Incentives for the unemployed

I just read a comment a from a reader over at chicagobusiness.com, where he suggests that people who collect unemployment benefits should have such hand-outs subtracted from their social security benefits.  In other words, if you collect unemployment benefits for a year, the age at which you can collect Social Security gets pushed back by [...]

Why Indian restaurants provide bad service

Normally, tips provide waiters and waitresses with an incentive to provide customers with good service.  However, in Indian restaurants, I am routinely faced with waiters who mumble, never smile, and generally behave as though you are burden and their job is a chore.

One possible explanation for this is that they may feel that serving others [...]

California's Curse

Chris sends my way this article on how too much government has been slowly sucking the blood out of California.  I wonder if California suffers from a kind of resource curse.  Normally, the resource curse is used to explain why countries with an abundance of natural resources have underperforming economies and corrupt governance.  In California’s [...]