Category: Social Sciences and Economics

  • Consumerism vs. Stewardship

    Rachel Whipple

    The following is a modified excerpt from my presentation at Sunstone this summer. We live, not only in a capitalist, but a consumerist, society. Our society is all about spending, acquiring, cluttering, and replacing, not about maintaining, restoring, renewing, and protecting. It is cheaper to buy new than to repair old.  We live in a…

  • Desert and a Just Society

    Sam Brunson

    The 2010 poverty level in the U.S., we learned on Tuesday, is the highest it has been since 1993. In 2010, about one in six Americans lived below the poverty line.[fn1] In June, 14.6% of Americans received food stamps.[fn2] To some extent, the high poverty rate is probably related to the high unemployment rate, which…

  • Mormonism and Social Justice

    Sam Brunson

    Recently, we’ve seen some distrust of religions that advocate social justice, from sources as diverse as the political punditry and lay Mormons.[fn1] The criticism is unfounded, of course, and strikes me as ahistorical and anti-Catholic. The term “social justice” comes from 1840, when the Jesuit scholar Luigi Taparelli as he worked through the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.…

  • What If President Monson Endorsed Mitt Romney?

    Sam Brunson

    In his talk at the close of the April 2008 General Conference, President Monson talked about the blessing we had received, both as members of the Church and, specifically, over the course of the conference. He ended his talk with counsel: parents are to love and cherish their children, youth are to keep the commandments,…

  • The Parable of the Talented Endowment Tax

    Sam Brunson

    Governments impose taxes in order to raise revenue that, in turn, funds government function and services.[fn1] In designing a tax system, tax theorists generally try to create provisions that will raise revenue without significantly altering taxpayers’ economic choices. That is, ideally, taxpayers will act in approximately the same way as they would have in a…

  • Faith frames the pie, and other reasons to be grateful

    Rosalynde Welch

    Today I, with millions of other home cooks around the country, will be getting frisky in the kitchen with all manner of saturated fats and simple carbohydrates as I beget a table full of gorgeous harvest pies. I make pie once a year, the day before Thanksgiving; the rest of the year I prefer my…

  • Zion and the Limits of Intellectual Agrarianism

    Zion and the Limits of Intellectual Agrarianism

    Nate Oman

    There is a strand of progressive Mormon thinking that associates Zion with an exaltation of agrarian virtues.  I am thinking here of folks like Hugh Nibley or Arthur Henry King or my friend Russell Arben Fox who argue that small scale, local economies, ideally based in large part on agriculture provide the best possible model…

  • The Tebows and Other Good Omens

    The Tebows and Other Good Omens

    Matt Evans

    I never expected to see the day that Kate Michelman, past president of NARAL, would write, “all sorts of well-educated and progressive people are comfortable calling themselves pro-life.” Michelman’s opinion piece in the Washington Post is fascinating not only for her openly acknowledging the eroding support for her movement (she says recent polls shows 51%…

  • Charity Free Riding

    Charity Free Riding

    Frank McIntyre

    As we all know, the gospel is overrun with economic doctrine.  On that note, I noticed a quote about free riding from President Monson (which I just saw at Mormon Times): “I am confident it is the intention of each member of the church to serve and to help those in need,” he said. “At…

  • Explaining the Puzzle of Cross-State Differences in Bankruptcy Rates

    Frank McIntyre

    Bankruptcy rates vary alot across states.  With a fairly simple statistical model, Lars Lefgren and I explain about 70% of these differences in a paper just published in the Journal of Law and Economics.   For cross sectional work using survey data, where you are looking across states at a point in time, explaining 70% is…

  • Morality Polling

    Frank McIntyre

    Suppose you take a “wisdom of the crowds” approach to morality (not that you should). Well then what could be more informative than a poll telling you what actions are morally wrong and what aren’t? Enter Gallup’s recent poll… Tip: Adultery is still wrong. Polygamy also out.

  • Commuter trains in Utah

    Frank McIntyre

    I just returned from a short presentation by Mike Ransom on the Utah commuter Frontrunner rail line.  It is a lesson in how to not spend money.

  • The Economics of Service and Welfare

    Kent Larsen

    A friend of mine suggested a few months ago that ward Elder’s Quorums should stop helping members move. Why, he asks, should we be competing with businesses in our area?

  • Optimal Tithing

    Frank McIntyre

    Suppose that we had a base 8 system instead of base 10, perhaps because, in this hypothetical world, we had 8 fingers rather than 10. Would we pay 1/8 our increase, or do you think it would still be one tenth? Or, to reverse causality, what are the chances we have ten fingers so that…

  • Dow 6,000

    Jonathan Green

    One of the things people find odd about Mormons is our claim to be led by a prophet.

  • A Short Lesson on Multipliers

    Frank McIntyre

    This is just a post about Keynesian mulitpliers with no particular religious content.  You have been warned and forewarned.  

  • Expected Value of A Fetus

    Frank McIntyre

    A thoughtful reader asked me if there were any economic tools that could be brought to bear in valuing a fetus.  Of course there are!  And in fewer than a 1000 words, no less!

  • The Political Uses of Debt and Mormon History

    Nate Oman

    Yesterday’s discussion got me thinking about debt, in particular the political uses of debt.  Here, I think that the experience of the American Revolution and the failure of the Confederacy may have something to tell us about Mormon history.

  • A Nobel calling

    Jonathan Green

    I’m very happy to see this year’s Nobel Prize in economics going to Paul Krugman, whose columns in the New York Times helped me see the importance of the discipline of economics as nothing else ever had. I think Mormon scholarship could use more scholars like Paul Krugman (quite apart from the Nobel and the…

  • Returning to Zion

    Brigham Daniels

    Given all that might be said of Mormonism, it should not come as a surprise that a lot of interesting topics sit pretty much neglected. One of these, I would argue, is the Mormon contribution to building settlements in the United States.

  • Global Warming, Redefining Marriage, and Risk Aversion

    Frank McIntyre

    I think we can all agree that, from a risk analysis perspective, global warming and gay marriage share a lot of characteristics.

  • McCain and the Revelatory Economist

    Frank McIntyre

    Bloomberg reports the following from McCain about economists who criticized his (lunatic) summer gas plan:

  • Moral Hazard in the Scriptures

    Frank McIntyre

    For those hoping to find more economics in their scripture study…

  • Shortage and storage

    Frank McIntyre

    With the recent spike in food prices, a three year old post demands new life. Here it is: Clearly, were there to be a famine, a one year food supply in the basement would look really good. What may be slightly less obvious is that the presence of food storage, even if nobody ever uses…

  • Coase on Abortion

    Frank McIntyre

    Estimates suggest that, on average, Americans behave as if they value a year of their life at, more or less, $100,000. This would put an average American life at a “revealed preferred” value of somewhere around $7 million.

  • Economics and the Vicious Dating Scene

    Frank McIntyre

    Diminishing Returns: Once things start going downhill, bail. Increasing Returns: It can only get better.

  • Markets and Consumer Activism

    Frank McIntyre

    With fair regularity, one hears someone talking of efforts to buy less of some commercial product, either out of a desire for global conservation or because he doesn’t like how it is produced or whatever. Invariably, he comments that his own effect on the market is small, but he wishes to “send a message” or…

  • Fixing the Minimum Wage

    Frank McIntyre

    It seems pretty clear that we are heading for a hike in the minimum wage. For the many of us who care about poverty reduction, which would be basically all of us, this could be a big deal. The problems with the minimum wage are that it:

  • The Opportunity Cost of Publishing

    Frank McIntyre

    In this excellent post, Rosalynde talks about the gender differences in subject material among Deseret Book writers. This renews the discussion brought up by Taryn Nelson-Seawright on the same difference existing in other Mormon outlets. Explanations abound for this phenomena, ranging from differing preferences to piggy discrimination, but most of them are sort of boring.…

  • Why Europeans look lazy

    Frank McIntyre

    It is a well established fact that Europeans perform vastly less formal market work than Americans. A less known fact is that this is a recent development— in the late 50s, Europeans worked about 10% more hours, but this has been in steady decline for 40 years, until now they work about 30% fewer hours…