James d. Gwartney

Journal of Legal Studies Vol. 31, No. S2, The Evolution of Property Rights: A Conference Sponsored by the Searle Fund and
Northwestern University School of Law (June 2002), pp. S609–S652. There have been other cases where humans have hunted
an animal species to extinction. Passenger pigeons are an example. They were hunted for meat while whales were hunted
mainly for oil. But pigeons were such a small part of the market for meat that even as they began to disappear, the price of
meat did not increase enough to call forth either preservation efforts or a large-scale increase in the production of meats. There
was no crisis. So their disappearance became complete. If whales had been intensively hunted only for their meat, and not
mainly for oil, they also might have disappeared. But whale oil was so important in the market for light that when its price rose
sharply, a substitute was found that reduced the demand for whale oil and its price, saving the whales. 
↩ 

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23. Clair Wilcox. Competition and Monopoly in American Industry. Monograph No. 21, Temporary National Economic
Committee, Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power, 76th Cong. 3d sess. (Washington, D.C.: United States
Government Printing Office, 1940). 
↩ 
24. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Volume I Glasgow Edition (Indianapolis:
Liberty Fund, Inc., [1776] 1981): 18. Also available at: 
www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html
. 
↩ 
25. World Bank, Doing Business Project (
doingbusiness.org
). “Time required to start a business (days).”
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ic.reg.durs
. 
↩ 
26. For a comprehensive analysis of the impact of minimum wage legislation on the poor, see Thomas MaCurdy, “How
Effective Is the Minimum Wage at Supporting the Poor?” Journal of Political Economy 123 (2015):
www.jstor.org/stable/full/10.1086/679626
. 
↩ 
27. For evidence on this point, see Edward Bierhanzl and James Gwartney, “Regulation, Unions, and Labor Markets,”
Regulation (Summer 1998): 40–53. 
↩ 
28. Muravyev, A., Oshchepkov, A. (2016) “The effect of doubling the minimum wage on employment: evidence from Russia.”
IZA J Labor Develop 5, 6. 
↩ 
29. Maria Koumenta and Mario Pagliero, 2018. “Occupational Licensing in the European Union: Coverage and Wage Effects,”
CEPR Discussion Paper 12577, CEPR Discussion Papers Series. 
↩ 
30. See the Department of Treasury, Office of Economic Policy, Occupational Licensing: A Framework for Policymakers,
2015; Morris M. Kleiner, “Why License a Florist?” New York Times, May 28, 2014; Jacob Goldstein, “So You Think You Can
Be a Hair Braider?” New York Times, June 12, 2012; and Dick M. Carpenter II, Lisa Knepper, Angela C. Erickson, and John
K. Ross, License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing, Institute for Justice, May 2012. 
↩ 
31. The sharp-eyed among you may have noted that the earliest picture in this sequence comes from 1990, after the fall of the
Soviet Union. In part this is because aerial photographs from Soviet airspace were not easy to take. More critically, the
shrinking after 1990 is still largely a legacy of Soviet policies. Once a regional economy is built around schemes to force
illogical production activities, it is very hard to change the infrastructure and worker skills involved. What will Caspian Sea
fishermen do if all of a sudden they are told, “No more fishing, find another job?” 
↩ 
32. These figures are from the Center for Responsive Politics, “Lobbying: Top Spenders,” (2008) available at:
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s
. (For additional details, see Peter J. Wallison and Charles W.
Calomiris, “The Destruction of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” American Enterprise Institute [2008] available at
https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-last-trillion-dollar-commitment/
). 
↩ 
33. See Peter Nyberg (2011) Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Banking Sector in Ireland (Dublin)
https://merrionstreet.ie/en/News-Room/Releases/commission-of-investigation-into-the-banking-sector.38671.shortcut.html
,
and Ron Wright Strengthening the Capacity of the Department of Finance (Dublin)

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https://web.archive.org/web/20110310164641/http://www.finance.gov.ie/documents/publications/reports/2011/deptreview.pdf
.
34. Note that credit cards (and debit cards) are not money. A credit card is simply a means of getting an automatic loan that
will not carry interest if paid back soon, while a debit card is merely an easy way to transfer bank account deposits, which are
the real money.35. Of course, as economists like to say, “correlation does not mean causation.” Maybe countries facing high inflation simply
print more money to try and keep up. Sophisticated data analysis, however, strongly supports the conclusion that it is excess
printing of money (usually to pay for government spending without raising taxes) that causes inflation. As Milton Friedman
famously said: “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” 
36. Frye, T. (2002). “The Perils of Polarization: Economic Performance in the Postcommunist World.” World Politics, 54(3),
308–337. 
http://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2002.0008
. 
37. The size of the actual fall in GDP in post-communist countries is extremely hard to measure. Under central planning,
producers had an incentive to over-report output in order to meet quotas. In a market economy the incentive shifted to under-
reporting to avoid taxes. In addition, improvements in quality to meet consumer demands in a competitive environment were
almost impossible to capture. See, for example, Randall Filer and Jan Hanousek (2003) “Output Changes and Inflationary Bias
in Transition”, Economic Systems, Vol. 24. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1516073
.38. Anders Aslund, Ukraine: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It (Peterson Institute, 2015): 48–49.39. See 
https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/methodology/paying-taxes
.40. The World Bank takes seriously the concept of “one country, two systems,” and evaluates Hong Kong’s tax system
independently from that of mainland China. 
41. Henry George, Protection or Free Trade (New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1980).42. Many of the “job savers” act as if foreigners are willing to supply goods without ever using their acquired dollars or euros
to purchase things. This is not the case. If foreigners were willing to sell things to Americans for dollars or Europeans for
euros but never use the dollars or euros to buy products, it would be as though Americans and Europeans could write checks
for imports without anyone ever cashing them or export pretty pieces of paper with pictures of national heroes (United States
bank notes) or even fictional bridges (Euro bank notes) on them. Wouldn’t that be great? In fact, however, producers of
imported goods and services do cash the checks they receive. They don’t actually want the pieces of paper; they want the
purchasing power represented by them to buy things they want or to invest in productive assets. And often what they want to
buy are the products that America and Europe exports. Thus, imports help to generate the demand for exports.43. When the exchange rate is determined by market forces, equilibrium in this market will bring the purchases of goods,
services, and assets (including both real and financial assets such as bonds) from foreigners into balance with the sale of these
items to foreigners. During the last couple of decades, United States imports of goods and services have persistently exceeded
exports. With market-determined exchange rates, such trade deficits will be largely offset by an inflow of capital of similar

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magnitude. The will result in lower interest rates, more investment, and additional employment. Thus, even
in this case, there is no reason to anticipate that there will be a negative impact on employment. Even though trade deficits
were present throughout most of the 1980–2005 period, employment in the United States expanded by more than 35 million.
44. The same logic applies to “outsourcing,” undertaking certain activities abroad in order to reduce cost. If an activity can be
handled at a lower cost abroad, doing so will release domestic resources that can be employed in higher productive activities.
As a result, output will be larger and income levels higher.45. “Cheap” does not mean “low quality.” We are explicitly holding quality constant. To economists things of different quality
are different products. West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil is a different product from Louisiana Light, just as a Mercedes and a
Kia are different products, not a generic “car.” 
46. S. Hong, H. Han, and C.S. Kim, “World distribution of income for 1970–2010,” Empirical Economics (2019).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-019-01657-w
. 
47. As quoted in Frank Whitson Fetter, “Congressional Tariff Theory,” American Economic Review, 23 (September 1933):
413–27. 
48. Douglas A. Irwin, “GATT’s contribution to economic recovery in post-war Western Europe” in: Europe’s Postwar