Plain Sense Economics

Robert Frank, Cornell economist and co-author of the principles textbook that we use in class, wrote in the New York Times this past Sunday:
The consensus is that short-run deficits help end recessions, and that whether long-run deficits matter depends entirely on how government spends the borrowed money. If failure to borrow meant forgoing productive investments, [...]

This article from The Economist describes a not-quite-a-market for agricultural water uses in California.
Farmers like Mr Errotabere have begun to use water more efficiently, dripping it through perforated hoses rather than flooding fields. There is a growing market in water trades between farmers. Most important, the state has set up a water bank. Farmers north [...]

As we wrapped up the last week of the Winter Term in the principles classes, our attention turned to trade policy. I admitted to my students that I’m a “free trade guy,” and I invited them to make up their own minds about free versus protectionist trade.
Today’s lead editorial in the New York Times [...]

The headline in the March 9, 2009 national edition of the New York Times said, “A Rising Dollar Lifts the U.S. but Adds to the Crisis Abroad.” The article, by Peter Goodman, illustrates a fundamental action in currency exchange rates. When demand for goods or bonds or securities in one country goes up, that [...]

In Principles of Microeconomics this week we talked about labor markets and how wages should rise as worker productivity rises. In Principles of Macroeconomics this week we talked about the concept of “sticky wages” – where, in the short run employers adjust their production/output when demand falls, but don’t immediately adjust wages downward.
This article in [...]

From NPR’s All Things Considered today:
At Ohio’s Oberlin College, registration in undergrad economics classes is up 25 percent this year, and the chair of the department says he’s never seen anything like it. Host Robert Smith finds a similar surge in the classrooms of American University and across the country. So is undergraduate economics getting [...]