The Daily Economy

  • Mostly Domestic Manufacturing

    In the wake of President Donald Trump’s protectionist stance for domestic manufacturing, many observers have spoken in defense of free trade. AIER has its own history of publishing in this area. In this post, I want to highlight one point that we touched on briefly in the December edition of AIER’s “Business Conditions Monthly” –…

    Mostly Domestic Manufacturing
  • Cause and Control of the Business Cycle Today

    The Great Recession was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Like the Depression, the Great Recession was precipitated by a combination of excessive credit creation and misguided government policy. Excessive credit, or purchasing media, makes people feel wealthier than they really are, triggering unsustainable consumption. For decades, AIER has pointed to excessive credit…

  • Land Value in Pennsylvania: A Practical Application

    I was recently reading AIER founder E.C. Harwood’s “Useful Economics,” which can be accessed online through our website’s Harwood Economics tab , when I came across a particularly interesting passage. In Chapter XIII, “Practical Applications,” Col. Harwood was discussing the role that taxes on site values, meaning taxes on the unimproved value of land, play…

    Land Value in Pennsylvania: A Practical Application
  • AIER Education Programs Rooted in Scientific Approach

    While students were occupied with their research projects during our new Winter Program, their professor, Lorri Halverson, and I were working on a paper summarizing our experiential learning approach, which is the basis for educational programming at AIER. The key idea of this approach is to blend learning within the academic classroom and learning within…

  • Complexity, economic policy, and AIER

    AIER has a long history of fostering schools of economic thought that don’t adhere to the views that currently dominate mainstream academia. One paradigm that reflects recent advances in other scientific fields but also confirms views put forward by AIER for decades is the growing discipline called complexity economics. As mathematical modeling came to dominate…

  • Earnings Growth and Employment Transitions

    What drives earnings growth for U.S. workers? In some form or another, this was the question addressed by researchers at a session of the American Economic Association’s annual meeting that I attended earlier this month in Chicago. There are three important channels for an employed worker to increase earnings. He or she can get a…

  • AIER Starts New Winter Program

    This month, in addition to our esteemed Summer Program, we are starting an AIER Winter Program. Our Winter Program encompasses the Applied Economic Research Course and the January intersession, which are both programs we have piloted in recent years.

    AIER Starts New Winter Program
  • Teach-the-Teachers Program Gets Results

    The Education Division of AIER is not only creating and executing innovative programs, but also conducts scientific research on the impact of those programs on their constituencies. At the recent 2017 annual meeting of the American Economic Association (AEA) in Chicago, I presented the results of the first two cycles of the Teach-the-Teachers Initiative program,…

  • Views From the Stone House Windows

    There’s nothing like seeing the sun rise from the windows of the Stone House, the centerpiece of AIER’s scenic campus in the Berkshires. I took these photos this morning.

    Views From the Stone House Windows
  • The Benefits of a Professional Learning Community

    In my recent blog about AIER’s approach to professional development workshops for teachers, I discussed an analogy suggested by Fred Ende. He wrote that during the follow-up process, both “regular water — reflection — and sunlight — coaching/support — are needed for the best growth” of a planted seed of a teaching idea. To provide…

    The Benefits of a Professional Learning Community
  • Tools to Help Lower-Income Americans Save Money

    In our January brief entitled “Why Can’t Americans Save,” I look at the numerous hurdles that different types of households face on the road to financial wellness. My research revealed that the bottom half of U.S. earners, roughly speaking, simply cannot afford to meet the goals experts put forward for saving, investing and debt.

    Tools to Help Lower-Income Americans Save Money
  • Labor Market Indicators Remain Upbeat

    Newly updated indicators for the labor market suggest a positive outlook for the economy. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for November shows the number of open positions in the private sector rose by 21,000 to 4.97 million. Adding in a 48,000 increase in the number of open government jobs, and the total number…

    Labor Market Indicators Remain Upbeat