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Economics of Crime

Freedom of Speech: True and False

By David Henderson | Dec 27, 2013

But, as a number of commentators (including conservatives) have pointed out, the First Amendment is irrelevant to the Duck Dynasty imbroglio for a very different reason. While constitutional protections for speech certainly extend to bigots, they protect only against government actions, not sanctions by employers. There is no inalienable right to be on A&E. This .. MORE

Labor Market

Walter Oi, RIP

By David Henderson | Dec 26, 2013

If you are an American male under age 66, you should take a moment and give thanks to economist Walter Oi, who died on Christmas eve. Why? Because he helped contribute to ending military conscription. Conscription ended on June 30, 1973. Until then, American men between age 18 and 26 were subject to it and .. MORE

Growth: Consequences

Climate Stabilizers: How Do People Adjust?

By Art Carden | Dec 26, 2013

I just read Ronald Bailey’s article “Ugly Climate Models” to which co-blogger David Henderson linked below. From what I can gather, it looks like it’s clear that the world is getting hotter and that human activity is contributing to it. Like David Friedman, I’m not convinced that it’s going to be unambiguously bad. I’ve been .. MORE

Economic and Political Philosophy

The Economics of Christmas: An Addendum

By David Henderson | Dec 25, 2013

John Carney, over at CNBC, has a hilarious parody of some of the leading economics blogs. The topic: the economics of Christmas. I can’t top it, but here is an addendum. Brad DeLong, Grasping Reality, “Worst Person in the World” Santa Claus has not spoken out against income inequality. That makes him today’s “worst person .. MORE

Energy, Environment, Resources

More Likely Than Not? This is Scientific?

By David Henderson | Dec 24, 2013

UPDATE BELOW 2nd UPDATE BELOW Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey, in the January 2014 issue of Reason, digs into how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deals with the fact that the globe has not warmed for the past 15 years despite the fact that the various models had predicted global warming. I’ll leave .. MORE

Price Theory

A Literary Theoretical Treatment of Prices

By Bart Wilson | Dec 24, 2013

Let’s see how far we can take the thesis that prices are like words, not by further deconstructing how individual words work, but by considering how a collection of words works in the discourse of a novel. I have never studied literary analysis, so M.M. Bakhtin, a Russian literary theorist, will do the heavy lifting. .. MORE

Behavioral Economics

Farewell to Bart Wilson, For Now

By Bryan Caplan | Dec 24, 2013

Guest blogger Bart Wilson is signing off, for now.  He’s been one of my favorite experimental economists for the last decade, and I’ve been pleased to see him bring his unique perspective to EconLog over the past month.  Out of all Bart’s posts, “The Error of Utilitarian Behavioral Economics” is probably my favorite.  If poor .. MORE

Microeconomics

Brace Yourselves. The In-Laws are Coming, or, How to Ruin Christmas

By Art Carden | Dec 23, 2013

Brace Yourselves. The In-Laws are coming. With that in mind, here are a few things from my archive that you might wish to discuss in between bouts of Peace on Earth and Goodwill to Men this Christmas. 1. Christmas and Consumption (Mises.org, 12/25/2007). I borrow from Steven Landsburg’s classic article (among other sources) and defend .. MORE

Uncategorized

Why I love markets – and not just technology

By Alberto Mingardi | Dec 23, 2013

I’ve taken the picture above because it explains why I love markets. Sorry if the quality is so-so: I am an even worse photographer than a writer. What you see there is a nice machine I have found in a FedEx shop in the DC area. I am on travel, and I needed to print .. MORE

Cross-country Comparisons

How to Work in France

By Bryan Caplan | Dec 23, 2013

From the Christmas newsletter of a good friend of mine who just got a post-doc in France.  Reprinted with his permission. Names omitted to hinder bureaucratic retaliation. In early March I got accepted for a position in [city redacted] France, and regardless of any considerations of career path and so forth, that was that; when .. MORE

Income Distribution

How the Welfare State Promotes Nativism

By David Henderson | Dec 22, 2013

Two of the best writers in economics, and among the best thinkers, are Alan Blinder and his mentor, Robert Solow. They seem to share a common view of justice. It’s a distributive view whereby the government takes from the well-to-do and gives to the poor and near poor. In other words, their view of justice .. MORE

Money and Inflation

A New Gig: DepositAccounts.com

By Art Carden | Dec 21, 2013

Writing op-eds and blogging is a nice way to have a few nice things and to make sure the bills stay paid. Forbes has obviously been great for me, and I’ve written several pieces for the Washington Examiner. I’ve just started a new gig contributing to DepositAccounts.com. My first contribution offers an illustration of the .. MORE

Uncategorized

Why I Read Paul Krugman

By David Henderson | Dec 20, 2013

Two commenters on a post I did recently on Paul Krugman, MingoV and Seth, want to know why I read Paul Krugman as frequently as I do. Specifically, MingoV wrote: Why do economists concern themselves with Krugman’s recent writings? His writings often are blatantly biased towards the left. When they aren’t blatantly biased, they’re often .. MORE

Behavioral Economics

Some Explanations for the Curious Absence of Socially Conservative Economics

By Bryan Caplan | Dec 20, 2013

Ross Douthat provides an array of explanations for the curious absence of socially conservative economics.  His top stories: 1. There’s more socially conservative economics than meets the eye. The first is that social conservatives actually do make such arguments, even if the phrase “negative externalities” isn’t deployed with quite the frequency Caplan would like… Indeed, .. MORE

Central Planning

Economics in One Meme: Growing Again

By Art Carden | Dec 20, 2013

At the beginning of 2012, I created a Facebook page called “Economics in One Meme.” It went dormant for most of the Fall because the meme creator I was using (Quickmeme) got banned from Reddit and then changed its format pretty considerably. After dragging my feet (and after getting through the semester) I created an .. MORE

Economic Growth

Consuming Resources Isn’t Success: On Charity and Development Aid

By Art Carden | Dec 19, 2013

Earlier today, I read an article trumpeting the “success” of a charity drive that received a lot of donations and that raised a lot of money. I’m not going to link to the article because I don’t want to single out one particular endeavor, but I’m sure you can find a ton of examples of .. MORE

Economics of Health Care

DeMuth on Obamacare

By Alberto Mingardi | Dec 19, 2013

Chris DeMuth has an excellent article on Obamacare in the last issue of The Weekly Standard. DeMuth points out that the new American mandatory insurance system has shortcomings that are not necessarily related to the idea of mandatory insurance – as instead with the bureaucratic superfetations of such a system engendered by the way the .. MORE

Macroeconomics

Higher Is Not Down

By David Henderson | Dec 18, 2013

In a front-page report in the Wall Street Journal on low inflation in the United States (where the inflation rate for the past 12 months was only 1.2%) and in the euro zone (where it was only 0.9%), the authors, Sudeep Reddy, Brian Blackstone, and Jason Douglas, write: The downward pressure on prices presents a .. MORE

Economic and Political Philosophy

What Are Cowenian Rights?

By Bryan Caplan | Dec 18, 2013

Negative theology tells us what God is not, but refuses to say what God is.  In his post on “The Politics of Science Fiction,” Tyler Cowen embraces Negative Political Philosophy.  He tells us what rights we don’t have, but remains silent about his actual position: Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The reality is that when it comes .. MORE

Political Economy

How Big of a Deal Is Social Security?

By Bryan Caplan | Dec 18, 2013

Karl Smith of Modeled Behavior has moved to DC, and yesterday he honored the GMU lunch with what will hopefully be the first of many visits.  During lunch, I asked Karl about a puzzling-to-me line from his latest post: Social Security never was that big of deal. Lots of people get this and I’ll just .. MORE

Macroeconomics

Interest is Special, Says Special Interest

By Art Carden | Dec 17, 2013

Regular readers of EconLog know that I, like Bryan Caplan, try to follow Rolf Dobelli’s advice and Avoid News. Here’s one reason why. Scan the headlines and look for claims about programs that are Obviously Good Ideas, according to Some Source. Too often, articles like these quote a member of a special interest group claiming .. MORE