On Car Seats as Contraception

This paper finds that "laws mandating use of child car safety seats significantly reduce birth rates, as many cars cannot fit three child seats in the back seat." 

Supply is Elastic

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/08/supply-is-elastic.html

Question

1. Did the people who planned the buy-back hope to increase the production of guns? 
2. Did the people who produced the 3-D guns response rationally? 
3. Do you think that the people who produced the 3-D guns sell them in gun shows or on the street? Why or why not?

How Not to Build Affordable Housing

"The nonprofit Up for Growth concluded that 'rather than increasing the number of affordable units,' the zoning scheme 'appears to be diminishing the supply of housing at nearly all income levels.'" (WSJ, May 2022)

Do we want to discourage marriage and work?

Casey Mulligan shows that the current version of the current version of the Spending Bill = Build Back Better Bill = Social Spending Bill = Reconciliation Bill imposes substantial taxes on couple who marry and increases the effective marginal tax rate on low-income earners (Mulligan, WSJ, Nov. 2021)
.

Government subsidies for antisocial behavior stalled decades worth of black progress.

Jason Riley is critical of the Great Society and what Biden's proposed $3.5 trillion expansion of the social safety net might mean for Black progress. (WSJ, Sep 2021). Here are some money quotes.

"Entitlement programs were dramatically expanded in the 1960s in the service of a war on poverty, yet poverty fell at a slower rate after the Great Society initiatives were implemented, and overall dependency on the government for food, shelter and other basic necessities increased."

"Between 1940 and 1960 the percentage of black families living in poverty declined by 40 points as blacks increased their years of education and migrated from poorer rural areas to more prosperous urban environs in the South and North. No welfare program has ever come close to replicating that rate of black advancement, which predates affirmative action programs that often receive credit for creating the black middle class. Moreover, what we experienced in the wake of the Great Society interventions was slower progress or outright retrogression. Black labor-force participation rates fell, black unemployment rates rose, and the black nuclear family disintegrated. In 1960 fewer than 25% of black children were being raised by a single mother; within four decades, it was more than half."

“'The greatest twenty-five years of black progress after Emancipation itself came between the early postwar period and around 1973'”

“'Overall, African American incomes rose relative to white incomes for the first two-thirds of the century ... most scholars agree that income levels by race converged at
the greatest rate between 1940 and 1970.'”

New York Trashes Landlords Again

This WSJ editorial raises questions about the security of landlord's property rights (WSJ, Sept. 2021). What exactly does the landlord purchase when the government can later forbid evictions or increases in rent? The restrictions decrease the income the landlord expected to earn. Does the inability to use the property as desired and decrease in income constitute "government seizure of private property for public use without just compensation"?

Do restrictions on evictions and increases in rent increase the incentive to become a landlord or decrease the incentive? How would the change affect the future availability of rental housing?

Unintended Consequences of Hero Pay

Stores employ fewer heroes (Reason, March 2020).

The role of incentives in the CA fires

Here are three reasons that CA is experiencing horrendous fires. I presume that similar reasons operate in WA and OR. I also recognize that global warming makes fires more likely. In my opinion, global warming increases the importance of using controlled burns to reduce the chances of horrendous fires.

1. Burn bosses don't suffer when they don't order controlled burns, but do suffer when a controlled burn gets out of hand.
2. Public ownership of public lands means that no individual has a strong incentive to maintain the land.
3. Command and control regulations often have unintended consequences and thwart attempts to perform controlled burns. 

One perspective on why much of Africa is poor

Magatte Wade, an African entrepreneur, says that the biggest reason much of her country is poor is crushing government regulation (StosselTV, Sept. 2019). The video also describes an unintended consequence of Tom's Shoes buy 1, give 1 away policy.

How firms avoid paying tariffs

Firms are using a variety of tricks to avoid paying tariffs Trump imposed on China (WSJ, Feb. 2020). Here are some questions.

1. What determines whether the US firm moves operations to the US, continues to import from China and pay the tariff, or use a trick to sidestep the tariff?
2. Is sidestepping the tariff consistent with the goal of moving operations to the US?
3. Are the tariffs increasing the general standard of living in the US?

Tariffs on Imports => Shoppers Buy Direct from China

An unintended consequence of imposing tariffs on imports from China is that consumers purchase directly from Chinese producers than from US importers. (WSJ, Dec. 2019.)

Incentives in Organ Transplants

This essay describes an unintended consequence in organ transplants. 

"Transplant programs are not evaluated by regulatory agencies to determine how well they use the organ donors available to them. Instead, they are judged primarily on how many of the patients they transplant are alive one year after surgery—an important but limited metric. The emphasis on one-year survival makes transplant programs overly cautious, letting viable organs go unused instead of using organs that they fear might harm their report card."

The essay includes an example. A surgery team turned down lungs that were good but not great matches for Patient A because another Patient B who had received a transplant had recently died. Patient A subsequently died while waiting for a match.

The emphasis on survival rates also reduces the propensity of doctors to transplant organs into patients who are likely to die within a year; e.g., patients who are old and weak and patients who suffer from other life-threatening diseases.