real Costs?
There is no possibility that the President’s plan will even remotely cut real costs. The true legacy of this bill will be to add costs in ways we hardly can imagine.
17Mar2010 | William L. Anderson | 7 comments | ContinuedBroadband: A Basic Right?
It’s 2006. You really want a broadband high-speed Internet connection, but you live in a small American city with a population of 100,000. So the broadband providers have decided it would not be profitable to come to your town at this time. What do you do? First, get mad. Then, form an interest group. Finally, [...]
1Mar2006 | Max Borders | 0 comments | ContinuedEconomics for the Citizen, Part III
Someone might have made you a gift of The Freeman.
Does that mean reading this article is free?
The answer is a big fat no.
Understanding Austrian Economics, Part 1
Austrian economics owes its name to the historic fact that it was founded and first elaborated by three Austrians—Carl Menger (1840–1921), Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926), and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851–1914). The latter two built upon Menger, though Böhm-Bawerk, in particular, made important additional contributions. Menger’s great work, translated into English (but not until seventy-nine years [...]
1Oct2003 | Henry Hazlitt | 3 comments | ContinuedWhy America Gets Fleeced
One of the occasional features on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw is “The Fleecing of America,” a series of segments exposing cases of waste and fraud that victimize individuals or the general public. Some of the examples are swindles or scams by private companies or individuals, and the obvious solution is to exercise more [...]
1Feb2002 | Melvin D. Barger | 0 comments | ContinuedTerrorism Is Good for the Economy?
Following the disastrous attack on New York, Washington, and our country, the purveyors of economic quackery began spilling gallons of ink in describing how they think the tragedy will affect the U.S. economy. One of the most prominent views to emerge, and also the most wrongheaded, is the idea that the destruction of the World [...]
1Dec2001 | Roy Cordato | 1 comment | ContinuedWhy Do Immigrants Own Inner-City Stores?
Richard Marcus is an associate professor in the School of Business Administration at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. As a business teacher I occasionally receive questions from students that I can’t immediately answer. A student recently asked, “Why are so many inner-city stores owned by foreigners?” This problem calls for economic analysis. The answer involves the [...]
1Aug2001 | Richard D. Marcus | 1 comment | ContinuedFemale-Parent Wage Gap Requires Action?
Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s New York Times article, “Have a Child, and Experience the Wage Gap” (May 16, 2000), presents itself as a summary of the detrimental effect that the choice to have children imposes on women’s wages. The author leads her readers through seemingly relevant data contrasting the dollar incomes of double-earner families with the [...]
1Sep2000 | Karen Y. Palasek | 1 comment | ContinuedVoluntarism Should Be Voluntary
Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. Service is good, so government-provided service must be better. That appears to be the motto of the Clinton administration. And the GOP [...]
1Aug1999 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedPrivate Property and Opportunity Costs
In three previous columns I discussed opportunity cost and the importance of this concept to understanding economics. We have considered the advantage the market has over government at incorporating opportunity costs into the calculus of decision-makers. Markets promote the general interest by revealing costs while governments commonly favor special interest by concealing those costs. In [...]
1Jun1999 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedCosts Should Be Revealed, Not Concealed
Making sound economic decisions is impossible without information about opportunity costs. Thinking about the cost of doing anything is crucial; it amounts to considering the value of the alternatives. A major advantage of the market process is that it gathers up information on costs and transmits it to market decision-makers through prices that cannot be [...]
1May1999 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Power of Incentives
The surest way to get people to behave in desirable ways is to reward them for doing so—in other words provide them with incentives. This is so obvious that you might think it hardly deserves mention. But it does. You might say that people shouldn’t have to be rewarded (bribed) to do desirable things. Even [...]
1Jun1998 | Dwight R. Lee | 1 comment | ContinuedEconomic Ends and Means
“It is common to see good intentions, if they are carried out without moderation, push man into very vicious results.” —Montaigne In the current debate over federal farm policy, those who express concern at the government’s mountainous holdings of surplus agricultural products are accused of lacking sympathy with the plight of the farmer. When the [...]
1Jul1956 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued-
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