Opioid abuse is taking a tremendous toll on America, with 42,000 opioid-related deaths in 2016 and 343 in Alabama.  The problem involves both prescription opioid-based painkillers and illegal heroin and fentanyl.  Might our public policy response be worsening this terrible problem? Economists have analyzed prohibition, both alcohol in the 1920s and illegal drugs more recently.  […]

Kilauea on the island of Hawaii began erupting on May 3, and has to date destroyed about 600 homes. The terrifying pictures led me to wonder why anyone would build a home on one of the world’s most active volcanoes. Hawaii’s regulation of property insurance provides part of the explanation, and Kilauea’s eruption offers a […]

Bitcoin’s price gyrations over the past year have attracted widespread attention. Even if we do not become Bitcoin billionaires, the blockchain technology behind Bitcoin will likely affect our lives by rendering some of government’s functions unnecessary. My Johnson Center colleague Malavika Nair and I explore these possibilities in a new paper we published in The […]

Over 35 years ago during the 1981-82 recession, Billy Joel released “Allentown” about the plight of this Pennsylvania town. The song resonated across the Midwest during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It also anticipated, I think, an important change in our economy and society. I was in high school in suburban Detroit […]

Many of Alabama’s 2018 high school graduates will start college this fall. Unfortunately, many recent college graduates report putting off buying cars or homes, saving for retirement, or marriage due to student loan debt. Will Alabama’s new grads face this fate? Student loans now total almost $1.5 trillion, with 2016 graduates averaging $28,000 in debt. […]

Presidential tweets and a Supreme Court case have reignited the question of taxing internet sales. The Court in April heard arguments in South Dakota v. Wayfair regarding whether a retailer must have physical presence in a state to have to remit sales taxes. The physical presence rule goes back to 1967 and mail order catalogs. […]

May 5th was the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, the economist who devised socialism. Last November was the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the first attempt to implement Marx’s ideas. During the 20th Century, millions of revolutionaries fought for communism, and today polls show that perhaps half of Millennials identify as socialists. What is […]

Spring professional football returns in 2019 with the Alliance of American Football (AAF). I am very excited about this and think that the league has an excellent chance to be successful. The AAF’s potential also illustrates one of economics’ most difficult challenges. The Alliance’s eight teams will play a ten game season beginning after the […]

All states license many occupations. Licensing, essentially a government permission slip to work, emerged in the early 20th Century and is now more extensive than ever. A new report by the Alabama Policy Institute and Johnson Center, “The Costs of Occupational Licensing in Alabama,” provides an evaluation of the current extent and costs of licensing […]

Income taxes were just due, and I hope that filing this year wasn’t too painful. Despite the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) fearsome reputation, our tax system relies extensively on voluntary compliance. Tax Day thus reminds us why it is important for Americans to believe that our government serves our interests, an impression which seems endangered […]

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking’s recent death brought new attention to his dire predictions about artificial intelligence (AI). Professor Hawking feared the loss of jobs, rising inequality, and the potential for malevolent AI to threaten human existence. Does a disaster loom? If we remain in control, I think that AI will bring progress. Robots already do […]

March Madness just concluded with Villanova winning the title. Given the ongoing college basketball bribery investigation, the bigger question may be whether the Wildcats will eventually vacate the title. The bribery case first broke last September with ten arrests, including four assistant coaches, based on an FBI investigation dating from 2015. The scandal has already […]

The first driverless car pedestrian fatality occurred recently in Arizona, almost two years after the first fatal crash. These tragic fatalities signal the ongoing development of this technology. Cars and trucks with drivers killed 5,800 pedestrians in 2016, so a driverless car pedestrian fatality was probably inevitable. Driverless cars will reshape our economy, as 2.8 […]

Fifty years ago, protests and violence in opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft roiled college campuses.  The War appeared hopelessly deadlocked after the Tet Offensive.  Protestors burned draft cards, ransacked draft offices, and fled for Canada.  At the end of March 1968, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

President Trump announced last week that he would seek tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. What will the impacts of these tariffs be, and do they constitute wise policy?A tariff is a tax imposed on items imported to the U.S. The proposed 25 and 10 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum will make imported metals […]

    The recent tragedy at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High has sadly raised this question again. The failure to prevent the loss of young lives reflects both an unpleasant reality and some problems of politics. Preventing school shootings is very hard in a nation with millions of guns. Once someone decides to do evil, […]

    Bitcoin has been on a wild ride, rocketing from $1,000 to nearly $20,000 last year. A recent slide to $7,300 brought claims that Bitcoin was a bubble. What exactly is a financial bubble, and does Bitcoin have a future? Most commonly described as a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin joins together several innovations. It is first […]

  I recently wrote about some of the problems with civil asset forfeiture, under which our governments seize money or assets allegedly involved in criminal activity without securing a conviction. An Institute for Justice report detailing forfeiture abuses, “Policing for Profit,” suggests that there is an inconsistency between proper policing and profit. And yet politicians […]

Shopping with Amazon Prime has made my life better. But has Amazon improved the U.S. economy? Several forms of government help may account for Amazon’s success. Ensuring that success constitutes progress becomes challenging when government and business are entangled. Online retailing has clearly benefitted residents of America’s small towns and rural areas. Our shopping options […]

    Civil asset forfeiture involves the government taking assets allegedly used in or the proceeds of criminal activity. The practice has long angered libertarians and produced many injustices. A reform bill has been introduced in the state legislature this session. First a little history. Civil asset forfeiture in the U.S. dates to the early […]

    Nineteenth Century poet Christina Rossetti asked, “Who has seen the wind?” Neither you nor I have, but we know that the wind can blow down trees and buildings. Transaction costs in economics are similarly invisible and probably impact our lives even more than the wind. Transaction costs are the costs of making and […]

    Nobody likes paying taxes. Accepting inevitability can make paying less painful; Benjamin Franklin observed that only death and taxes were certain in life. Or perhaps Oliver Wendell Holmes’ observation that taxes are the price we pay for civilization might console us. But the handing of sales tax revenue back to retailers may rekindle […]

  Did you win the recent Mega Millions or Powerball $400 million jackpots? If not, perhaps you are lucky, since big jackpots often make people miserable. The “lottery curse” and related research findings suggest that perhaps we should rethink our economic priorities. We all know what we would buy with some extra money, so a […]

    We frequently wish for a happy and prosperous New Year. As an economist, I know more about prosperity than happiness. Because economic freedom is closely related to prosperity, 2017 closed with some good news for Alabama. The Economic Freedom of North America report, published by Canada’s Fraser Institute, measures the freedom of markets […]