EconLog Archive
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Is Obama’s Semi-Amnesty for Real?
I don’t just think that immigration restrictions are bad policy; I think they’re a grotesque crime against humanity – with all that implies. Given this starting point, Obama’s semi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants sounds like the best U.S. political news of the 21st-century. I can’t remember the last time any American policy .. MORE
Public Choice Theory
Friday Night Video: Liberty as Collateral Damage
This is from a talk I gave on my book, The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey, less than 3 months after 9/11. HT to Jim Cardoza.
Business Economics
Merit, Ethics, and Reward
I’ve enjoyed the back and forth between co-blogger Bryan Caplan and Trevor Burrus. I’m starting to think that a good line for Vizzini to have used in “The Princess Bride,” besides “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” something that JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Bush I, Bush II, and Obama failed to heed, is .. MORE
Political Economy
Exit and Voice in the Workplace
Elizabeth Anderson writes, I’m arguing that the case for workplace democracy and other democratic constraints on employers is the same as the case for democracy anywhere: it’s better for securing the freedom and personal independence of the governed than the authoritarian alternative. Pointer from Tyler Cowen. Read the whole thing. She seems to me to .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Burrus and Merit: Final Thoughts
Trevor Burrus continues our previous exchange on merit and liberty (see here, here, here, and here for previous installments). Trevor misses one of my key points here: Bryan asks, if the question of merit is incidental to the case for free markets, then “[d]oesn’t the same hold for prosperity, tolerance, culture, and all the other .. MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Awaiting Comments from Scott Sumner
Two papers on Milton Friedman’s monetarism (both in the same pdf), one from Jerry Jordan and one from Allan Meltzer. They come from a 2010 symposium sponsored by the LIberty Fund and the Pacific Research Institute, and they are reproduced by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. I will excerpt from the Meltzer paper. But first, let me .. MORE
International Trade
Tear Down These Walls
My article, “Tear Down These Walls,” based on my blog post of the same name, is now out in The Freeman. One highlight: Immigration reform would dwarf any other measure economists have considered to help people in poor countries. Take microcredit, the lending of small amounts to small businesses. In his recent book, Borderless Economics, .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
Does Portugal Show the Signaling Model Is Wrong?
Tyler mischievously taunts me on Twitter: Good thing the Portuguese saved all those resources which Sweden wasted on signaling. On MR he adds: In 2009, only 30 percent of Portuguese adults had completed high school or its equivalent, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Which got me wondering. What exactly .. MORE
Business Economics
Wal-Mart’s Positive Effects
Devin G. Pope and Jaren C. Pope have recently had a Working Paper published by NBER. It’s #18111 (May 2012) and it’s cleverly titled, “When Walmart Comes to Town: Always Low Housing Prices? Always?” Here’s an ungated version. In it, they examine empirically the effect of arrival of new Walmart stores on the prices of .. MORE
Politics and Economics
The Big Gulp Ban
Will Wilkinson writes, I’ve often suspected that paternalists like Mr Noah generally cares more about sending “a powerful message of social disapproval” than about the actual effects of paternalistic policy on welfare. It’s worth remembering that liberalism is, at its roots, a philosophy of mutual disarmament in the face of intractable disagreement, and that its .. MORE
Central Planning
Elinor Ostrom, RIP
As many bloggers have noted, Elinor Ostrom, who co-won the Nobel Prize in economics, died today of cancer. Here’s the post I wrote after she won the prize, along with Oliver Williamson. And here are two paragraphs from my Wall Street Journal that ran the day after she won: Based on her work, Ms. Ostrom .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Trevor Burrus, I Want to Convert You to Meritocracy
The meritorious Trevor Burrus responds to my defense of merit against his critique. Though he’s not crying uncle, Trevor concedes a key point: Bryan argues that “the correlation between market success and merit is imperfect, [but] still fairly high.” Great success can come to the lucky and lazy, but they tend to be the exceptions .. MORE
Economics and Culture
Toga! Toga!
“Excellent.” That’s what Tyler calls Noah Smith’s effort to salvage the human capital model. Noah’s story: Students learn lots of useful job skills outside of class by socializing together. [U]seful skills, which you mostly learn on the job, are not the only valuable form of human capital. There are three extremely important forms of human .. MORE
Economics of Education
Rejoicing Over Class Cutting
Bryan Caplan poses again the puzzle about students, human capital, and signaling. I won’t repeat it because he says it so well. One of his commenters, Cameron Mulder, has an interesting piece of evidence against the idea that students rejoice when professors cancel class. I have another piece of evidence. I taught a 40-hour Microeconomics .. MORE
Economics of Education
College and Class Identity
Noah Smith writes, College is an intense incubator where smart people meet other smart people. The large number of leisure activities and the close quarters in which people live facilitate the formation of friendships and romantic relationships, while the exclusiveness of college makes sure that the people you’re meeting are pre-screened to be the type .. MORE
Economics of Education
A Puzzle for Human Capital Extremists Revisited
A while back I posed the following puzzle to those who dismiss the signaling model of education: Why do students rejoice whenever a teacher cancels class? From a human capital standpoint, students’ attitude is baffling. They’ve paid good money to acquire additional skills. Employers will judge them by the skills their teachers impart. But when .. MORE
Behavioral Economics
Gerald Prante on Means-Testing
Gerald Prante of the Tax Foundation, author of the best dissertation I ever chaired, emailed me some interesting comments on means-testing. Reprinted with his permission: Saw your post with regards to means-testing Social Security and Medicare. Such a system would likely be tied to income in retirement. A lot of retirement income of the “retired .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
The Meritocracy of Liberty: Why Trevor Burrus Should Become a Meritocrat
The meritorious libertarian Trevor Burrus has unfortunately joined the ranks of libertarians against merit: Libertarians are often accused of advocating for a merit-based society. The free market, the argument goes, produces a distribution that more-or-less corresponds to how meritorious the people are. If you’re poor, you likely deserve to be poor; if you’re rich, the .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Replies on Means-Testing
I’m happy to see all the feedback on my latest means-testing post, but I wish more readers engaged my original question. After presenting one simple means-testing formula, I asked: In the new political equilibrium, how much do you predict the full Social Security and Medicare benefit will fall? Remember, this is the benefit that everyone .. MORE
International Trade
Matt Zwolinski on Sweatshops
Was Schindler Wrong? Philosophy professor Matt Zwolinski has an excellent video on sweatshops at LearnLiberty.org. LearnLiberty.org has given me permission to put it here. I basically like the video, although I have one question and one disagreement. My question is about something he said at the 2:00 point. He says: So long as sweatshop labor .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
Means Testing Isn’t “Awesome”
Over two years ago, Bryan Caplan posted on why means testing is “awesome”. He didn’t actually make that case, though. The case he actually made is that means testing is a good idea. “Awesome” is a step above “a good idea.” I wrote a post critical of his. In it, I made three criticisms of .. MORE