Applied Economics
Healthcare, housing, platform economics, and environmental policy.
11 articles
FeaturedZoning: Land Use Regulation and Its Economic Consequences
Zoning is a government regulation that specifies what types of land use are permitted in specific geographic areas.
Read more →Deep Dives
5 articles
Healthcare as a Market: Why the Economics of Medicine Break Every Standard Model
U.S. health spending hit $5.3 trillion in 2024. Three features break the standard market: asymmetric information, third-party payment, and inelastic demand.
Housing Markets: What Happens When Supply Can't Keep Up With Where People Want to Live
Home prices have outrun incomes for years. The reason is inelastic supply: housing takes years to build, and zoning caps it where demand is highest.
Platform Economics: Two-Sided Markets, Network Effects, and Why Winner-Takes-Most
Platforms connect two groups and grow more valuable as each grows. Network effects explain why these markets tip toward one giant — and draw antitrust fights.
Environmental Economics: Pricing the Planet and the Policy Math Behind Climate Action
Carbon is the textbook negative externality. The fix is a price — a carbon tax or cap-and-trade — set against the EPA's $190-per-ton social cost of carbon.
Thinking Like an Economist: The Mental Frameworks That Stay With You
You'll forget the equations. What stays is five tools — opportunity cost, marginal thinking, incentives, trade-offs, equilibrium — that improve every decision.
Quick Answers
5 termsSwitching Costs: The Friction That Keeps Customers Locked In
Switching costs are the costs a buyer incurs when changing from one supplier or product to another.
Read more →Cap-and-Trade: Using Markets to Cut Pollution Efficiently
Cap-and-trade sets a total limit on emissions, distributes tradeable permits up to that cap, and lets firms buy and sell permits based on their individual…
Read more →Carbon Tax: Pricing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Directly
A carbon tax is a per-unit charge on greenhouse gas emissions, designed to make the private cost of fossil fuel use reflect its social cost.
Read more →The Network Effect: Why Some Products Become More Valuable as They Grow
Network effects occur when a product's value increases as more people use it. They are the primary driver of winner-take-all market dynamics in technology,…
Read more →Platform Economics: The Two-Sided Markets That Reshape Industries
Platform economics analyzes two-sided (or multi-sided) markets where a platform intermediary connects two distinct user groups that each benefit from the…
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