Economics Detective Radio
Economics Detective Radio is a podcast about markets, ideas, institutions, and all things related to the field of economics. Episodes consist of long-form interviews, and are generally released on Fridays. Topics include economic theory, economic history, the history of thought, money, banking, finance, macroeconomics, public choice, Austrian economics, business cycles, health care, education, international trade, and anything else of interest to economists, students, and serious amateurs interested in the science of human action. For additional content and links related to each episode, visit economicsdetective.com.
Rank #1: Price Theory and the Minimum Wage.
The minimum wage is a contentious issue among economists, and yet it enjoys near-universal support among the public. In my view, public views of the minimum wage are simply the result of a lack of careful thought by most people. Daniel Kahneman’s theory that people, when faced with a difficult question, substitute a simpler question that they can easily answer, applies particularly well in this case. People answer the question of whether they would like people to earn more when the real question is whether government should mandate higher wages (I first heard this argument from Bryan Caplan on EconLog). A purely empirical argument for or against the minimum wage is methodologically wrong-headed because empirics do not speak for themselves. Sound theory must be the economist’s first tool in understanding the effect of a policy such as the minimum wage. Before we can understand something like the minimum wage, we must understand the role of prices in allocating factors of production to their various uses. The price of a factor signals to entrepreneurs that that factor is scarce, that it is needed elsewhere in the economy, and that the entrepreneur who can reduce his usage of relatively more scarce factors in favour of relatively less scarce ones can earn profits, while entrepreneurs who fail to do so earn losses. I give the example of a sandwich shop during an oil boom; the high price of labour caused by the oil boom leads the sandwich shop to substitute away from labour in various ways. The oil boom in my illustration is irrelevant to the story. The sandwich shop would adapt to an increased price of labour no matter what caused it. If the cause is a minimum wage law, the people no longer employed making sandwiches are involuntarily unemployed rather than finding employment in some other industry. Minimum wage opponents sometimes get into trouble when they draw supply and demand curves to illustrate the impact of the price floor. The problem with this is that supply and demand diagrams come with built-in assumptions that do not hold true in the case of labour markets. Low-skilled labour is not a homogeneous quantity being sold in a centralized market. The simple supply-and-demand story does not capture all the effects of the minimum wage. For instance, firms substitute between different sorts of workers affected by the minimum wage. In addition, the other terms of employment contracts can change in response to a minimum wage law, such as training and benefits.
Rank #2: Cities, Markets, and Urban Planning with Alain Bertaud.
Today's guest is Alain Bertaud, author of Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities. Alain discusses his extensive experience in urban planning: When he was first trained as a planner, urban planning was thought of as an offshoot of architecture. In this conception, cities are just large buildings that need to be laid out and designed by a skilled architect. Through his experience, Alain came around to thinking of cities not as large buildings to be designed, but as markets. He argues that planners are too focused on what happens on private property and not focused enough on what happens on public streets and roadways. He argues that urban economics has many useful insights for urban planners and that economists should be integrated into urban planning teams. The publisher's description of the book follows: Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground—the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative—“sustainable,” “livable,” “resilient”—often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens. Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities' development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this “urban planners' dream” created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities' productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.
See Podcast
