Wednesday, March 28, 2018

More Evidence of the Perverse Effects of the Minimum Wage

A new study from Grace Lordan, London School of Economics and David Neumark, University of California at Irvine shows the  following:

1. Increasing the minimum wage decreases significantly the share of automatable employment held by low-skilled workers. 

2. An increase of the minimum wage by $1 (based on 2015 dollars) decreases the share of low-skilled automatable jobs by 0.43 percentage point. 

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

The Balance of Payments Must Always Balance

Apparently Donald Trump didn't study Balance of Payments at Wharton because he is always wailing about a "trade deficit".  A trade deficit is always balanced by a surplus of foreign investment.
So, for example, if US businesses and consumers import more than they export, there is a corresponding increase in the capital investment from abroad -- e.g. buying the stocks and bonds of US companies, investing in US treasury debt. Why this would be bad is beyond me.