◆ GLOBAL & APPLIED
Applied Economics
Healthcare, housing, platform economics, and environmental policy.
10 articles
FeaturedThinking 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.
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4 articles
◆ APPLIED ECONOMICS
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.
◆ APPLIED ECONOMICS
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.
◆ APPLIED ECONOMICS
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.
◆ APPLIED ECONOMICS
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.