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I mentioned in a previous post that The Economist appears to lose all rationality when one specific topic is broached. The writer of the magazine’s April 20 newsletter “The World in Brief” gave another illustration in the section “The Day Ahead”: he could not mention the 25th anniversary of the horrible Columbine school massacre without doing .. MORE
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Revealed Preference
In recent years, there has been a large outflow of residents from California and New York to places such as Texas and Florida. The concept of “revealed preference” suggests that these fast growing states might be the best places to live. But there are actually two ways of thinking about the “best place”: 1. The .. MORE
Economics of Crime
This is the second in my series of posts on the social costs of drug prohibition. You can read the first post here. In 1878, Congress passed Title 18 U.S.C. §1385, commonly known as the Posse Comitatus Act, to address the question of using the military for the purposes of civilian law enforcement. Previous uses .. MORE
Education
A student group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest issued a statement quoted by the Wall Street Journal (“New York Mayor Says Conflict at Columbia Must End as Police Amass Nearby,” April 30, 2024): “Do not incite another Kent or Jackson State by bringing soldiers and police officers with weapons to our campus,” the group said, .. MORE
Economic History
Last month, I posted on some of the intellectual contributions of economic and business historian Robert Hessen, who died on April 15. At the time, I didn’t have access to his contribution to Ayn Rand’s book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. But I got a copy from the library and found his essay. It’s titled, “The .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Warning: There will be spoilers in this post for the plot of Dune, including plot points from the second book that will serve as the basis for the as-yet unmade third movie. The recently released Dune: Part 2 has been a big box-office success, as was the first movie. These two movies were based on .. MORE
Political Economy
Perhaps as a sequel of mankind’s long tribal history, people apparently need scapegoats to shed the weight of sins and responsibilities from their shoulders. In democratic countries, “unelected officials” figure among the favorite scapegoats. It is an easy path to follow under the sun of simple beliefs, and I confess I once found it tempting. .. MORE
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Bloggers David Henderson, Alberto Mingardi, Scott Sumner, Pierre Lemieux, Kevin Corcoran, and guests write on topical economics of interest to them, illuminating subjects from politics and finance, to recent films and cultural observations, to history and literature.
Browse our archive of posts by author last nameBooks: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Years ago, I read Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus. In the book, Yunus describes the origins and purpose of the Grameen Bank. This bank specializes in offering small loans to people in poverty to help them begin to attain self-sufficiency. This isn’t a charitable organization – .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Public Goods differ from private goods in that they are non-rivalrous in consumption and nonexcludable. If I watch a fireworks show, it doesn’t reduce the amount of “fireworks show” my neighbor can enjoy. If I’m going to put on a fireworks show, I can’t prevent non-payers from watching my bombs bursting in air. Since public .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Political and moral philosophy are related to economics, and even less stealthily to the older political economy. The economist cannot recommend a government policy without making or accepting a value judgment consistent with who is going to be helped and who will be harmed. At least, he must believe that the policy falls within the .. MORE
Ludwig von Mises The works of Ludwig von Mises and James M. Buchanan reflect the best of the classical liberal intellectual tradition. Given the centenary of the publication of Mises’ Socialism,1 and since 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of the passing of Buchanan, it seems an excellent time to remember their contributions. Both defend methodological .. MORE
A Book Review of Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose World Wars, by Alan Bollard.1 Most economists go through their lives wondering if any of their work has had an effect on the world beyond academe. The seven economists that Alan Bollard writes about in Economists at War probably .. MORE
One main reason why rational expectations macroeconomics, in particular its implication that the Phillips Curve for anticipated changes in money is vertical even in the short run, caught on was the allegation that the incumbent Keynesian tradition had failed to either control or explain high inflation. “Failed to control,” I suppose, is true, though the .. MORE
The story of how I became an economist is its own odyssey: I started college as an English major, intending to hone my creative writing skills, and hopefully to drop out after I wrote the first book of an extremely long, best-selling fantasy epic. The winds of fate blew in other directions and I found .. MORE
I do not see any contradiction in thinking that all the value of a firm is created by the workers, that all "surplus" should go to workers, profits of owners ought to be zero [I..
Thomas L Hutcheson, May 1