Markets

February 2026

• Feb 3, 2026ConceptsEconomic Laws Explained SimplyGneezy and Rustichini's 2000 study added a fine for late pickup at Israeli daycare centers. Late arrivals roughly doubled, and did not return to earlier levels after the fine was removed. The charge turned an obligation into a purchasable option and destroyed a stronger non-monetary incentive. Eight principles in plain language: scarcity, opportunity cost, incentives, marginal thinking, supply and demand, comparative advantage, diminishing returns, and prices as information.17 MIN40.8k

April 2024

• Apr 10, 2024CultureUnderstanding Capitalism's ImpactThe invisible hand came with a visible fist in his own text, since he distrusted merchants using political influence to restrict competition and suppress wages, and he backed public infrastructure, schooling for working-class children and usury laws. The page holds the productive case and the critique together rather than resolving them, and notes Weber's Protestant thesis is contested because capitalism flourished in Catholic Italy first.15 MIN6.1k

January 2023

• Jan 31, 2023ExplainersThe Basics of Supply and Demand in EconomicsSan Francisco's median home price went from about $550,000 to over $1.3 million between 2012 and 2022, because when construction is blocked the whole demand shock lands on price instead of splitting between price and quantity. The rent control evidence runs the same way, with a Stanford study finding San Francisco's 1994 expansion cut rental supply 15 percent as landlords converted and redeveloped.21 MIN13.6k

September 2022

• Sep 9, 2022ExplainersAsymmetric Information in Economics: Key ConceptsIt won the Nobel Prize 31 years later, and the model it set out now predicts a death spiral in unregulated insurance, where sick buyers raise premiums, healthy buyers drop out and premiums rise again. The page separates the four distinct problems the term covers, since hidden information and hidden action call for different remedies. One concrete marker of the gap: Levitt and Syverson found homes owned by real estate agents themselves sold for about 3.7% more.20 MIN2.0k

July 2022

• Jul 16, 2022ConceptsWhat Is Narrative Economics: How Stories Move MarketsShiller's claim is that the stories a society repeats about money change spending, borrowing and hiring, and that they spread like contagion, with infection rates, superspreaders and epidemic curves. He tracks them through newspaper and book archives: frugality language spiking in 1930 to 1932, Bitcoin's rotating justifications, GameStop reaching 483 dollars on a story about making the suits pay. The criticisms get a full hearing too.18 MIN9.6k