News Room

As President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden wage a ferocious advertising campaign focused on a half-dozen battleground states, ground zero this year is a handful of crucial television markets in Florida, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

If you had to teach remotely and money were no object, what kind of home studio would you build? You might find inspiration atop a Tennessee garage. That’s where a business school professor commandeered his kids’ playroom and spent more than $25,000 on audio and video gear to create a state-of-the-art Zoom classroom for the pandemic era.

As Gov. Mike Parson campaigns across Missouri to defend his widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and asks voters to grant him a full term, he has promoted an eye-catching statistic that suggests his administration has tamed the deadly virus. “In April, when our death rate was at 8 percent – close to 8 percent – today, it is at 0.7,” Parson said at last Friday’s gubernatorial debate. He also cited the data while speaking to reporters last week.

The most celebrated theory in all of economics, the so-called First Welfare Theorem, says that, provided there is perfect competition and perfect information, free markets allocate resources resources efficiently. In other words, it says the father of economics Adam Smith was right, that the “invisible hand” of the market works in the best interest of society. Often the conditions are not met, and much of modern economics is about how to improve the otherwise suboptimal outcomes delivered by unfettered markets.