All articles from Nicholas Decker
Some Problems With GDP
Many people use GDP to make claims about changes in people's welfare over time. This is entirely reasonable, and would likely be correlated with any reasonable measure of people's welfare. It is not, however, perfect, and it will miss things. First, it often does not include many things which we mig
Should We Support Small Businesses?
The US government has a host of programs to support small businesses. Small businesses are eligible for subsidized loans from the Small Business Administration, which spends billions a year for this purpose. A portion of federal contracts are set aside for small businesses, with the Biden administra
The Work of Raj Chetty
Raj Chetty is best known for extremely labor-intensive studies, with dozens of research assistants assembling and cleaning datasets to answer enormous questions. This approach can answer questions that nobody else can really answer, because no one else has the data! Who else has the tax records of m
All Housing is Housing
In order to be allowed to build housing in much of America, it is required that some portion of the units sold must be "affordable" housing. This is justified on the grounds that otherwise, the only housing which will be built will be luxury apartments, unaffordable to anyone but the rich. Rich cons
Can the BLS be Replaced?
With the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Erika McEntarfer, the present administration has made the world a worse place. The work that they do in estimating the national accounts is incredibly important to firms, policymakers, and to voters. Without the knowledge of what conditio
My Best Work This Year
It has been many months since I started blogging in earnest – over a year now, in fact. Many of you who now subscribe to my blog were not doing so until quite recently. As I have written quite a lot of articles, I would like to share those that I think stood out as especially good. I last did this s