Bardonomics

Fast food workers on strike in Richmond, VA. Image: Bernard Pollack In today's world of rising inequality and decreasing social mobility, there are few economic issues as contentious as that of the minimum wage. There have long been loud voices arguing on either side; interestingly, both those who are for and against an increase maintain that they hold the best interests of the poor. Recently the tide has favoured those advocating for a higher minimum wage. This is particularly true in the United States, which has a lower minimum wage than most developed countries. Those who support a higher minimum wage assert that it is an effective way to improve the plight of the growing ranks of the working poor, people who often work multiple jobs but remain beneath the poverty line. Many demand that a 'living wage'—a wage high enough to maintain a normal standard of living—be instituted. They say that a living wage is the only way to ensure wellbeing for workers in a labor mar...

Image: Washington Post   Up, up, and up, with not a glance below. In just 12 months, the frenzied Chinese stock market gained a staggering $6.5 trillion in value. Many sold their homes, quit their jobs, and took loans in a manic effort to join the invincible bull run. Less than 12 weeks since, trillions of dollars in stock market value has evaporated in a precipitous slide that is spooking investors around the globe.  Following close to half a decade in the doldrums, the Chinese stock market took off spectacularly in the summer of 2014. Shares were being traded higher and higher with unrelenting pace. Nascent companies with paltry profits staged wildly successful equity offerings. One tech company, Beijing Baofeng Technology, saw its shares rise 17-fold in just 26 trading days.  Worryingly, the rally showed no signs of slowing even as the economy progressed sluggishly. With the steep ascent looking excessive, the government should have made an attempt to h...

Image: Youkai Chou It's a happy day. Through some divine stroke of luck you have found yourself with two free tickets to the Rugby Sevens / insert-event-you-want-to-attend. What should you do? Is it a better idea to sell your coveted tickets to the highest bidder or to take along a friend and have a good time? What's a reasonable way to think about this decidedly pleasant dilemma?  Homo economicus , the imaginary friend of every economist, may have some advice for you. So who is  Homo economicus ? He is the relentlessly optimising, perfectly rational, purely self-interested character   who serves as a model for human behaviour. Numerous core economic theories are formulated through the study of how this creature would behave and interact under certain conditions. Fortunately, for economists and everyone else, humans are indeed often rational actors. For instance, the central economic tenet that, all other things being equal, an increase in th...

Image: Bloomberg There is a famous Greek myth about two sea monsters, Scylla and Charybdis. It is said that they lived on opposite ends of the Strait of Messina, terrorising ships that attempted to pass. If any vessel attempted to avoid one of the monsters, it was certain to be destroyed by the other.  Today, that legend is encapsulated in the saying "between a rock and a hard place."  Athens now finds itself in a somewhat analogous predicament. By the end of this month, Greece must repay the International Monetary Fund (IMF) $1.7 billion in loans. Additionally, in July and August the country is due to pay the European Central Bank (ECB) nearly 6.8 billion euros ($7.6 billion). Greece does not have the funds to honour those obligations. Crucially, the European Commission is refusing to release 7.2 billion euros in bailout funds unless the Greeks agree to additional fiscal austerity measures. If Greece is unable to repay its debts, it faces expulsion from the...

Image: TrinityPrep and Fox It's exam season, so here's some light, bite-sized economics. By now you have probably laboured your way through piles of frustrating mocks for an alphabet soup of tests. Yet every time you get a less-than-ideal score on one of those Barron's practice tests, you hold onto a sliver of hope: the practice test is generally more difficult than the actual exam. This is no coincidence—test prep companies like Barron's likely have economic incentives to design their practice tests questions in a manner such that they are more difficult than what one is likely to face in an actual testing situation. But what are these incentives? Strange as it seems, an experiment with weather forecasts in Kansas City could shed some light. In April 2007, Kansas City resident J.D. Eggelston's fifth-grade daughter was assigned a school project to keep track of the accuracy of weather forecasts for a week. Intrigued, Eggelston decided to continue his da...

What economics can teach us about procrastination.  You slouch back in your chair, scrolling aimlessly through your Facebook newsfeed. Another fascinating Buzzfeed post screams for your attention, “32 Pictures That Will Give You Intense Elementary School Flashbacks.” There’s an important exam in two weeks. But you can study for that tomorrow. For the tenth day in a row, you promise yourself that tomorrow won’t be as unproductive as today. But of course, 13 days later, you realize that you’ve done almost nothing for the exam that’s now a night away. In a panicky burst of productivity, you cram in as much review as possible.  Why do we procrastinate? Even as we watch one TV show episode after another, we know that it is far more beneficial to work on that essay due next week—yet we can’t gather the motivation to do anything. A branch of economics known as behavioral economics may have an explanation for this conundrum, it’s called hyperbolic discounting.  A...

Image: 123rf Two months ago, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) unexpectedly abandoned the Swiss Franc’s exchange-rate peg to the Euro. The move rocked financial markets, and the value of the Swissie, as the Franc is known, soared the most in its trading history. The Economist quoted an analyst describing the Franc’s dizzying rise as a “20-plus-standard-deviation move,” something that should only happen once in “many squillions of years.” The decision by the SNB to remove the peg was unwise. Its ramifications will, and are, being felt by the Swiss economy. In 2011, as the European debt crisis deepened, the SNB implemented a currency peg, tying the Franc’s value to that of the Euro. This was because the Swiss currency, seen as secure, saw massive inflows from investors searching for a “safe haven.” As Euros were sold and Francs were bought, the latter’s value rose dramatically. Switzerland, dependent on exports for some 70% of GDP, saw its competitiveness decrease. Due to the st...