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Tyler CowenBloomberg |
Sometimes monopolies are best left alone. That’s often the case when they aren’t harming consumers, but it can also be true when they are — for...
Here is a question I once asked myself while browsing in a modest-sized bookstore, one of my favorite things to do: If I had to read all the books in...
Sometimes industries want to be regulated. It’s not that they favor all of the associated restrictions, but that regulation means legitimation. The...
The good news is that President Javier Milei seems to be backing away from plans to dollarize the Argentine economy. That is also the bad news....
May 2024 will be remembered as the month that the AI safety movement died. It will also be remembered as the time when the work of actually making...
As the global fertility crisis continues to accelerate, so does anxiety over what to do about it. A smaller world population may be fine in the...
There is some bad news afoot for workers. Labor’s share of the US gross domestic product has been falling for a long time, by seven percentage...
Apple unveiled a record stock buyback plan last week even as it increased its dividend by 4%, to 25 cents per share. That made the market happy, and...
It’s not often that Paul Krugman and Donald Trump agree. But the Nobel-prize-winning economist and former (and future?) president have both...
Sometimes the best way to understand the future is to look to the past. Out of curiosity, I recently cracked open The American Economy in Transition...
A second Trump administration might be very different from the first, and that includes how the president treats the Fed. Donald Trump complained a...
As the summer tourism season approaches, a perennial question arises, and technology is giving it a novel twist: Is a place primarily for those who...
The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises is having a moment, especially in Latin America. Argentine President Javier Milei admires Mises, and he has...
What do some Republicans have against lab-grown meat? Legislatures in Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee and Florida are all considering bans on the sale or...
The best large-language models can already write like humans, especially if prompted properly. Photos and images can be faked at low cost....
Canada’s population surpassed 40 million last year, recording its highest growth rate since 1957. The vast majority of this growth — 97.6% — was...
As improvements in artificial intelligence continue apace, so do questions about how AI will influence economies, asset prices and — the question of...
Indiana’s Republican governor has just signed new law that introduces “intellectual diversity” as a standard for tenure decisions in state...
As Haiti continues its descent into chaos, the Dominican Republic continues to prosper. The two countries share the island of Hispaniola and a lot of...
Going against type, some Canadians are being very negative. A chorus of doomsayers is pointing out that by some measures, Canadian per-capita GDP is...
From both a biomedical and economic point of view, the success of the new class of weight-loss drugs is something to behold. Not only are they a...
With the US economy booming, the job market growing and inflation retreating, the consensus is near-unanimous: Bidenomics has been vindicated. Allow...
Open-source software may well be the greatest “public good” the market economy has ever produced. What it shows is the power of voluntary social...
Sora, a new service from OpenAI that produces one-minute videos in response to a textual prompt, isn’t yet available to the public. But the videos...
Some Americans like to mock France and Sweden for their high taxes. Yet California — whose economy is bigger than that of both countries — has...
Could an economic theory popularized in the 19th century revitalize 21st century Detroit? A lot of economists seem to think so, and I share their...
When it comes to artificial intelligence, I am an optimist. In fairness, this may be something of an understatement: Over the past year and a half, I...
When will the world have its first trillionaire? A recent report from Oxfam International predicts one within a decade, noting that the five...
Most students have a favorite teacher. In the future, could that teacher be … a chatbot? The answer depends in part on whether AI succeeds in...
For the billions of people around the world who live in countries that are not yet fully economically developed, I have some disturbing news: The very...
In economics as in life, success sometimes lies in knowing when to discard previous victories. I have in mind something called “political business...
I have news for you: The United States is becoming more redistributionist. Whether you like it or not. The broader historical trends show that the US...
Economists are used to the idea that intervening in concrete ways — spending on development projects, for example, or on social services — can...
Last year at this time, 85% of economists in one poll predicted a recession this year — and that was an optimistic take compared to the 100%...
Sometimes the real action is in the dog that didn’t bark. What is striking about the European Union’s pending regulations on artificial...
There is currently legislation before Congress that, if passed, could be one of the most important laws in US history. The Unidentified Anomalous...
The unexpected decline of the rate of inflation in the euro zone, to 2.4% from 10.6% a year ago, will limit the strain on European economies and lower...