All Posts Tagged With: "prices"
Deflation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
During the current recession a number of commentators have made various comparisons to the Great Depression, mostly because of the dramatic decline in the stock market and ongoing troubles in the financial industry. When oil prices also began a dramatic decline in the autumn of 2008, pulling the overall consumer price level downward for the [...]
5Jan2010 | Steven Horwitz | 59 comments | ContinuedOil Prices Are Rigged? It Just Ain’t So!
In reality, all prices are determined by supply and demand, properly defined. Outside investors with lots of money can certainly influence prices, but there are always risks. Funds that had large “long” bets on commodities took a bath as oil fell from its July 2008 high of $145 down to well below $50 a few months later. Futures markets allow producers and consumers to hedge against needless risk by locking in prices, and they allow speculators with superior foresight to improve the allocation of resources over time. Our Time authors think they’ve shown that the oil market is rigged, but it just ain’t so!
21May2009 | Robert P. Murphy | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity
The primary characters in The Price of Everything are Ruth Lieber, an economics professor and provost at Stanford University, and Ramon Fernandez, a Cuban immigrant tennis prodigy studying there. Ramon is saturated with hostility toward the market process, while Ruth has a strong appreciation of markets and liberty. Their conversations—serves and volleys of economic ideas—form [...]
2Apr2009 | E. Frank Stephenson | 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.
Supply, Demand, Inventory
Supply-and-demand analysis is the bread and butter
of classroom economics. All over America as the
leaves change color and college commences, professors
of economics are shifting supply and demand
curves and showing how the price of a good changes in
response.
Inflation in One Page
1. Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money and credit. Its chief consequence is soaring prices. Therefore inflation — if we misuse the term to mean the rising prices themselves — is caused solely by printing more money. For this the government’s monetary policies are entirely responsible. 2. The most frequent reason for [...]
1Nov2004 | Henry Hazlitt | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Collectivist Paradox
Among other grand achievements, F. A. Hayek had a remarkable career pointing out the flaws in collectivism. One of his keenest insights was that, paradoxically, any collectivist system necessarily depends on one individual (or small group) to make key social and economic decisions. In contrast, a system based on individualism takes advantage of the aggregate, [...]
1Mar2004 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedDecency Requires a Minimum-Wage Law?
The libertarian cliché that “at least the Republicans are right on economic policies” suffered another setback on the August 11, 2003, Los Angeles Times op-ed page, where Republican Douglas MacKinnon argues that anyone who cares about the poor should be ashamed of the failure of the Senate to raise the minimum wage. His essay is [...]
1Mar2004 | Aeon J. Skoble | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Real Monopoly
What is a monopoly? The attorneys general of the nine states and the District of Columbia that are now engaged in their latest legal attack on Microsoft apparently have no idea. Because if they did, they would be focusing their ire not on Microsoft, but on the U.S. Postal Service, which has authorized another 3-cent [...]
1Aug2002 | John Berthoud | 1 comment | ContinuedWhy Economies Grow
Aaron Schavey is a policy analyst in the Center for International Trade and Economics (CITE) at the Heritage Foundation. One of the consequences of living in an affluent society such as the United States is that the poverty of the majority of the world is often overlooked. For instance, a recent report from the Organization [...]
1Nov2001 | Aaron Schavey | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Luckiest Generation
W. Michael Cox, senior vice president and chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Richard Alm, a business writer, are co-authors of Myths of Rich and Poor: Why We’re Better Off Than We Think. Meet the Luckiest Generation. When it comes to the material facts of life, the young men and women [...]
1Mar2001 | and W. Michael Cox | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Force of Economics
Ninos Malek teaches economics at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, California, and is an economics lecturer at San dose State University and DeAnza College. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . there were economists who tried to explain economics in clear terms. Unfortunately, there are only a [...]
1Dec1999 | Ninos P. Malek | 0 comments | ContinuedEverything Is Cheap and Getting Cheaper
“Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities.” —Andrew Carnegie[1] We all labor under the notion that the cost of living is high and rising every year. Yet, believe it or not, economic life is relatively inexpensive, and getting cheaper all the time. This truth was reinforced recently when my friend and colleague Roger Clites told [...]
1Dec1998 | Mark Skousen | 1 comment | ContinuedA Powerful Case for Free Trade
While Adam Smith presented the best-known practical case for free trade, the most powerful rhetorical case came from Henry George in his book Protection or Free Trade (1886). Here are some of the most memorable passages: Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent [...]
1Jun1996 | Henry George | 2 comments | ContinuedA Reviewers Notebook
I have just been reading a number of college textbooks on economics. They contain the standard chapters on monopoly, oligopoly, “monopolistic competition,” “imperfect competition,” “workable competition,” and “administered” prices. And they flash the usual warning signals: let the customer beware of price gouging, of submitting docilely to “all the traffic will bear.” This sort of [...]
1Jun1956 | John Chamberlain | 0 comments | ContinuedThe First Law of Economics
Mr. Reinach is a financial consultant, formerly a member of a New York Stock Exchange firm. The economic facts of life are many. But the grandfather of them all is the law of demand and supply. If this one law alone were thoroughly understood, it is highly improbable that government interference in the market place [...]
1May1956 | Anthony M. Reinach | 0 comments | ContinuedLetters
Unquestionably, one of the most effective forms of communication is a thoughtful letter written to a person in answer to his own question. The staff members of the Foundation for Economic Education write thousands of such letters each year. Some of these are, in effect, short articles on “general interest” subjects not fully covered in [...]
1May1955 | Bettina Bien Greaves | 1 comment | Continued-
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