Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'supply and demand'

Price-gouging laws won’t help gas prices or consumers

Yesterday, Democrats successfully but narrowly passed an anti–price gouging bill in the House to address raging prices at the pump and to deliver on promises for successful climate-change legislation. Meanwhile, the Senate Natural Resources and Energy chair, Joe Manchin, continues to work toward a bipartisan climate and energy package.  Continue Reading...

Magic cards and market forces

Back in the 1990s, the debut of Magic: The Gathering marked a new form of gaming: collectible card games. While many may remember it similarly to Pogs, for example, Magic survived where Pogs did not. Continue Reading...

Does the equilibrium model work in the real world?

Note: This is the seventh post in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. In previous videos in this series from Marginal Revolution University we learned how prices reach equilibrium and how the market works like an invisible hand coordinating economic activity. Continue Reading...

Every Market Form in a Single Chart

Reading through the German economist Walter Eucken’s work The Foundation of Economics (1951), I came across one of the most helpful charts for economic analysis I have yet to find. In it, Eucken gives every possible form of market in a single table: Eucken adds four qualifications that are important to keep in mind: “These forms of market are actual forms which have been or are to be found in actual economic life (often blended with one another, and existing alongside the forms of a centrally directed economy). Continue Reading...

A Living Wage for a Living Tree?

Over at the American Conservative, Micah Mattix reflects on the Christmas tree market, which in his neck of the woods is “notoriously unstable.” In Ashe County, North Carolina, says Mattix, a dilemma faces the small tree farmer: “It is not sell or starve, but it is sell or go without a new septic tank, a repaired roof, a mended this or that.” Continue Reading...

Are Rising Food Prices a Result of the Ethanol Subsidy?

Economies across the globe are struggling, and rising food prices are not going to make life any easier.  The Acton Institute raised concern for rising food prices, especially corn, in 2007, when Ray Nothstine wrote a commentary on, and at the time, record prices for corn, resulting in revolts in Mexico due to rapidly rising prices for tortillas.  Continue Reading...

Economic lessons in your morning mug

A NYT editorial informs us today that retail prices for coffee products are rising (HT: Icarus Fallen). We are assured, however, that the price rise has been “relatively modest” and that an important factor is “changes in supply and demand in a global economy.” Continue Reading...
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