Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
Upside of Inequality Unintended Consequences Oxford

Alan Krueger

Studies Debunk Evidence that Higher Minimum Wages Don’t Hurt Low-skilled Employment

An op-ed in today’s WSJ debunks shoddy evidence used by President Obama to claim that raising minimum wages increases growth. If raising wages truly stimulated demand, then larger increases should produce more growth. The research found the opposite: Of “the 13 states that raised their minimum wage in January [the states used as evidence by the president], those that raised it the most had, on average, lower job growth than did those that raised it the least.” In fact, ... Read More

Does Alan Krueger’s defense of the Obama Admin’s economic policies add up? You be the judge

Last week, I debated Alan Krueger, President Obama’s former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors on Bloomberg TV’s In The Loop with Betty Liu. I made the argument that the administration pumped trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus into the economy over the last six years, over-predicted the impact stimulus would have on growth, and, as a result, did little else to fix the structural problems slowing the recovery. Because of this, we have suffered five years of ... Read More

Chetty and Saez debunk the claim that income mobility is declining in the U.S.

Chetty and Saez’s new study, “Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in the Intergenerational Mobility,” debunks the notion that income mobility in the U.S. has declined. They conclude, “Contrary to the popular perception, we find that percentile rank-based measures of intergenerational mobility have remained extremely stable for the 1971-1993 birth cohorts.” In fact, “the probability that a child from a low-income family (e.g., the bottom 20%) ... Read More