All Posts Tagged With: "supply and demand"

The Boston Red Sox and Bad Baseball Economics

If you don’t understand the law of supply and demand, you may end up promoting the very outcome you want to avoid.

1Feb2012 | Aaron Gordon | 4 comments | Continued

Private Investment and Public “Investment”

Politicians are fond of telling the public that we must “invest” in this program or that—be it education; health care; make-work infrastructure projects like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”; $50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa; $3.4 million for a tunnel to allow turtles to cross under a highway in Florida; $1.8 million for swine [...]

22Jun2011 | Adam B. Summers | 1 comment | Continued

It’s Only Gouging When They Do It

Those who complain about “price gouging” (some of whom are probably receiving higher wages through the same process) need to be consistent.

12May2011 | Steven Horwitz | 10 comments | Continued

Supply Depends on the Demand for (Often Unseen) Alternatives

It’s important to understand that supply is just the flip side of demand and often gives us an alternative way to change the incentives people face.

12Aug2010 | Steven Horwitz | 2 comments | Continued

Vienna and Chicago: Friends or Foes? A Tale of Two Schools of Free-Market Economics

In the post-World War II era, two of the leading voices for a return to a competitive free-market economy have been the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics. Both schools have influenced many people about how markets work and how government affects economic affairs. To many, the Austrian and Chicago economists seem to be saying [...]

13Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued

Politicians Eye the Oil Market

With oil prices setting records every week and gas prices topping $4 per gallon, voters are getting increasingly angry. This naturally makes the politicians nervous, so they do what they can to divert blame from themselves at all costs. Two easy targets are “Big Oil” and speculators. In this article we’ll see that the politicians’ [...]

1Oct2008 | Robert P. Murphy | 1 comment | Continued

Who’s Afraid of Prosperity?

Should we worry that the people of China, India, and other undeveloped countries are getting richer? Apparently so, according to the newspapers and the “experts” they quote. They don’t come right out and say that global prosperity is bad for us. Instead they say, as the New York Times recently said, “As development rolls across [...]

1Mar2008 | John Stossel | 0 comments | Continued

The Anatomy of Economic Advice, Part II

How can positive science (consisting entirely of “is” statements) be translated into “ought” statements within the framework of economic understanding? In the first part of this series we drew attention to some of the paradoxes surrounding economic advice.

1Sep2006 | Israel M. Kirzner | 0 comments | Continued

The High Cost of Misunderstanding Gasoline Economics

National emergencies, wars, natural disasters—all these things tend to bring about expanded government power.1 Hurricane Katrina was no exception. In addition to promising to spend billions of dollars of other people’s money allegedly to “rebuild” New Orleans and other stricken areas, politicians have been equally generous with other people’s gasoline supplies. In many states, anyone [...]

1Apr2006 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 0 comments | Continued

Economics 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.

1Dec2005 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

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.

1Nov2005 | Russell Roberts | 1 comment | Continued

Postal Monopoly: Playing by Different Rules

Once again the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is seeking to use its monopoly power to defy the economic law of demand. On April 8 the USPS requested an increase in the first-class letter rate from 37 to 39 cents, a 5.4 percent jump. Between 2000 and 2004, the price of first-class postage increased 12.1 percent, [...]

1Jul2005 | Robert Carreira | 1 comment | Continued

On Price Gouging

The immediate aftermath of a natural disaster inevitably brings much higher prices for staple goods, such as lumber, batteries, fuel, and bottled water. Just as inevitably, these higher prices are roundly decried as unjust and inexcusable. Such price hikes are slapped with the derisive name “price gouging.” And even people who typically endorse markets often [...]

1Apr2005 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | Continued

How Government Destroys Medical Care

News in August that Northridge Hospital Medical Center’s Sherman Way Campus, the San Fernando Valley’s oldest hospital, would be shutting its doors, was greeted by Los Angeles County residents with the same sense of resignation that has greeted other recently announced hospital closures. Another hospital or emergency room closing? What else is new? Earlier in [...]

1Feb2005 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | Continued

Decency 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 | Continued

Nationalized Health Care Will Cut Costs?

A group called Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is promoting a government insurance plan to cover all Americans. In an August 13, 2003, Los Angeles Times report, the group claimed that their “single payer” plan would eliminate $200 billion a year in “administrative, marketing and other private-industry expenses.” This would save enough “to [...]

1Jan2004 | and and Gene Callahan | 15 comments | Continued

Medical Care and Market Forces

I’ve heard it argued that market forces don’t apply to health care because there isn’t anything close to a free market in health care. There are all these government programs, and there’s insurance, and patients don’t have as much information as doctors. The list of market “imperfections” is a long one. Supply and demand just [...]

1Oct2003 | Russell Roberts | 4 comments | Continued
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