Price Ceilings: The US Economy Flounders in the 1970s

In 1971, President Nixon, in an effort to control inflation, declared price increases illegal. Because prices couldn’t increase, they began hitting a ceiling. With a price ceiling, buyers are unable to signal their increased demand by bidding prices up, and suppliers have no incentive to increase quantity supplied because they can’t raise the price.What results when the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied? A shortage! In the 1970s, for example, buyers began to signal their demand for gasolin

The Solow Model and the Steady State

Remember our simplified Solow model? One end of it is input, and on the other end, we get output.What do we do with that output?Either we can consume it, or we can save it. This saved output can then be re-invested as physical capital, which grows the total capital stock of the economy.There's a problem with that, though: physical capital rusts.Think about it. Yes, new roads can be nice and smooth, but then they get rough, as more cars travel over them. Before you know it, there are potholes

Zimbabwe and Hyperinflation: Who Wants to Be a Trillionaire?

How would you like to pay $417.00 per sheet of toilet paper? Sound crazy? It’s not as crazy as you may think. Here’s a story of how this happened in Zimbabwe.Around 2000, Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, was in need of cash to bribe his enemies and reward his allies. He had to be clever in his approach, given that Zimbabwe’s economy was doing lousy and his people were starving. Sow what did he do? He tapped the country’s printing presses and printed more money. Clever, right? Not so