Category Archives: Our Economic World

iPads, Blogs and Answers

By the numbers, US economic performance over the past decade has not been impressive. However, there are other indicators of progress that NBER and BLS statistics do not convey. I don’t know how the Consumer Price Index currently accounts for changes to the quality of consumer electronics, but even if they could account for the vast [...]
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Pareto Efficiency: Rides Home Edition

Economists often speak of efficiency, which I fear might further people’s perception of economics as a calculating, dismal science, unconnected to more “human” social sciences. I think that the word “efficient” carries the negative connotation of a robot-like, profit-maximizing corporation, concerned only with the bottom line. This is an unfortunate mischaracterization, because many economic definitions [...]
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