Plain Sense Economics

Gregory Mankiw:
I am delighted that President Obama has decided to reappoint Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. While there is certainly room for reasonable people to question some of the specific decisions Ben has made, in general he has led the Federal Reserve System with humility, intelligence, wisdom, and grace.
yeh – what he [...]

This post from the Freakonomics blog has a nice little description of fixed and variable costs, as applied to hot dog vendors in New York City.
A Slate article mentions that the annual price of a hot-dog stand license near the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is $362,201. Licenses are very limited and [...]