While the Trump administration is always happy to brag about anecdotal cases of companies relocating to the United States, the actual overall numbers tell a different story. For instance, Toyota recently announced a large U.S. investment, though the rate of foreign investment here — including investment from Japan — has slowed under Trump. Constant uncertainty about the trade war, new Chinese tariffs, the threat of additional auto tariffs and the global slowdown played a prominent role in this decline.
Elaine Schwartz summarizes six benefits of free trade.
Pierre Desrochers and Kevin Brookes celebrate the miracle of supermarkets. (HT Germain Belzile)
Here’s the abstract of an important new paper on minimum wages by Jeffrey Clemens and Michael Strain:
Empirical research on minimum wages has historically focused on employment effects, with the implicit assumption that workers who remain employed under a minimum wage regime are better off. This paper develops a simple model and a stylized example to highlight the importance of an underappreciated margin: how a minimum wage might affect the regularity of workers’ schedules. Our analysis illustrates a novel line of intuition for how a minimum wage can reduce welfare even if, as in our example, it increases wages, productivity, and output, without decreasing employment.
George Will believes that the Electoral College isn’t going to disappear any time soon.
Radley Balko exposes some of the horrors of America’s current criminal-justice system.
My GMU Econ colleague Dan Klein loves the movie Little Pink House.
