Price “gouging” is not a moral issue. It’s an economic issue with *beneficial* humanitarian consequences. Counterintuitive as it may seem, high gas prices from natural disasters send two very powerful signals into the market: they tell gas producers to produce more, and they tell gas consumers to consume less. After disasters, the news wires fill […]
A Drug War Peace Dividend?
Should we bring back “Just Say No” and ramp up the drug war, especially as more states decriminalize recreational marijuana use? As I have written before, drug prohibition is (literally) “a textbook example of a policy with negative unintended consequences” most visible in the extensive criminal underground and widespread violence associated with prohibition. What can […]
My Favorite Economics Education Resources
Here’s a list of some of my favorite Econ Ed resources: MRUniversity. I teach from Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s Modern Principles textbook. This site features loads of videos and mini-courses that can be adapted to any econ course. LearnLiberty. I’ve made a lot of videos for LearnLiberty, which is an online project of the Institute […]
My Favorite MLK Quote
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job […]
How To Write A Lot
After reading How to Write a Lot by Paul J. Silvia, I found that it was a useful refresher. I already write a lot, but one of the things that keeps me going–and that helps me to write better–is that I read a lot of books like this. Even when I don’t really learn anything […]
Will Industrial Policy Make America Great Again?
Will Industrial Policy Make America Great Again? Not likely. This episode of NPR’s Planet Money provides a cautionary tale.
Wellness Advantage
Here’s an oft-overlooked wellness advantage: financial wellness. I recently spoke to three groups of students from Hoover High School on economics, and we went through a few exercises on how much money they would have by investing $458.33 per month between ages 22 and 67. We also looked at how they think about the value of […]
Two Suggestions for Wellness (Plus a Free Gym Pass!)
This month, we’re studying “wellness” in the Get Momentum Leadership Academy and as part of a faculty development program at Samford. “Wellness” means a lot more than just physical health. Here are two suggestions that will get you off to a good start, I hope. The first is the CBR App, which is perfect if […]
Can Time Management Be Made Stupidly Easy?
A review of Michael R. Clark, Time Management Made [Stupidly] Easy: A Modestly Simple Guide to Time Management. Yes. It’s useful to have regular reminders. This is a breezy and accessible introduction to and synthesis of a lot of the things people have written on time management over the last several years. Those familiar with this […]
Lifehacks For Preparing For Your Next Exam
In order to better prepare for your next exam, I suggest you do the following: First, work through end-of-chapter problems. You need to try to do the problems without any help from a classmate, the textbook, the answers, or anything: as uncomfortable as this will be, it will show you what you don’t understand. Second, […]