EconLog Archive
Economics and Culture
The Hyperbole of Backlash
Tyler tries to cure my immigration backlash confusion, but not to my satisfaction. The overarching flaw: He equivocates between two different versions of “backlash to immigration.” Version 1: Letting in more immigrants leads to more resistance to immigration. Version 2: Letting in more immigrants leads to so much resistance to immigration that the total stock .. MORE
Political Economy
Cleveland Rocks?
I don’t know about you, but my feeds are dominated by the RNC in Cleveland this week…I’m not following the circus closely at all…But I do think this is an opportune time to reflect on what economics can tell us about politics more generally… Politics, like markets, is a means of allocating resources, according to .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
A Badly Misleading Title
I’m back from my 18-day trip to my cottage in Canada and so, once again, I will be posting almost daily. I hate many things: one of them is price controls and another is badly misleading titles. Three Felonies a Day is a case in point. Written by Harvey A. Silverglate, with a Foreword by .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
Free, good and happy
Tyler recently linked to a study that used data on happiness in 22 OECD countries (all majority white). Only 6 countries scored above 8.00 in the happiness survey: Denmark: 8.35 USA: 8.32 New Zealand: 8.22 Australia: 8:05 Switzerland: 8.01 Finland: 8.01 My immediate reaction was to think about our populist candidates, Sanders and Trump. Sanders .. MORE
Economics of Education
7th Grade: The Homeschooling Experience
My sons and I have finished our first year of homeschooling. It was a great success by all vital measures. My two students were vocally much happier than they were in regular school. They also learned vastly more, covering over two years of advanced math in a single year. Our most impressive achievement: My 13-year-old .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Uncertain about uncertainty
I’ve always been a bit skeptical when people point to “uncertainty” as the cause of economic distress. High unemployment? Uncertainty about ObamaCare! More often, the problem is bad monetary policy, and the only “uncertainty” is just how much NGDP instability the central bank will tolerate. And yet I don’t want to be dogmatic, it seems .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Slavery in the Age of Em
Robin Hanson: Bryan Caplan made strong, and to me incredible, claims that econ consensus predicts all ems would be fully slaves with no human personality. As he won’t explain his reasoning, but just says to read the slavery literature, I’ve done a quick lit review, which I now summarize, and then apply quickly to the .. MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Zachary David on NGDP futures targeting
Jim S. directed me to a Zachary David post criticizing my NGDP futures targeting proposal. He links to my Mercatus paper on the plan, but seems to ignore its contents. Most of the objections that he raised are answered in the Mercatus paper. He may not agree with my arguments, but he should have at .. MORE
Behavioral Economics
Observations from Europe
Just got back from a month in Europe, where I was a visiting professor at the University of Münster, teaching a short course in Advanced Public Choice. Along the way, we drove to London for the Institute of Economic Affairs THINK conference, and to Heidelberg to address European Students from Liberty. Overall, a month of .. MORE
Economic Growth
Decentralization in Turkey
I’ve always been a fan of Swiss-style decentralization. The following is from an Economist article on Turkey: Countries such as India and China have witnessed similar urban explosions, but Turkish cities stand out for also offering an impressive quality of life. The proportion of Turks living in cities has swollen from about half the population .. MORE
Macroeconomics
The costs of inflation and recession
Noah Smith has a good post on the costs of inflation and recession, but I don’t quite agree with this: Many people seem to think that inflation and recession are equal, symmetric dangers. This is implicit in the idea of nominal GDP (NGDP) targeting, which is promoted by economists like Scott Sumner at George Mason .. MORE
Economic Education
Midweek Musings
Until this week, I hadn’t heard of Pokemon Go (I know, I know…But I was on vacation last week.) But apparently, not only is everyone playing it, it’s also “everything that is wrong with global capitalism.” Seriously? The analogy to the bowling alley, for example, I find weak. I doubt all bowling alleys and bowling-related .. MORE
Macroeconomics
The Irish miracle
There’s been a lot of recent discussion of the new GDP statistics out of Ireland, which show 2015 RGDP growth of 26.3% and NGDP growth of 32.4%. Almost everyone agrees that the data is somewhat fishy, but it’s not clear whether that means “wrong” or “accurate but misleading”. Based in what I’ve read, I vote .. MORE
Austrian Economics
Hayek’s Views on Emergence
In an interesting new paper, my colleague Paul Lewis discusses the origins of Hayek’s views on emergence in his work on theoretical psychology and The Sensory Order. Hayek published The Sensory Order in 1952, but he developed the core ideas in the book very early in his career while studying law, and reading economics and .. MORE
Energy, Environment, Resources
Don’t Worry About Canada Becoming a ‘Petrostate’
But imagine that Canada’s oil production grows so much that it becomes as important to Canada as oil is to Saudi Arabia. Is that bad? No. First, Canada is a vibrant democracy with competitive political parties and a fair amount of civil and economic freedom. Not so Saudi Arabia. Second, although many people, including Smith, .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Great Moments in Sunk Cost
The third book I finished on my vacation at my cottage in Canada is Trudeau Revealed by David Somerville, BMG Publishing, 1978. It’s surprisingly good, in that the author quotes extensively from Pierre Trudeau’s writings in the 1950s and 1960s, and lets the reader make his own conclusions. The one area where Somerville is off .. MORE
Uncategorized
The Signs of Signaling
How can you empirically distinguish between human capital and signaling? In this talk, I explore not only the basics of the issue, but the subtleties.
Economic and Political Philosophy
Utilitarianism as a lodestar (Constructive Criticism for Caplan)
I’m happy to see that Bryan Caplan is planning a new book on poverty, as his forthcoming book on education already looks like it will be a classic. He asked for “constructive criticism” in a recent blog post, so I’ll take a stab at it. My basic suggestion is that we need to be very, .. MORE
Liberty
Media Freedom, Markets, and Political Change
When I watched the video of Philando Castile die from gunshot wounds inflicted by a police officer in the course of a routine traffic stop, a deep sickness swept over me. Sadly, this feeling was not the result of a sudden realisation that police violence was a problem, particularly against black members of our communities. .. MORE
Free Markets
Efficiency is not just a good idea, it’s the only ethical policy
Here’s Neil Irwin of the NYT, expressing some rather unoriginal views that you might see in 100 other media outlets: What lesson should a card-carrying member of the economic elite take from the success of Donald J. Trump, and British voters’ decision to leave the European Union? Voters in large numbers have been rejecting much .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
All the Shah’s Men
On my summer vacation, I read more books and fewer blogs. The first book I’ve read this vacation is Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. It’s excellent. I saw Kinzer speak at a Future of Freedom Foundation event in northern Virginia in 2008. I spoke .. MORE