Define time preference, high time preference, low time preference, and time preference rate.

What are the two conditions necessary for capital formation to set in and continue?

What are the external and biological time preference factors? Why does it matter for these factors to be expected? What role is played by nutrition and health care?

Do you think that members of the military more likely or less likely to have high time preferences?

Why are property rights violations harmful to capital formation? What were the examples given in class? Can you think of others?

If price controls [on credit card fees] are enacted in the U.S., consumers here too will likely "bear the brunt of this policy," says a paper by Wayne Brough, chief economist of Washington-based FreedomWorks. This is because, here as in Australia, consumers "are a diffuse and dispersed group" who have a hard time competing with "organized special interests seeking to use the political process to achieve gains unavailable in the marketplace," Mr. Brough writes.

This is from a recent article by John Berlau. Read the full piece here.

The latest (and fascinating) version of Death and Taxes is now out.