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Category: Law and Economics
Becker-Posner Blog - November 08, 2009
Last week two pieces of news about the American economy were disclosed, with important implications for where the economy is going. On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that during the third quarter of 2009, productivity jumped at the remarkable annual rate of 9½%. On Friday, the La
Becker-Posner Blog - November 08, 2009
Becker is certainly right that growth in productivity is an important driver of economic growth. But we must consider the source of the growth in productivity in order to understand the conjunction in the last two quarters of rapidly rising productivity with rapidly rising unemployment.
I
Becker-Posner Blog - November 01, 2009
In October, the President announced that $13 billion (some commentators believe a more accurate estimate is $14 billion) of the $787 billion stimulus package enacted this past February would be used to pay every social security annuitant $250 in 2010, ostensibly to "compensate" for the fact that
Becker-Posner Blog - November 01, 2009
The government's preliminary estimate of the growth in American GDP during the third quarter of 2009 is an impressive annual rate of 3.5%. This figure may be revised downward (or upward) as more data on the third quarter become available, but it surely definitely signals that the US recession is
Becker-Posner Blog - October 28, 2009
Longtime readers of this blog will be pleased to learn that this month sees its migration into book form. Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism, which collects what we believe are the best, most interesting, and most lasting posts from this blog. The posts selecte
Becker-Posner Blog - October 25, 2009
I sympathize with all the people who are upset by the very large bonuses, stock options, and other compensation received by heads of some financial institutions that ran their companies into the ground through bad investments. However, I also believe it is a big mistake to have a pay czar,
Becker-Posner Blog - October 25, 2009
Limiting the compensation of a handful of employees at a handful of firms can't have any effect except to benefit the firms' competitors by making them more attractive places to work. The limitations are a form of scapegoating designed to appease public anger over the high incomes of financiers w
Becker-Posner Blog - October 19, 2009
Oliver Williamson, an economist who won half a Nobel prize last week, has made important contributions to a field of economics that is not as well known as it should be: "organization economics." This is a field, closely related to a branch of sociology called organization theory, to which pionee
Becker-Posner Blog - October 19, 2009
Oliver Williamson's influential contributions to the theory of firms were the stimulus for our discussion topic this week of the analysis of organizations. Posner gives an excellent discussion of various factors that determine organizational structure and efficiency, such as conflicts between pri
Becker-Posner Blog - October 15, 2009
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Becker-Posner Blog - October 11, 2009
The worldwide recession has slowed the growth in the demand for cereals and other foods as many countries have experienced stagnation or contraction in their GDPs. Now that the recession appears to be over, world GDP will start growing again. Many are forecasting that this growth in world
Becker-Posner Blog - October 11, 2009
Becker is right to point out the difference in supply conditions between oil (and other minerals, but I will limit my discussion to oil) and agricultural products: it is cheaper to expand output of the latter than of the former. Hence as demand for oil and for food rise as a function of populatio
Becker-Posner Blog - October 04, 2009
The New York Times published an article last Thursday on the Swiss health care system, which can be viewed here: www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/health/policy/01swiss.html?_r=1&em.; The system is simple. There is no "public option," that is, there is no government health insurance program, su
Becker-Posner Blog - October 04, 2009
The Swiss health care system has several important properties that I (and many others) have been advocating should be incorporated into any reform of the US health care system. One major advantage of the Swiss system is that employer-provided health care does not receive any special tax breaks, w
Becker-Posner Blog - September 27, 2009
The major American trade unions, including the United Automobile Workers, the United Steelworkers, and the Service Employees International Union, went all out in their support of Barack Obama during the past presidential election. They supplied money-said to exceed $400 million- and hundreds of t
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