BOHANON & STYRING: Why not use auctions to allocate H1-B visas?
Sometimes, prices are intentionally not used to allocate resources. The H1-B visa program is an example. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t use prices to ration these visas.
Bill Styring / Special to IBJ
Articles
BOHANON & STYRING: Monthly jobs reports have many moving parts
Each month, markets and media await the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report. And each month, the headline misses 90 percent of what’s really happening on the jobs front.
BOHANON & STYRING: The rich will pick up tab for fixing Social Security
Social Security will inevitably be changed from an insurance program to a simple welfare program designed to transfer wealth from high earners to low earners in retirement.
BOHANON & STYRING: Impacts of trade deficits poorly understood
It’s natural to think it’s bad to buy more from foreigners than they buy from us.
BOHANON & STYRING: Knee-jerk decision to recycle not always wise
Wealth, technology and relative prices tell us when it makes sense to use a virgin resource from the Earth and when to reuse something.
BOHANON & STYRING: Playing politics with tariffs an unwise course
Tariffs provoke retaliation. Pretty soon you’re in a trade war. The objective of protecting American jobs winds up costing many times more jobs than the ones you set out to protect.
BOHANON & STYRING: Temptation to cheat dooms price-fixing schemes
The Saudis et al. tried to reinvigorate the OPEC cartel, which has been nearly destroyed by new U.S. hydraulic fracturing technology. It didn’t work.
BOHANON & STYRING: Venezuela offers lessons in dangers of inflation
inflation is a sustained and persistent increase in the general level of prices. In the United States, we don’t have much inflation right now, but, historically, governments have conjured up inflation as a way to raise revenue and repudiate debts.
BOHANON & STYRING: Obama budget takes on sports-venue subsidies
Obama’s 2017 budget has one provision that makes us want to send him a belated Valentine! He asks Congress to eliminate a federal tax exemption for interest payments on local bonds issued to build professional sports venues.
BOHANON & STYRING: Look past class warfare to the real numbers
It’s an election year, so politicians talk a lot about taxes. Most candidates tell the middle class and poor they pay way too much in federal income taxes.
BOHANON & STYRING: Fed’s easing policies are coming home to roost
Nowhere is it written that it’s the Fed’s job to provide cheap money for the federal government to spend, but that’s precisely the hole the Fed has dug for itself.
BOHANON & STYRING: Market ultimately keeps gas prices in check
As long as a price-fixing scheme cannot be enforced by law or mafia contract, we consumers have little to fear.
BOHANON & STYRING: Ethanol has lost its glow, but subsidies live on
Ethanol, the wonder fuel, has turned out to be a wonder flop. But corn ethanol has powerful interests protecting the subsidy, such as corn farmers and ethanol companies. Those who bear the costs of the ethanol subsidy are the widely dispersed and disorganized members of the general public.
BOHANON & STYRING: Quest for growth faces demographic headwinds
A low birth rate coupled with extended life spans for old folks is a recipe for an economic squeeze.
BOHANON & STYRING: Economics matter in immigration choices
Immigration stories have cultural, social and political elements to be sure, but economics almost always plays a central role.
BOHANON & STYRING: Federal Reserve gives banks unintended windfall
Opaqueness has advantages. Explained in everyday English, one consequence of recent Fed policy would be embarrassing. “We are giving banks $12.25 billion a year in free profits for doing absolutely nothing.
BOHANON & STYRING: Fed’s baby step on rates has minimal impact
The point of the rate hike was not to slow down business lending; rather, it was to signal that the Federal Funds Rate will not be zero forever.
BOHANON & STYRING: Not all consequences of policies are intended
Any self-respecting intermediate microeconomics student should know that, if the cost of burning Christmas lights goes down, folks will indulge in consuming more Christmas lighting.
BOHANON & STYRING: Federal tax system earns F on every front
If we’re going to tax income, is there a better alternative? Indiana’s adjusted gross income tax wouldn’t be a bad choice.
BOHANON & STYRING: Messed-up U.S. tax policies fuel gamesmanship
One of the nastier quirks of U.S. corporate taxation lies in where income is taxed. Just about everyone else follows a simple rule: You pay taxes to the country where the income is earned. But that’s not good enough for Uncle Sam.