Flaws and Ceilings

Flaws and Ceilings PDF Author: Christopher Coyne
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 0255367023
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Price controls across many sectors are currently being hotly debated. New controls in the housing market, more onerous minimum wages, minimum prices for alcohol, and freezes on energy prices are very high up the agenda of most politicians at the moment. Even without any further controls, wages, university fees, railway fares and many financial products already have their prices at least partly determined by politicians rather than by supply and demand in the market. Indeed, barely a sector of the UK economy is unaffected in one way or another by government controls on prices. This book demonstrates why economists do not like price controls and shows why they are widely regarded as being amongst the most damaging political interventions in markets. The authors analyse, in a very readable fashion, the damage they cause. Crucially, the authors also explain why, despite universal criticism from economists, price controls are so popular amongst politicians.

Flaws and Ceilings

Flaws and Ceilings PDF Author: Christopher Coyne
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 0255367023
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Get Book Here

Book Description
Price controls across many sectors are currently being hotly debated. New controls in the housing market, more onerous minimum wages, minimum prices for alcohol, and freezes on energy prices are very high up the agenda of most politicians at the moment. Even without any further controls, wages, university fees, railway fares and many financial products already have their prices at least partly determined by politicians rather than by supply and demand in the market. Indeed, barely a sector of the UK economy is unaffected in one way or another by government controls on prices. This book demonstrates why economists do not like price controls and shows why they are widely regarded as being amongst the most damaging political interventions in markets. The authors analyse, in a very readable fashion, the damage they cause. Crucially, the authors also explain why, despite universal criticism from economists, price controls are so popular amongst politicians.

Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls

Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls PDF Author: Robert L. Schuettinger.
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
ISBN: 161016525X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
The Mises Institute is thrilled to bring back this popular guide to ridiculous economic policy from the ancient world to modern times. This outstanding history illustrates the utter futility of fighting the market process through legislation. It always uses despotic measures to yield socially catastrophic results. It covers the ancient world, the Roman Republic and Empire, Medieval Europe, the first centuries of the U.S. and Canada, the French Revolution, the 19th century, World Wars I and II, the Nazis, the Soviets, postwar rent control, and the 1970s. It also includes a very helpful conclusion spelling out the theory of wage and price controls. This book is a treasure, and super entertaining!

Making Great Decisions in Business and Life

Making Great Decisions in Business and Life PDF Author: David R. Henderson
Publisher: Chicago Park Press
ISBN: 0976854104
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The phrase "work smarter, not harder" has been repeatedly ridiculed in the Dilbert comic strip and elsewhere, not because it is a bad idea, but because it is thrown like a brick lifesaver to drowning employees. To tell someone to work smarter is like telling someone to be happier, healthier, and richer. It's not much help to merely repeat the objective; what people need is a plan for achieving the objective.In Making Great Decisions, we show our readers how to achieve their objectives. We write to help those in business and those in the business of life--i.e., everyone--to work smarter. Our ideas are both simple and powerful. We offer a better way to look at problems so that the solutions are easier to find. We help supplement our readers' clear thinking by summarizing some of the most powerful techniques we have discovered.Have you ever driven through corn country? From a distance, all you see are corn stalks and more corn stalks in a jumbled mess. Then suddenly, when you get closer, your perspective changes, and you can see down the rows and realize that the corn was planted perfectly in straight lines. Your perception of the crop changes from a messy jumble to a clear picture simply because you're in the right spot. This book puts readers in that ideal spot. So many problems seem like hopeless jumbles but then, when you start using the techniques we discuss here, they start to look as straightforward as the straightest line in an Iowa cornfield.What motivated us to write this book is that, over the years, both of us have regularly come across people in organizations--often bright people with MBAs or other graduate degrees--who don't think they have time, energy, or skills to make good decisions. They have many clues but don't know how to put them together. They regularly face situations that they could analyze with some of the tools they learned in their courses, but they don't realize that. We don't hold ourselves apart from this group, and stories of our successes and failures are sprinkled throughout Making Great Decisions in Business and Life.

Drastic Measures

Drastic Measures PDF Author: Hugh Rockoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521522038
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
A history of America's use of wage and price controls from colonial times to the 1970s.

Discovering Prices

Discovering Prices PDF Author: Paul Milgrom
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154457X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Traditional economic theory studies idealized markets in which prices alone can guide efficient allocation, with no need for central organization. Such models build from Adam Smith’s famous concept of an invisible hand, which guides markets and renders regulation or interference largely unnecessary. Yet for many markets, prices alone are not enough to guide feasible and efficient outcomes, and regulation alone is not enough, either. Consider air traffic control at major airports. While prices could encourage airlines to take off and land at less congested times, prices alone do just part of the job; an air traffic control system is still indispensable to avoid disastrous consequences. With just an air traffic controller, however, limited resources can be wasted or poorly used. What’s needed in this and many other real-world cases is an auction system that can effectively reveal prices while still maintaining enough direct control to ensure that complex constraints are satisfied. In Discovering Prices, Paul Milgrom—the world’s most frequently cited academic expert on auction design—describes how auctions can be used to discover prices and guide efficient resource allocations, even when resources are diverse, constraints are critical, and market-clearing prices may not even exist. Economists have long understood that externalities and market power both necessitate market organization. In this book, Milgrom introduces complex constraints as another reason for market design. Both lively and technical, Milgrom roots his new theories in real-world examples (including the ambitious U.S. incentive auction of radio frequencies, whose design he led) and provides economists with crucial new tools for dealing with the world’s growing complex resource-allocation problems.

The Distributional Implications of the Impact of Fuel Price Increases on Inflation

The Distributional Implications of the Impact of Fuel Price Increases on Inflation PDF Author: Mr. Kangni R Kpodar
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1616356154
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
This paper investigates the response of consumer price inflation to changes in domestic fuel prices, looking at the different categories of the overall consumer price index (CPI). We then combine household survey data with the CPI components to construct a CPI index for the poorest and richest income quintiles with the view to assess the distributional impact of the pass-through. To undertake this analysis, the paper provides an update to the Global Monthly Retail Fuel Price Database, expanding the product coverage to premium and regular fuels, the time dimension to December 2020, and the sample to 190 countries. Three key findings stand out. First, the response of inflation to gasoline price shocks is smaller, but more persistent and broad-based in developing economies than in advanced economies. Second, we show that past studies using crude oil prices instead of retail fuel prices to estimate the pass-through to inflation significantly underestimate it. Third, while the purchasing power of all households declines as fuel prices increase, the distributional impact is progressive. But the progressivity phases out within 6 months after the shock in advanced economies, whereas it persists beyond a year in developing countries.

Making Medicines Affordable

Making Medicines Affordable PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309468086
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.

The Great Inflation

The Great Inflation PDF Author: Michael D. Bordo
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226066959
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

Rethinking Consumer Protection

Rethinking Consumer Protection PDF Author: Thomas Tacker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498577423
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
For many decades consumer protection laws have focused on preventing “bad” choices. Though that approach has some value, this book explains we are much more often harmed, even killed, by the needless delay of new inventions that could save lives or vastly improve life quality. Thomas Tacker explains how we can revamp regulation to embrace inventions that save and improve lives while still holding companies accountable for actions that harm consumers. Case studies include price gouging, the FDA approval process, airport passenger screening, and occupational licensing, particularly as it relates to Uber. This book demonstrates that enacting appropriate liability laws and providing information to guide consumers, rather than strictly controlling their choices, will save thousands of lives annually, increase consumer freedom, and make life more enjoyable.

Cato Handbook for Policymakers

Cato Handbook for Policymakers PDF Author: Cato Institute
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1933995912
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 698

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Book Description
Offers policy recommendations from Cato Institute experts on every major policy issue. Providing both in-depth analysis and concrete recommendations, the Handbook is an invaluable resource for policymakers and anyone else interested in securing liberty through limited government.