EconLog Archive
Cost-benefit Analysis
Economists are Less Selfish than the Average Person
There are numerous stereotypes about economists. Two are common. The first is that all we think about and study is money. The second is that economists are more selfish than the average person. Both stereotypes are wrong. My wife, who is not herself an economist but has been married to one for almost forty-one years, .. MORE
Free Markets
That’s the Style: Markets and Modernism
Less is more — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Less is a bore — Robert Venturi In a recent post, Alex Tabarrok discussed the problem of modern architecture. Why do architects no longer produce the sort of beautiful old buildings that we see in many European cities? Alex cites an article by Samuel Hughes, which .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Libertarian Reciprocity
There are a wide range of arguments for what makes a state legitimate, or what confers authority on a state in such a way as to create a duty to obey. There is one class of argument I’ve always found unsatisfying, and recently while pondering it I realized why it always seemed to fall short .. MORE
Public Choice Theory
Transfers Rather Than Transactions: Rent-Seeking Is Costly
In 1967, Gordon Tullock published a paper titled “The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft” that described the mechanics of what Anne O. Krueger would later call “the rent-seeking society.” Rent-seeking might seem a little abstract, but if you understand why robbery makes the world worse off, on net, then you understand why the .. MORE
Foreign Policy
The Fight for Memorial Day
You might think this article comes a little late since it’s being published after Memorial Day. But now that Memorial Day has come and gone, it’s worth thinking about what it represents and why the debate about Memorial Day is so crucial. “Debate,” you might say. “What debate?” Yes, there is a debate. On .. MORE
Labor Market
Economic Theory and Reality
Kevin Corcoran recently did a post discussing the distinction between being wrong in theory and wrong in fact. Here I am interested in another situation, the case where theory matches reality quite closely, but people are reluctant to accept the implications of that fact. For instance, basic economic theory suggests that higher tax rates ought .. MORE
Economic Growth
Brigadoon versus the Hockey Stick
I happened to wake up in the middle of the night last week and turned on Turner Movie Classics (TCM). Playing at the time was the 1954 movie Brigadoon. I’d heard about it but never seen it. It’s about 2 guys on a hunting trip to Scotland who discover a place in mid-18th century Scotland .. MORE
Business Economics
Cell Phones and Competition
Here’s a hot shopping tip that I suspect most readers won’t be able to take advantage of – at the moment, Apple is discounting the iPhone in China. But I don’t bring that up because I’m actually hoping to influence anyone’s shopping behavior. I find it noteworthy for other reasons. It may seem odd that .. MORE
Economics of Crime
Conclusions and Consequences Abroad
Consequences of the War on Drugs™ Abroad In 1996, Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control Chuck Grassley testified that a recent poll revealed that eighty percent of Americans viewed as their primary foreign policy concern the stopping of illegal drugs being trafficked into the United States. The Senator was responding to his own concerns that .. MORE
International Trade
Some Call it Treason
It has been discouraging to see that the lessons learned in the first half of the 20th century have now been forgotten, as nationalism is on the rise in many regions. And now we are seeing a repeat of the McCarthyism of the early 1950s. Here’s Foreign Policy: Not so long ago, consultancies and other .. MORE
Foreign Policy
Highlights of My Weekly Reading for May 26, 2024
From the River to the Sea–One State by Warren Coats, Warren’s Space, May 22, 2024. Excerpt: The recent attack and counterattack were continuations of 70 years of unresolved relations between the areas [sic] Palestinian and Jewish residents. Netanyahu remains adamantly against revising the Two State Solution (Oslo Accord) future and Saudi Arabia is equally insistent on .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Asimov and Tolkein – Intelligence vs Wisdom
I once posted that I found John Rawls’ argument that it’s unjust to benefit from your natural abilities to be inferior to ideas found in J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings: More than anything, this kind of attitude reminds me of what Boromir says to Frodo when attempting to take the Ring .. MORE
Taxation
The Pink Tax Myth
Back in 2019, Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison tweeted: Haircuts for women cost more than those for men. Also health care, car repairs, etc. That’s reality for the awesome @AOC and every other woman. It’s morally wrong and it threatens the economic security of women and everyone who depends on her income. It’s the “pink .. MORE
Liberty
The Guru Whom Politicos in the West Are Scared of
A report from the Financial Times’s Beijing correspondent should leave everybody in the Western world laughing out loud (and the Chinese too if they were allowed to). It is only slightly exaggerated to say that the rulers of Western countries, and the US government at the first rank, have been dead scared of the Chinese .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
Does Scottish Poverty Cause Drug Use?
A few months back, The Economist had an article on the drug problem in Scotland. This statistic caught my eye: Scots in the poorest areas are 16 times more likely to die a drug-related death than those in the richest places. The difference between the overdose death rates for the rich and poor is too .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
A Free Market in Organ Donations: When Pigs Fly
Who’d have thunk it? Physicians have actually transferred a kidney from a pig to a human being, and the operation appears to have been a success (not for the pig; for the person!). The patient was helped by this transplant and her body did not reject the kidney she received as was initially feared. One .. MORE
Labor Market
Wrong In Theory Is Worse Than Wrong In Fact
Recently, Tucker Carlson has committed the all-too-common mistake of suggesting that evolution by natural selection is an unproven idea, because evolution is merely a “theory.” As he put it on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “Darwin’s theory’s totally unproven – that’s why it’s still a theory, almost two hundred years later.” This is an elementary misunderstanding of .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Racial Bias in Drug Enforcement
In her book The New Jim Crow (Alexander, 2010 ), Michelle Alexander makes the claim that while overt discrimination based on race is no longer socially acceptable, discrimination against those convicted of a crime is. She notes that while crime rates in America are roughly equal with those of other Western nations, incarceration rates have .. MORE
Economic Growth
How Did We Get Good Growth in the 1950s Despite High Marginal Tax Rates?
In my latest OLLI talk, “Economic Growth: Crucial but Uncertain,” which I posted and talked about on Substack, I didn’t discuss one question that one of the participants asked. I didn’t think to do so because John, the A/V guy, made certain cuts and, for some reason, that question and my answer aren’t on .. MORE
Business Economics
Tom Hazlett on the TikTok Ban
In my view, the best writer on economics today is Tom Hazlett. He has a way with words. And good writing necessarily requires good thinking. Tom recently had a recent post on the TikTok ban that was so good that I didn’t want to post it as one of many in Sunday my weekly reading .. MORE
Finance
Fear of Financial Instability
The consensus view is that the Great Recession of 2008-09 was caused by financial instability. I believe that view is wrong, and wrote an entire book arguing that it was tight money that caused the Great Recession. A recent Bloomberg article perfectly illustrates why it’s important to understand what went wrong in 2008: The FSOC .. MORE