Three Americans shared the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics “for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory.” They owe an intellectual debt to Friedrich Hayek. His 1945 American Economic Review article, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” focused on the distribution of knowledge and the difficulty of coordinating behavior from a central location. While […]

I recently met with an intelligent and highly successful young man deeply involved with our community. Most of those with whom he deals are part of young families, many having arrived here in the past few years, just as Bozeman was booming. He began our conversation with this statement, “I’m no economist, but I think […]

Congratulations to Al Gore on winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. Mr. Gore asserts climate change is a moral and spiritual issue. In order to make responsible decisions on these dimensions, Mr. Gore’s next mission should be to focus on the tradeoffs his policy choices necessarily imply. I suggest when […]

I am the president of American Bank and a banking veteran with more than 35 years of experience. American Bank is a nationally recognized high performing bank. We do what we do very well, emphasizing prudent real estate lending. While our largest market is Montana, we are very active in Hawaii, Idaho and North Carolina. […]

Economists have no monopoly on tools explaining the pathologies that afflict organizations. However, their approach offers some illuminating insights. Here’s one—within an organization decisions are made on the basis of information and incentives faced by the decision maker. Consider business practices that alienate customers and clients. Surely no business with a general clientele, such as […]