Competition and Real Estate

From the marginal revolution comes a link suggesting there may be something anticompetitive going on in Tulsa.

Three week old minutes interest the financial community

The minutes from the May 3 FOMC meeting will be released tomorrow. How hawkish on inflation are the remarks in the minutes? This link reports that the financial community wants to know.

Unequal questions

Russell Roberts raises some questions and posts some interesting facts on inequality here.

Eminent debate

Here is a debate on eminent domain at the Wall Street Journal Econoblog.

Here's an interesting look at the US current account deficit

Fed Governor and Princeton professor Ben Bernanke takes an interesting and different view of the US current account deficit. In the introduction he writes:

Why is the United States, with the world's largest economy, borrowing heavily on international capital markets--rather than lending, as would seem more natural? What implications do the U.S. current account deficit and our consequent reliance on foreign credit have for economic performance in the United States and in our trading partners? What policies, if any, should be used to address this situation? In my remarks today I will offer some tentative answers to these questions. My answers will be somewhat unconventional in that I will take issue with the common view that the recent deterioration in the U.S. current account primarily reflects economic policies and other economic developments within the United States itself. Although domestic developments have certainly played a role, I will argue that a satisfying explanation of the recent upward climb of the U.S. current account deficit requires a global perspective that more fully takes into account events outside the United States. To be more specific, I will argue that over the past decade a combination of diverse forces has created a significant increase in the global supply of saving--a global saving glut--which helps to explain both the increase in the U.S. current account deficit and the relatively low level of long-term real interest rates in the world today. The prospect of dramatic increases in the ratio of retirees to workers in a number of major industrial economies is one important reason for the high level of global saving. However, as I will discuss, an important source of the global saving glut has been a remarkable reversal in the flows of credit to developing and emerging-market economies, a shift that has transformed those economies from borrowers on international capital markets to large net lenders.

Read it all here.

(Hat tip to Bryce)

Garbage economics

The Minneapolis Fed is full of garbage! (Hat tip to Bryce at UNI)

Why did we have the Great Inflation?

Allan Meltzer analyzes the origin of the "Great Inflation". It is an interesting historical dissection of policy mistakes at the Fed and elsewhere. It is an instructive reminder of what the received wisdom for macroeconomics was in the 1960s.

Becker thinks about going nuclear

In this post Gary Becker, nobel prize winner in economics, discusses the pros and cons of nuclear power. There many interesting comments on this post on the Becker-Posner blog on this issue.

Housing Vouchers

Here is a discussion from the urban institute on voucher for housings.

Fed raises and looks to raise again.

The Fed raised its target federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 3%. This article suggests we are likely to see more such raises in the future.

Oil Policy

Lynne at the Knowledge Problem points to this interesting article from the Economist. Also, check out Lynne's comments on the regulation and public choice theory.

Fiscal blues

Andrew Chamberlain at the Idea Shop ruminates on why tax policy is so bad and why it is not likely to get any better very soon.