Stock markets continue to head lower this morning. Certainly one of the catalysts is the prospects for higher interest rates. The Federal Funds rate was pushed downward beginning in the third quarter of 2000 and has been held down at 1% for the last year ( see chart ). On the other hand, the bond market indicates that interest rates are heading
The Free Market 24, no. ( 2004) S igns of a “new era” in housing are everywhere. Housing construction is taking place at record rates. New records for real estate prices are being set across the country, especially on the east and west coasts. Booming home prices and record low interest rates are allowing homeowners to refinance their
You Austrians have it all wrong. Bubbles are not caused by inflation. They are caused by increases in the money supply. Just take a look at this: Monetary Policy and Asset Prices: A Look Back at Past U.S. Stock Market Booms By Bordo and Wheelock. “Two booms stand out in terms of their length and rate of increase in market prices - the booms of
Via MarginalRevolution comes a betting site on the Nobel Prize , including the economics prize to be announced on Monday. Edward Prescott is in the lead, followed by Robert Barro , Paul Krugman, Oliver Williamson. VountaryXchange offers some thoughts on how accurate these betting systems will prove to
Big loss for sales tax supporters in Washington State, with a 1% increase for education (oh sure) rejected by 60% of voters. Other races around the country suggest that some smaller tax increase attempts passed and some failed. But the big story is what happened to GOP reps. who promoted the National Sales Tax. As Kudlow notes , “Every Republican
Consider the myriad internal contradictions embedded in this URL: www.freedom.gov . Compare to Mises: “Government is essentially the negation of liberty.” “Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.” “A liberal government is a contradictio in adjecto. Governments must be forced into adopting
Here is a new NBER working paper . It seems that Teddy Roosevelt’s gunboat diplomacy created some profit opportunities: “Empire, Public Goods, and the Roosevelt Corollary” by KRIS JAMES MITCHENER and MARC WEIDENMIER ABSTRACT: The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine marked a turning point in American foreign policy. In 1904, President
Last night coming home from Montgomery, Alabama, I was listening to APR and there was a short report on National Octogenarian Day which listed some of the new words over the last one hundred years. It mentioned that praxeology was coined one hundred years ago! That’s wrong, but it was interesting to hear. For more, see MNR on praxeology
No link for this working paper but you can write the lead author for a copy: sjadams@uwm.edu “The Effects of Living Wage Laws: Evidence from Failed and Derailed Living Wage Campaigns” SCOTT J. ADAMS and DAVID NEUMARK Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States. But living wage campaigns have also been
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.