EconAir

  President Trump’s rhetoric seems to be more bellicose, or unhinged, every year he speaks to the world’s leaders at the United Nations. Last year, he summed up his opinion of the entire world with “Your countries are going to hell.” Whether he was making a religious statement or just a political threat was unclear. This year’s theme was to make clear that the United States would exert its military and economic power without any regard to other countries, international norms, or any personal constraints. On Iran. The U.S. will “annihilate the Islamic republic.”  “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations,” Besides the usual incoherence of his speeches, he seems to be advocating something close to genocide. On Venezuela. “If necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital interests of the U.S.” “To the victor belongs the spoils.” Trump characterized America’s takeover of Venezuelan oil as the “big...

  INFORMATION AND ECONOMIC THEORY A key strategy for corporate growth and development is innovation.    Innovation generates proprietary information, company-specific knowledge, and new technology.    A company’s products and services embody past innovation and the sum of proprietary information.    One of the assumptions of the perfect competition model is complete information.    All participants in a market know all relevant information.    As discussed in an earlier tutorial,  Introduction to Information and Economic Structure , this assumption is unrealistic in an imperfectly competitive economy dominated by large corporations. Proprietary information that cannot be duplicated by other companies allows a company to differentiate its products and services from those of other companies. Differentiated products and services reduce competition from other companies and limit the ability of a supplier or customer to play off one...

  The Agricultural Revolution - settled farming, domestication of animals, irrigation - started about 10,000 years ago. The technology changed little until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. Because of the Industrial Revolution, agriculture has been radically transformed.  A consequence of the “industrialization” of agriculture has been that farming has changed from subsistence farming (raising food to feed the farming family) to commercial farming (growing crops to sell in markets). Because of the reduction in transportation costs, markets for farm products are now global. Like other industries, agriculture has gone through waves of absorbing innovation and new technology developed by input suppliers. Agriculture, especially grain production, has been transformed by   steel plows and implements.  animal-drawn harvesters and combines.  tractors and other mechanized equipment. chemical fertilizers. pesticides. herbicides. irrigation systems....