Some Links

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Alex Tabarrok reports on research that finds that firms that make economically irrational hiring decisions – in popular parlance, firms that “discriminate” in hiring – are more likely to go out of business than are firms that do not engage in this economically reckless behavior.

David Henderson recently mentioned his 2012 EconLog post titled “Krugman Discovers Life Cycles.”  It’s excellent – and I believe that I failed, when David first wrote it, to link to it here at Cafe Hayek.  Better late than never.

From the more-recent past (June 2016) is this short essay by Bryan Riley on the costs of the Jones Act.

Robert Barro explains that the slow and weak recovery from the 2008 Great Recession is due neither to the depth of the downturn nor to the fact that it was accompanied by a financial crisis.  (gated)  A slice:

Given the need for productivity-enhancing policies, it is sad that recent policy suggestions from Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have emphasized restrictions on trade and immigration and higher minimum wages. The former policies are equivalent to constraining technological progress. Expanded trade in goods and people is like better technology—both raise the total real value of goods and services that can be produced for given inputs. Mandating a higher minimum wage amounts to inefficient regulation of the labor market by pricing young and less-productive workers out of the job market.

(Barro’s piece would have been even stronger had he mentioned the work of Bob Higgs on regime uncertainty.)

Speaking of economic growth, my Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold rightly notes that we’ll get more of it if we’re given more freedom to trade.

George Leef shows why Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to ‘fix college’ will fail.

Jeff Jacoby is correct that zoning is not only unnecessary, but also harmful.

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