Do gifts destroy value? Are they a drag on the economy, as many economists suggest?
In “The economist’s guide to gift-giving” at FT, Tim Harford collects the research of these economists who say that “Gifts typically destroy value. The total deadweight loss of Christmas in the US alone was $12bn.”
It finally happened. The Fed raised interest rates a quarter of a percentage point for the first time in 2016, after forecasting four rate hikes a year ago.
Jesús Huerta de Soto is the author of Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, and numerous other works exploring foundational issues in Austrian economics and political economy. A Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, Dr. Huerta de Soto is expanding his efforts to make his lectures and other works more readily available online and to an English-speaking audience.
[This essay originally appeared as “The Theory of Economic Development and the European Miracle” in The Collapse of Development Planning, edited by Peter J. Boettke.]
Amid all the hysteria surrounding Donald Trump, clear and sober analyses of who he is and what to expect have been few and far between.
I’ve already seen numerous progressives warning that Trump intends to eviscerate entitlements. It’s as if facts never enter the progressive consciousness. Their opponents are an undifferentiated blob and hold what progressives take to be generically right-wing positions.
A fall in the US unemployment rate to 4.6% in November from 4.9% in the month before, and 5% in November last year, has prompted some commentators to suggest that we are almost at the so-called natural rate, which is believed to be at around 4.5%.
It is held that once the unemployment rate falls below an “optimal” rate — called the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) — it sets off an inflationary spiral.
