Economic Forces

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 8,000 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: Imagine that one state in the U.S., let’s say Ohio, decided to prevent any resident of that state from holding Apple’s stock in a retirement account.

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 8,000 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: A common debate within housing policy circles—and the too-online crowd, more generally—is whether building houses will decrease housing prices. Places with lots of housing have high prices! What gives?

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 8,000 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: In a previous post, I argued that a useful analogy for thinking about banks is to think of them as a coalition of depositors.

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 8,000 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: Economists are trained to make purely positive, scientific claims: what happened to GDP? what will happen if we change the tax rate? We aren’t perfect, but that is where the science shines.

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 8,000 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: One characteristic of universities that makes them different from a lot of other employers is that they provide a benefit to professors known as tenure. This benefit provides job security.

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 7,500 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: ICYMI, Substack Notes is now live. It is basically Twitter without the drama of Elon, so I encourage you to check it out. The folks at Substack explain more below.

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 7,500 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: In another desperate flail, Elon’s Twitter started blocking links to Substack yesterday.

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 7,500 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: If you ever take a course on macroeconomics, you will no doubt be introduced to the permanent income hypothesis. The basic idea is as follows. A person’s income is made up of a permanent component and a transitory component.

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 7,500 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: Many economists focus on people’s choices: Do people make rational choices? Which product does a consumer pick? What price does the monopolist set?

You are reading Economic Forces, a free weekly newsletter on economics, especially price theory, without the politics. Economic Forces arrives weekly in the inboxes of over 7,000 subscribers. You can support our newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber: Some people choose to consume less today in exchange for the ability to consume more later. We call those people savers. It is important to note that the decision to save is costly.