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Farmer Hayek: Krugman and Friends Don't Get Uber
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/07/krugman-and-friends-dont-get-uber.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Tuesday, July 28, 2015. Krugman and Friends Don't Get Uber. Krugman's recent blog post. You might not have thought that a taxi service would move onto center stage in our great political debates. But Uber actually is looking like a surprisingly important political issue. Why? The other is the company whose workers supposedly are free contractors, not employees, exempting the company from most of the regulations designed to protect employee interests. An...
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Farmer Hayek: May 2015
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015_05_01_archive.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Monday, May 25, 2015. Paul Krugman is Confused About the Theory of the Firm. Krugmans Memorial Day blog post. Shows his unfortunate misunderstanding of the difference between government bureaucracies and the managerial structures of private businesses. He goes as far to state that those who work for large private firms work under command-and-control regimes. Economics in TWO Lessons? Sunday, May 24, 2015. A Mercatus Center blog post. The total number of res...
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Farmer Hayek: The Importance of Applying Market Process Theory
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/08/the-importance-of-applying-market.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Monday, August 3, 2015. The Importance of Applying Market Process Theory. I came across an interesting post by Chris Dillow. On markets vs gov't direction of resources. He starts off by criticizing an article in the Telegraph about privatization as a solution to the tragedy of the commons. However, his own analysis of the market vs gov't trade-off lacks the important insights of market process theory. His discussion of the role of transactions costs. This a...
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Farmer Hayek: Does the US Have a "Cheap Food" Policy?
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/08/does-us-have-cheap-food-policy.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Tuesday, August 11, 2015. Does the US Have a "Cheap Food" Policy? It's often said, in defense of payments to ag producers, that these subsidies constitute a "cheap food" policy. Advocates of the policy contend that the subsidies incentivize increased production such that food prices fall. It's a win-win: producers benefit directly from the subsidy and consumers (especially the poor) benefit from reduced prices at the grocery store. Miller and Coble go on to...
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Farmer Hayek: Blackboard Theory Versus the Reality of Markets
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/07/blackboard-theory-versus-reality-of.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Thursday, July 9, 2015. Blackboard Theory Versus the Reality of Markets. Mark Thoma's recent article. As Farmer Hayek readers might expect, I didn't find his arguments terribly convincing. First, this is a classic case of the Nirvana fallacy. Another way to look at this issue is to consider what Ronald Coase called " blackboard theory. In his Nobel Prize address. Or Pete Boettke's longer article here. For instance, the presence of asymmetric information bet...
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Farmer Hayek: Noah Smith and the Panglossian Fallacy
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/08/noah-smith-and-panglossian-fallacy.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Saturday, August 1, 2015. Noah Smith and the Panglossian Fallacy. Over the past few months, I've spent some time pushing back against what I believe are poor arguments made by professional economists who oppose market direction of resources. The "arguments" I want to examine this time aren't really arguments. They're really just bald assertions with nothing to back them up. I suppose this makes my job easy, so I'll try to be brief. This is a recurring theme...
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Farmer Hayek: Natural Resource Potpourri
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/08/natural-resource-potpourri.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Wednesday, August 5, 2015. I don't have the expertise in natural resource economics to really do a lot of writing on the topic. However, I want to make sure we cover it at least occasionally, so I'll probably stick to this potpourri format for now. I hope some day we find a contributor who is interested in this area. Lynne Kiesling has a great post. Digital Trends has an interesting piece. On electric vehicles and their actual impact on the environment:.
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Farmer Hayek: The PR Cost of Pro-Ag Policy
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/08/the-pr-cost-of-pro-ag-policy.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Saturday, August 15, 2015. The PR Cost of Pro-Ag Policy. Last week, Jayson Lusk commented on a recent strike down of an ag-gag law in Idaho. Such laws are designed to keep anti-ag activists from recording footage on farms and using it to make the industry look bad. Lusk points out the potential for unintended consequences. So, the industry pushes for ag gag laws, they pass, and those who love to bash the industry have more ammo. As the article. Over the las...
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Farmer Hayek: Confusion on GMOs from Financial Heavyweights
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/07/confusion-on-gmos-from-financial.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Monday, July 20, 2015. Confusion on GMOs from Financial Heavyweights. Have an interesting article in the NYT. Attempting to draw an analogy between systemic financial vulnerability and alleged problems with GMOs. They start off by describing some ways in which the financial system was vulnerable leading up to the crash. Interestingly, there are similarities between arguments that are pro-G.M.O. and snake oil, the latter having relied on a cosmet...Second, w...
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Farmer Hayek: Potpourri... Again
http://www.farmerhayek.com/2015/08/potpourri-again.html
Free-Market Agricultural and Applied Economics. Tuesday, August 11, 2015. In his characteristic fashion, uses Paul Krugman's analysis to show that fiscal austerity leads to a robust recovery. The story of Tesla's crony capitalism takes a sharp turn for the worse. Not content with the billions it gets in government help, Tesla Motors now wants tougher fuel economy standards that would cripple its competitors. The sad part is, even with all the favors it gets, Tesla can't manage to turn a profit. The Silic...
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