EconLog Archive
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Field Review
As promised, here is my review essay on Alexander Field’s A Great Leap Forward. I think the highlight of the essay is the table that lays out the six eras discussed in the book. How much does the current period resemble the thirties? Jay Cost has a graph showing the rise in the number of .. MORE
Labor Market
Momentum in Employment
The employment situation report for May 6 shows a gain of 700,000 jobs over the three-month period February through April. One thing I learned from Ed Leamer’s Macroeconomic Patterns and Stories is that there is momentum in employment. If history is a decent guide, then this growth in employment is likely to continue for a .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
The Feds’ Attack on Forest Laboratories
At first, the FDA “grandfathered” older drugs. But in 1997, the FDA decided that some older drugs were actually “new drugs.” Therefore, Forest needed to navigate the FDA’s expensive and difficult new drug approval process. Forest didn’t act quickly enough to follow all the proper procedures and violated the FDA’s deadlines. FDA Commissioner Margaret M. .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Good Short Book in Economics
Tyler Cowen, in asking for advice on what short book one should read for a good introduction to economics, quotes one of his regular readers as saying, “Henry Hazlett [sic] is out of date.” Not so. I gave a talk on this at the latest APEE conference in Nassau last month, drawing on my piece .. MORE
Family Economics
SRtHMK Reactions
My book’s gotten a lot of feedback recently: 1. Nicole Russell in the Washington Times: This isn’t your average parenting book spouting psychologist-laden babble about the inner workings of the human psyche, inherent selfishness and bearing children. Rather, Mr. Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University, is a father of three, including twins, and .. MORE
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
My Response to Nick Schulz
I’m used to stories about Brad DeLong deleting comments from his blog that he doesn’t like. [Please: this is not an invitation for you to post all your frustrations about Brad DeLong.] It appears (and correct me if I’m wrong, Nick) that Nick Schulz has done the same thing on his blog. I posted a .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Short, Readable Book on Economics
A Marginal Revolution Reader writes to Tyler: There must be a good, short book out there on economics that illuminates the power of markets and the economic way of thinking. I recommend The Best Book on the Market, by Eamonn Butler. I think it will satisfy the writer’s needs, because it is readable and relatively .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
A Buck is a Buck
Nick Schulz takes on Ezra Klein and me, calling our argument “preposterous.” Recall that Ezra and I had both argued that in response to 9/11, which I presume Osama bin Laden was behind, the U.S. government spent a lot of extra money on war and on “homeland security.” This spending, we argued, is helping drive .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Debating Monetarism
Matt Rognlie takes on the monetarists. Note that the comments on the post, including Matt’s comments, are where the debate gets elucidated.
Fiscal Policy
David Gratzer’s Misleading Article on Canada’s Election
Gratzer leaves out the tremendous accomplishments of the Liberal Party between 1995 and 2006. Since the early 1960s, when the Liberals won the first of 10 victories in 13 elections, Canadian governance largely focused on welfare statism. Between 1963 and 1993, government spending soared to over 50% of GDP from 29%. In contrast, American government .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
The Alternate Universe Problem
At the moment, I am very pessimistic about the prospects for the United States solving its fiscal problems without a crisis. Given that we have divided government, a reasonable long-term budget will require a compromise. But the two sides seem to live in alternate universes. The Republicans’ alternate universe is based on the belief that .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Starve-the-Beast Health Care Policy
Jed Graham writes, Much has been written about Ryan’s plan to have the vouchers only keep pace with inflation, which is generally well below health care inflation. But almost nothing has been said about how the Democrats’ own health care law includes a provision that would hold the growth of subsidies below the rate of .. MORE
Regulation
Who is “We”?
In a comment on my most-recent post, Arnold Kling seems to set up a straw man. I had made the point that if you looked at Osama bin Laden’s goals, you would conclude that he achieved a good portion of them. Arnold seemed to disagree, but if you read his comment carefully, you’ll see that .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
The Anti-Hanson on Health Care
John A. Nyman has a theory under which it is efficient to stimulate health care spending with health insurance. When the care that was deemed to be welfare-decreasing is reclassified as welfare-increasing, health insurance becomes much more valuable to consumers than health economists have hitherto thought it was. Pointer from Mark Thoma and Austin Frakt. .. MORE
Regulation
How Osama Won
I just finished reading the best piece by Ezra Klein that I’ve ever read by him. Klein argues that Osama bin Laden achieved many of his goals. One of bin Laden’s main goals, claims Klein, was to bankrupt the U.S. economy. And with George W. Bush’s excessive spending on “homeland security” and huge increases in .. MORE
Central Planning
The Race Between Technology and Oppression
Will Twitter Undercut Censorship? Although I know my vote doesn’t matter and I agree with Bryan Caplan about most of his criticisms of democracy, I’m somewhat of a political junkie. So I’ve been on line all evening watching the highlights of Canada’s federal election. I couldn’t get any results until the polls closed in British .. MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Thoughts on Accounting
From Liberty Fund’s Daniel Austin Green. This scientific idealization also disregards the deeply political and decidedly non-scientific nature of many aspects of accounting and stands at odds with the emphasis on experience, judgment, and artistry used to justify CPAs’ role in financial regulation, as formalized in the 1930s in the wake of another financial crisis. .. MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
A Bet I Will Make
Some comments on my post on Social Security challenged me to bet. Here is a bet I am willing to make. It concerns the following proof. 1. national output = national income (note that is true by definition in a closed economy, but in an open economy you can in theory earn income on other .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Seagren on Service
To David’s recommendation, I wish to add mine. One of my pet peeves is people who describe volunteer work and non-profit work as “giving back.” Instead, working for a profit can be (and, I suspect, usually is) a higher form of service. The essay is here.
Energy, Environment, Resources
Liberty, Population, and Cognitive Dissonance
My target essay at this month’s Cato Unbound is up. From the intro: People have been fretting about the “population problem” for at least fifty years. But over those five decades, the perceived problem has practically reversed. From the sixties to the eighties, the problems on people’s minds were overpopulation and the “population explosion.”… During .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Chad Seagren on Service in a Free Society
Today, while most Americans celebrate, quite appropriately, the killing of a mass murderer, Osama bin Laden, we are likely to hear encomiums to people in the U.S. military. In the May Econlib Feature Article, one member of that military, Major Chad Seagren of the U.S. Marine Corps, takes on General Stanley McChrystal’s narrow view of .. MORE