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FTC Hearing on Vaping Case Shows Antitrust at its Worst
Earlier this week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held a public hearing about a seemingly resolved antitrust case about the vaping market. In 2018,…
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Virtual Reality and the Relevant Market Fallacy
The relevant market fallacy is one of the most common analytical mistakes in antitrust policy. One of the first legal questions in an antitrust…
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Mixed News on CPI: Headline Rate Improves, Core Rate Accelerates
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for August is out. It increased 8.3 percent over the last year, down from 8.5 percent in July. The…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Queen Elizabeth II passed away at age 96. Meanwhile, in a four-day week, agencies issued new regulations ranging from St. Louis bridges to Atlantic krill…
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Fed Chairman Powell’s Remarks at Cato Monetary Conference
Every year, our friends at the Cato Institute hold a monetary policy conference. This year’s conference opened with Cato President Peter Goettler interviewing Federal…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The labor market continues to look strong, and the Federal Trade Commission lost its attempt to keep an early cancer-detection test off the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Biden announced partial student loan forgiveness for people earning up to $125,000. The number of new final regulations this year topped 2,000. Meanwhile, agencies…
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The Fed’s Preferred Inflation Measure Improves, Mixed Picture on Consumer Spending
Two new economic indicators published Friday morning give reason for cautious optimism. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the inflation measure that gets the…
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Student Loan Forgiveness Is Regressive, Will Increase Tuition
When the Inflation Reduction Act passed, I pointed out that its $300 billion in tax increases and spending cuts would not begin to phase…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2022 Federal Register surpassed 50,000 pages last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from hearing aids to vessel repair duties. On to the…
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CDC Restructuring Shows that Institutions Matter
One of my policy mantras is that institutions matter. That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) restructuring announcement is big…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The FBI raided former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from street markings to salmonella prevention. On to the…
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CPI Gives Reason for Cautious Optimism on Inflation
Inflation may finally be coming down. July’s month-to-month Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase dropped to zero last month, down from 1.3 percent in June. The…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Inflation Reduction Act, which would not reduce inflation, is now expected to pass after Sen. Kyrsten Sinema agreed to sign on. Meanwhile, agencies issued…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
GDP shrank, the Federal Reserve increased the federal funds rate, the Senate passed the CHIPS+ Act to subsidize chipmakers, and the Build…
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The Facebook Antitrust Case Is Aging Poorly
Antitrust cases often take years to litigate. While wasteful, this isn’t always a bad thing. The politics surrounding a case might stay the same, but…
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Getting Inflation Wrong and Making It Right
Everyone makes mistakes. Owning up to them is an underrated life skill that is almost non-existent among political pundits. Doubling down when threatened is a…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Biden signed the FORMULA Act, which will temporarily suspend baby formula tariffs and other regulatory measures that made the formula shortage worse. Footage emerged…
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Former Trade Official Opposes Minor Tariff Relief
Now that former President Trump’s China tariffs are four years old, a mandatory review process is underway. President Biden has indicated he might lift…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The James Webb Space Telescope sent back its first images, and they are amazing. The Consumer Price Index increased 9.1 percent over the last…
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Certification Program Goes Bananas
Private regulation is an excellent alternative to government regulation, if done right. One form it can take is independent certification. For decades, groups like the…
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Inflation Sped Up in June: What’s Going On?
Last month, it had looked like inflation may have peaked. That celebration was likely premature. According to numbers released this morning, the Consumer…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated while giving a speech. Boris Johnson resigned as UK Prime Minister. Jobs numbers remained strong in the…
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China Tariffs: Will Inertia Win?
Former President Trump’s China tariffs came with a safeguard: They expire after four years unless an internal review finds them worth keeping. On trade issues,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Independence Day, everyone. The Supreme Court issued a major ruling on the separation of powers in the case West Virginia v. EPA. Agencies…
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The FTC vs. the Right to a Fair Trial
The Food and Drug Administration recently proposed capping the nicotine in cigarettes, which will encourage many smokers to smoke more to get the same nicotine…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The January 6 hearings continued and the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Agencies issued new regulations ranging from nuclear fees to pelagic resources. On…
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Crisis Abuse in History
Last week, CEI released Wayne Crews’s paper proposing an Abuse of Crisis Prevention Act. (If you prefer the short version, see Wayne’s and my…
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Yellen Proposes Capping Oil Prices? Not Quite
Cable news and Twitter are aflame with outrage today that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen proposed price caps for oil. Fortunately, the rumors are false.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Juneteenth, everyone. The January 6 hearings continued. The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage points. Agencies issued new regulations ranging…
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New CEI Paper: Abuse of Crisis Prevention Act
Government always grows during a crisis. And it rarely gives up all of its emergency powers when the crisis passes. This has already happened three…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
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One Way to Address Worker Shortage: A Commission to Clear Out Job-Blocking Regulations
Earlier this week, the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee held a hearing to discuss ways to address the worker shortage. There are more than…
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CPI Slightly Up, Inflation Slightly Down?
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for May increased to an annualized 8.6 percent rate over the last year, reaching another new 40-year high. Even so,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The unemployment rate held steady at 3.6 percent. The K-Pop group BTS made an official visit to the White House. Agencies issued new regulations…
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Restating the Case for Free Trade
The case for free trade needs to be restated frequently. Politicians keep pushing the same protectionist policies, as though maybe this time the results will…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Just before the long Memorial Day weekend, the third version of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, a major antitrust bill, was introduced in…
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Trade, Mission Creep, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework
President Biden announced this week a major economic agreement with a dozen countries in the Indo-Pacific region, to be called the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The government’s Disinformation Board was ended before it began. President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to address the baby formula shortage. The…
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Baby Formula and Regulatory Failure
A lot of people are blaming free markets for the baby formula shortage. As the economist Jagdish Bhagwati might say, the problem with this is…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation remained high at 8.3 percent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was confirmed to a second term. A baby formula shortage is exposing the…
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What Is Core Inflation?
The new inflation numbers are out, and they aren’t pretty. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went up 0.3 percent during April, and is up…
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Biden’s Inflation Speech: Top Domestic Priority
President Biden gave remarks on Tuesday declaring inflation his top domestic priority. Like many people, he seems not to understand that inflation is a…
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U.S. to Lift Tariffs against Ukraine for One Year: China Next?
In 2018, President Trump enacted a 25 percent tariff on Ukrainian steel, on what he claimed were national security grounds. They remained in place throughout…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Reserve took another small step to tamping down inflation, and the latest jobs report had mixed news. Agencies issued new regulations ranging…
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Fed Hikes Interest Rate: Bigger News on Bond Portfolio Mostly Neglected
The Fed this week announced a half percentage point hike in its federal funds rate. This is the right thing to do, but it…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The economy shrank at an annualized 1.4 percent pace in the first quarter of 2022. The Department of Homeland Security announced a new “…
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Sorting Out Some Confusion on Trade and GDP
While inflation is the biggest economic problem right now, trade policy is another reason why GDP shrank last quarter. It is also a common…
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GDP Shrinks: The Good and the Bad
The advance estimate for 2022’s first quarter gross domestic product (GDP) is in, and the news is not good. Adjusting for inflation, GDP shrank…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Air travelers no longer have to wear masks, although the decision is being appealed. Having solved all of the state’s other problems, Florida Republicans passed…
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The Updated Case for Free Trade
Trade is a core value of civilization. The very act of trade implies respect for people’s rights. Suppose you have something I want. I could…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet was sunk. Baseball season began, marking the unofficial start of spring. Agencies issued new regulations ranging from Potato…
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Inflation Rises to 8.5 Percent: Straining for Optimism
High inflation will likely be with us for a while, which means I’ll be writing a lot of posts like this. So, for the sake…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Senate confirmed Ketanji Jackson Brown as the newest Supreme Court Justice. A rabid fox bit nine people on Capitol Hill, this time literally…
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FTC Merger Guidelines Update
All proposed corporate mergers above a certain size have to go through review by antitrust regulators. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department…
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Pay College Athletes
No March Madness tournament would be complete without at least one school being caught paying its players in violation of NCAA rules. This year, the…
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Antitrust Triangulation
Sometimes it’s useful to introduce useless bills. The Prohibiting Anti-Competitive Mergers Act , sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY),…
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Inflation and the Biden Budget
It is good that the Biden administration is beginning to take inflation seriously. Unfortunately, however, there isn’t much that the president and Congress can…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Ukraine continues to hold out against Putin’s unprovoked invasion. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Jackson Brown had her Senate hearings. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging…
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Amazon Antitrust Lawsuit Dismissed
Last year, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon over its third-party seller program. On Friday, a judge…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The March Madness college basketball tournament began, continuing this month’s theme. Ukrainians continued to fight valiantly against Putin’s army, while ordinary Russian people are showing…
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New Anti-Merger Bill Not Indexed for Inflation
Yesterday, I wrote about four problems with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY)’s new antitrust bill, the Prohibiting Anti-Competitive Mergers…
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New Antitrust Merger Bill Is Fatally Flawed
There is yet another antitrust bill in Congress. The Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act, sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones…
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Correcting a Couple of Inflation Whoppers
Over at National Review’s Capital Matters site, I have a piece pointing out that today’s high gas prices aren’t caused by inflation. They’re caused…
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Antitrust Is Political
Antitrust regulation is just as politicized as other forms of regulation. Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich’s just-announced investigation into investors whose politics he doesn’t like…
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Inflation Sets Another 40-Year High: Relief Is in Sight, with Caveats
Inflation set a new 40-year high in February. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 0.8 percent in February, which annualizes to 7.9 percent.
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The New Office Normal
What is the best workplace model for employers to follow as COVID-19 (hopefully) continues to wind down? In an Inside Sources op-ed currently being…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Ukrainian people have proven more resilient that the Kremlin anticipated, though Putin’s invasion continued. President Biden gave his State of the Union speech. Employment…
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What Do Workers Want?
Pundits and politicians are talking about how to get back to normal as COVID (hopefully) winds down into an endemic disease like the cold or…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress avoided a government shutdown by passing a continuing resolution to fund the government through March 11. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Russia invaded Ukraine last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from headlights to glucose monitors. On to the data: Agencies issued 44 final regulations…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation reached an annualized rate of 7.5 percent, with prices going up 0.6 percent just in January. This is highest reading in 40 years.
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New Export-Import Bank President Has Opportunities for Reform
Reta Jo Lewis is about to become the next president of the Export-Import Bank. The Senate confirmed her nomination yesterday. Called Ex-Im for short,…
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Steel Tariffs against Japan Lifted, Kind of
President Biden is taking a small step toward tariff relief. Japan’s first 1.25 million metric tons per year of steel exports to the U.S.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The U.S. government’s debt reached $30 trillion last week. Antitrust target Facebook lost users last quarter for the first time in its history,…
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Good News for Facebook Competitors, Bad News for the FTC’s Antitrust Case
Thursday brought some interesting news, none of which were kind to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust case against Facebook. First, Facebook’s number of…
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The COMPETES Act Is a Bad Idea. Here’s What Congress Should Do Instead
The 2,912-page America COMPETES Act (H.R. 4521; the backronym is for ‘‘America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology, and Economic Strength’’) is the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
GDP grew 5.7 percent during 2021, giving further evidence of a strong economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Even so, Congress is now considering…
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Better Ways to Fight Poverty than the Minimum Wage
Every January, states and cities across the country raise their minimum wages. There are also calls to raise the federal minimum wage, which has stayed…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A major antitrust bill from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is poised to hit the Senate floor without a proper hearing. Considering its contents, one…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone. Inflation hit a 40-year high last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new rules ranging from French dressing freedom to…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Teachers’ unions continued to make an eloquent case for school choice by shutting down schools in major cities like Chicago. The country also observed the…
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Retro Book Reviews: A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity by Luigi Zingales (Basic Books, 2012)
University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales’s book A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity, which celebrates its 10th anniversary…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Register took Christmas Eve off, and here’s hoping everyone had a happy holiday season. One more week to go in 2021. The Food…
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Best Books of 2021: Keith E. Stanovich, The Bias that Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking (MIT Press, 2021)
Today’s political polarization isn’t just annoying; it’s damaging important cultural and family institutions. And tensions won’t deescalate until people figure out the root of the…
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Best Books of 2021: Ryan Bourne, Economics in One Virus (Cato Institute, 2021) and Caleb Fuller, There Is No Free Lunch (Freiling, 2021)
Economists are an unpopular bunch. One reason for this is that much of their job is putting parameters on people’s utopias. Spending more money…
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What’s Ahead for Regulation in 2022?
There are two questions about the coming year in regulation. The first is what will happen. The second is what should happen. What will likely…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Two big pieces of good news last week were the Senate’s decision to shelve the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better spending bill and the…
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Have a Regulated Holiday Season!
The Code of Federal Regulations is 185,984 pages long, according to my colleague Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandmentsreport. It consists of 50 titles spread…
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Senate Shelves Build Back Better Spending Bill, For Now
The Senate will not vote on the Build Back Better (BBB) spending bill this year, though they might take it up again next year.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new regulations this year topped 3,000, ending the week at 3,068, and the 2021 Federal Register topped 70,000 pages. Inflation went up…
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Inflation Increases to 6.8 percent, Misery Index Reaches 11
October’s inflation reading was the highest since the recession of 1991. November’s is the highest since the 1982 recession, at an annualized 6.8 percent.
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Can Regional Trade Agreements Replace the WTO?
Trade policy is in a bad place right now, with two consecutive protectionist administrations in the U.S. and the World Trade Organization (WTO) possibly damaged…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new final regulations this year will pass 3,000 this week, with more than three weeks still to go. The Omicron variant gave…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was a short work week because of Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, agencies issued new rules ranging from blood lancets to crash test dummies. On to the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The House passed a $1.85 trillion spending bill, which a 50-50 Senate will now consider. An Alzheimer’s vaccine began human trials. If it…
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Court Strikes Down Trump Tariff: Precedent for Institution-Level Changes?
Pessimism reigns for trade liberalization in the short run, but there is fresh hope for the long run. A new court decision over solar panel…
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Review of Michael Munger, The Sharing Economy: Its Pitfalls and Promises (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2021)
Transaction costs are one of the most overlooked ideas in economics. They are also one of the most important. The lowering of transaction costs is…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Children can now receive COVID-19 vaccinations, which is good news all around. The economy gained 531,000 jobs in October, showing once again why Congress’ big…