Category: Economics

Firms Moving from Silicon Valley to Texas

(p. A3) SAN FRANCISCO–California’s economy is adding jobs far faster than affordable places to live, forcing some employers to leave the state as they expand.
. . .
Karen Holian, 44 years old, joined the startup Lottery.com when it was founded here in 2015. Though a San Francisco native, Ms. Holian, a marketing manager, was excited when the company last year moved to Austin, Texas, because she could finally plan to buy a home.
“In San Francisco, that never seemed like a possibility,” she said. A mother of two, she is for now renting a four-bedroom house for $2,000 a month, a third of what a comparable place costs in her hometown.
Lottery.com CEO Tony DiMatteo said that as the company grew, he found it difficult to persuade current and prospective employees to move to the area. “We can give them a much better bang for their buck if we’re not in San Francisco,” he said.
. . .
Carl Guardino, chief executive of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said CEOs tell him “that any new job that doesn’t absolutely need to be in the Bay Area is located outside of the Bay Area.” The public-policy advisory group counts some 360 companies, including Silicon Valley’s largest, as members.
. . .
Texas has drawn more companies leaving California over the past decade than any other state, according to research by Joe Vranich, a relocation consultant who encourages businesses to leave California.
Housing costs are “a major selling point for us,” said Mike Rosa, senior vice president of economic development for the Dallas Regional Chamber. “It’s a factor in just about every [relocation] search we see.”

For the full story, see:
Nour Malas. “Firms Quit California Over Costs.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 20, 2019): A3.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added; bracketed word, in original.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 19, 2019, and has the title “California Has the Jobs but Not Enough Homes.” The sentence quoting Karen Holian appeared in the online, but not the print, version.)

Big Firms Can Benefit Consumers

(p. A15) Mr. Wu writes with elegance, conviction, knowledge–and certitude. But he goes over the top in his effort to slay the dragon of the so-called Chicago School of antitrust analysis, which finds its clearest expression in the late Robert Bork’s influential 1978 book, “The Antitrust Paradox.” Bork and the Chicago School insist that “consumer welfare” should be the sole standard for antitrust law. Nothing else matters.
. . .
The deeper source of philosophical disagreement, however, lies in Mr. Wu’s self-proclaimed “neo-Brandeisian” attack on Bork’s underlying worldview. First, Mr. Wu claims that Bork’s consumer-welfare theory shows too little solicitude toward the small businessman, who can be steamrolled by larger businesses with greater economic power. Second, Mr. Wu claims that Bork’s thesis ignores the perverse influence that dominant firms exercise on the overall political system.
Against both challenges, Bork’s position holds up reasonably well. As to the first, the protection of the small businessman comes at a high price. It forces consumers to do business with small firms that may well have a local geographical monopoly, which would be undercut by a larger firm offering better goods at lower prices.
. . .
Similarly, both Brandeis and Mr. Wu have an oversimplified vision of political markets, for economic dominance need not translate into political dominance. Companies like Google and Facebook today enjoy dominant positions with their search engines or social-media platforms, but they face massive political opposition, not only from regulatory authorities but also from skilled political operatives–activist groups, litigation centers, unions, trade associations–who can make their lives a public-relations nightmare.
. . .
Finally, Mr. Wu’s Brandeis fixation blinds him to the distinctive features of modern antitrust litigation, which must contend with often complicated economic arrangements and effects. When American Express tried to prevent its merchants from steering their customers to credit-card companies that charge lower fees to retailers, it was hit with an antitrust lawsuit. But the Supreme Court this year upheld the policy, claiming that it didn’t result in an abuse of market power but was pro-competitive because of indirect effects that improved the benefits to Amex card holders. With his over-concern with bigness per se, Brandeis had nothing to say about these novel issues, and neither, alas, does Mr. Wu.

For the full review, see:
Richard A. Epstein. “BOOKSHELF; Revisiting the Gilded Age; Are Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon akin to the dominant “trusts” of the late 19th century–and thus deserving of antitrust action?” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Dec. 3, 2018): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 2, 2018, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘The Curse of Bigness’ Review: Revisiting the Gilded Age; Are Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon akin to the dominant “trusts” of the late 19th century–and thus deserving of antitrust action?”)

The book under review, is:
Wu, Tim. The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age. New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2018.

The Bork book mentioned in the review, is:
Bork, Robert H. The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself. New York: The Free Press, 1993 [first published 1978].

Tight Labor Market Gives a Chance to Outsiders

(p. 7) Traditionally male industries have made a comeback. The three fastest-growing sectors since December 2016 have been the three that are most male-dominated: mining, construction, and transportation and utilities. Yet in the same period women’s employment has increased more. It turns out that women are moving into these male-dominated fields, as well as a few others.
. . .
The faster employment growth for women was concentrated in sectors that are at least two-thirds male. In these sectors, women’s employment rose 5.0 percent, versus 3.0 percent for men. Women’s employment grew more than 10 percent in construction, mining, and transportation and utilities.
. . .
“In a tight labor market, firms give workers a chance they would not otherwise consider,” said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “But the tight labor market could facilitate longer-term change if it demonstrates to firms that they should be more open to women in previously male-dominated areas.”
This growth in women’s employment in male-dominated industries is not just about desk jobs. Within male-dominated industries, the fastest growth for women has been at the building site and on the factory floor, rather than in the accounting office.

For the full commentary, see:
Jed Kolko and Claire Cain Miller. “As Labor Market Tightens, Gender Lines Blur.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sunday, Dec. 16, 2018): 7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 14, 2018, and has the title “As Labor Market Tightens, Women Are Moving Into Male-Dominated Jobs.”)

Luis Locay Offers Advance Praise for Openness to Creative Destruction

Openness to Creative Destruction is first and foremost a great read. Much of the book is devoted to skillfully chosen accounts of usually successful, but occasionally unsuccessful, entrepreneurs to illustrate the author’s arguments. At times these accounts made me feel like I was reading a series of short adventure stories. This use of examples to make the argument for the central role of the creative entrepreneur in generating innovation, and the benefits that can accrue to society from creative destruction, makes the book very accessible to the intelligent layman or beginning student, while its serious ideas will be of interest to professional economists and sophisticated policymakers. The theoretician of entrepreneurship or innovation will find it a one-stop source of real-world examples. I plan to make it required reading in my growth and industrial organization classes.

Luis Locay, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Miami.

Locay’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.

Last Blockbuster Store Flourishes

(p. B3) The second-to-last Blockbuster, a squat blue-and-yellow slab wedged next to a real estate agency in Western Australia, will stop renting videos on Thursday and shut down for good at the end of the month. Two stores in Alaska, part of the final group of Blockbuster outlets in the United States, closed in July.
That will make the Blockbuster in Bend, Ore., one of a kind: a corporate remnant, just off the highway, near a cannabis retailer and a pet cremation service.
. . .
Some Tower Records stores still thrive in Japan long after their parent company declared bankruptcy and closed all of its American stores. There is a Howard Johnson’s in Lake George, N.Y., that is the lone survivor of what was once the country’s largest restaurant chain.
Such holdouts have bucked the norm in the retail and restaurant industries, which have shed stores by the hundreds in recent years.
. . .
The Bend store became a Blockbuster franchise in 2000. It has about 4,000 active accounts and signs up a few fresh ones each day, Ms. Harding said. Some of the new customers are tourists who have traveled hours out of their way to stop in.
. . .
One possible explanation for the store’s long life: Bend is in a region that the city’s mayor, Sally Russell, describes as having “huge expanses with really small communities” that often do not have easy access to the high-speed internet necessary for content streaming.
Many residents of outlying areas stop at Blockbuster during their weekly trips to town to run errands, drawn in part by the store’s seven-day rental policy, Ms. Russell said, adding that the store’s last-in-the-world status could even give it a lift.
“It’s like with old vinyl, and how everyone wants to have turntables again,” she said. “We get to a place where something out of date comes back in — there’s definitely interest in keeping this almost-extinct way of enjoying movies alive.”

For the full story, see:
Tiffany Hsu. “A 9,000-Store Chain Has Closed 8,999. How Does That Work?” The New York Times (Thursday, March 7, 2019): B3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 6, 2019, and has the title “The World’s Last Blockbuster Has No Plans to Close.”)

Those Who Don’t Like High-Tech Can Buy Low-Tech

(p. A1) Dan Dolar was ready to take a break from the distractions of his smartphone. So he bought another phone.
The 47-year-old IT worker, who lives in Manteca, Calif., now typically carries his new 3.8-inch Palm “companion device” around with him on weekends, leaving his bigger Samsung Galaxy Note 9 at home.
The new gadget helps when he’s “living that dad life,” he said, while reducing the potential distractions. Without his big smartphone, he said, “I’m not compelled to get that dopamine rush.”
Smartphone-fatigued consumers are renegotiating their relationships with their devices. A growing contingent is embracing a new crop of mini-(p. A13)malist phones, priced around $300 to $350, to wean themselves off premium models that keep them constantly connected.
Some are concerned that social media-usage is robbing them of interpersonal connections and making them less attentive. Others are annoyed by recent data privacy scandals at large internet and social-media companies–or they want the simple practicality of carrying a smaller phone.

For the full story, see:
Sarah Krouse. “One Solution for Smartphone Addicts–Another Phone.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 12, 2019): A1 & A13.
(Note: the online version has the date March 11, 2019, and has the title “Smartphone Addicts’ New Tactic to Break Their Habit: Buy a Second Phone.”)

Innovative Entrepreneurs Improve Life for All

(p. A19) In a free-market system, society’s most productive members tend to facilitate upward mobility for all of us, not just for themselves. And not only through their philanthropy.
Oil refining made the Rockefellers rich, but in the process, they made oil products much cheaper and thus more widely available to the poor. Prior to Standard Oil, whale oil and candles were a luxury that only the wealthy could afford. The rest had to go to bed early to save money, explains Burton Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College. “By the 1870s, with the drop in the price of kerosene, middle- and working-class people all over the nation could afford the one cent an hour that it cost to light their homes at night. Working and reading became after-dark activities new to most Americans.”
Rockefeller got rich and America got more productive. Henry Ford did something similar in auto manufacturing, as did Sam Walton of Walmart fame with respect to big-box discount stores. Bill Gates has done more for humanity creating his computer-software fortune than he will ever do giving it away through his foundation. Wealth creation plays a far bigger role than philanthropy or government transfer programs in improving our standard of living, something that those forever trying to “stick it to the rich” either don’t understand or choose to ignore out of political expedience.

For the full commentary, see:
Jason L. Riley. “UPWARD MOBILITY; How a Billionaire Spends His Money Is His Own Business; Progressives are more interested in scapegoating the wealthy than they are in relieving poverty.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019): A19.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 29, 2019.)

Aloysius Siow Offers Advance Praise for Openness to Creative Destruction

Art revives the lost art of business history in the tradition of Alfred Chandler to write a definitive history of American entrepreneurship. He uses economic theories to organize his encyclopedic knowledge of entrepreneurial success stories. Unlike books by successful entrepreneurs which recount why they personally succeeded, Art looks for themes which are common to these success stories. He provides modest policy suggestions to improve the environment for these entrepreneurs to thrive.

Aloysius Siow, Professor of Economics, University of Toronto.

Siow’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.

Small Spanish Firms Less Likely to Hire with Higher Minimum Wage

(p. B1) MADRID — As Spain grapples with a turbulent political crisis, one of Europe’s last Socialist governments may soon fall amid the rise of a new nationalism in the country. But whatever the outcome, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is leaving behind a signature legacy: a record increase in the minimum wage.
The 22 percent rise that took effect in January, to 1,050 euros (about $1,200) a month, is the largest in Spain in 40 years. Yet the move has ignited a debate over whether requiring employers to pay more of a living wage is a social watershed, or a risky attempt at economic engineering.
. . .
(p. B4) Over 95 percent of businesses in Spain are small and medium-size firms, many of which operate with thin margins, according to Celia Ferrero, the vice president of the National Federation of Self-Employed Workers.
“You won’t find people disputing that higher wages are needed,” said Ms. Ferrero, whose organization represents many smaller businesses. “The question is whether firms can afford it. Higher wages and social security taxes simply make it more expensive for employers to hire or maintain staffers.”
“It’s not that they don’t want to pay; they literally can’t,” she added.
Lucio Montero, the owner of General Events, which makes booths and backdrops for firms displaying wares at big conventions, employs eight workers on the outskirts of Madrid. He pays each €1,400 a month.
The higher minimum wage and increased social security charges will put upward pressure on his labor bill and already thin margins, he said. It is a cost that he can ill afford.
“I would need to think twice about hiring more people,” said Mr. Montero, walking around his tiny, sawdust-covered factory floor.

For the full story, see:
Liz Alderman. “Spain’s Minimum Wage Has Surged. So Has Debate.” The New York Times (Friday, March 8, 2019): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 7, 2019, and has the title “Spain’s Minimum Wage Just Jumped. The Debate Is Continuing.”)