On March 9, the European Central Bank (ECB) launched its expanded asset purchase program, which was officially announced at the end of January at the central bank’s first board meeting of the year. With the expansion of the program’s scope and volume, the ECB will aim to buy 44 …
More »2015.03
The moratorium on timber exports – an unprecedented state intervention
The ban on the export of unprocessed timber has provoked a lot of reactions, mainly because of the very initiative taken by the government. The ruling coalition, which has become known for its spontaneous decisions attacking specific problems under the guise of the term “reform”, has once again pitted business against society. The particular populism seen in …
More »Guest Comment: How much does it cost to clear a landslide?
We received this text from our reader, who asked to remain anonymous. The important question he asks is - how is taxpayer money spent in such disasters? Watching a TV report this week about the landslide of rocks and earth on the Asenovgrad - Smolyan road, I was definitely provoked by the statement ...
More »Piketty backs down on his inequality thesis
When the French economist Thomas Piketty published his massive paper arguing that the steady rise in economic inequality was inevitable under capitalism, his thesis and its supposed and empirical basis quickly gained support among leftists, who echoed Piketty’s call for greater redistributive taxation. Other economists spent a lot of time …
More »The efficient division of scarce resources: in defense of the complete privatization of nature
Against the backdrop of debates about environmental protection, based on economic logic, we will present our view on the most effective way to utilize and protect nature in Bulgaria. Economic Calculation and Efficiency As Ludwig von Mises pointed out in his article Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth back in 1920 …
More »When the state knocks on the door
In public choice theory (which became particularly popular after the Nobel Prize for one of its founders, James Buchanan), there is talk of the so-called "rational ignorance". It is a situation in which the expenditure of resources (time, attention, effort, etc.) required for a person to become informed on a given issue exceeds the potential benefit of learning ...
More »Violent egalitarianism and the harms of quotas for women in the workplace
The rhetoric of leftist movements is often peppered with arguments about inequality. Their strongest populist theses are based precisely on social phenomena, presented as “social inequalities” that should be remedied through the power of the state apparatus and regulatory coercion. The reason for using this type of populism is that it allows for easy …
More »Let's legalize ecstasy
Edward Hess In early January, four people in the UK died[i] as a result of using something that looked like ecstasy (MDMA). Before we understand why the war on drugs contributed to, rather than prevented, the deaths of these four people, let’s look at ecstasy itself. MDMA is …
More »Should we expect a tightening of monetary policy in the US soon?
Several years after the start of the financial crisis and the subsequent launch of the quantitative easing program, politicians and central bankers reported a positive change in the values of some economic indicators, reading this as a signal of an improvement in the general situation of the economy and the labor market. In order to achieve some of the desired …
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EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion