Economic Lessons from Scandinavia
18 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics
In my younger years, I oftentimes would have arguments with statists who wanted me to believe that countries in Northern Europe like Sweden “proved” that generous welfare states were compatible with economic prosperity.
That doesn’t happen as often today because the Nordic nations in recent decades have not enjoyed rapid growth. Moreover, some of the nations – such as Sweden in the early 1990s and Iceland last decade – suffered from serious financial downturns.
So I stand by my position that free markets and small government are the recipe for prosperity.
That being said, there are still some interesting lessons to be learned from these countries.
As I’ve previously argued, the Nordic countries demonstrate that a big welfare state is “affordable” so long as countries are willing to accept less growth 
and so long as they are willing to compensate for high taxes and high spending with very…
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The History of Economic Thought | Murray Rothbard–Videos
17 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics
The History of Economic Thought, Lecture 1: Ideology and Theories of History | Murray Rothbard
he History of Economic Thought, Lecture 2: The Emergence of Communism | Murray Rothbard
The History of Economic Thought, Lecture 3: The Pre-Austrians | Murray Rothbard
The History of Economic Thought, Lecture 4: Menger and Böhm-Bawerk | Murray Rothbard
The History of Economic Thought, Lecture 5: Mises and Austrian Economics | Murray Rothbard
he History of Economic Thought, Lecture 6: Hayek & His Lamentable Contemporaries | Murray Rothbard
The University of the Internet explained
17 Jan 2015 2 Comments
in health economics, liberalism Tags: quackery
The Peltzman effect and banking regulation
17 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics
I like to tell people that I prefer taxis where the driver is not wearing a seatbelt. This mostly confuses people – at least non-economists – because the general perception is that people who do not wear seatbelts are more “irresponsible”.
However, if you know about the so-called Peltzman effect you would not be surprised by my preference of “irresponsible” taxi drivers. The Peltzman effect is named after Chicago economist Sam Peltzman.
In a very controversial article –“The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation” – in the Journal of Political Economy from 1975 Peltzman showed that contrary to what should have expected the introduction of seat belt laws in the US did not reduce the total number death accidents in traffic.
Here Russ Robert (in a blog post from 2006) explains Peltzman’s results:
“Peltzman argued that mandatory safety devices such as seat belts reduced the probability of harm to the…
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Are Europeans Spending Too Little On Health Care ComparedTo The US? – Tomas Philipson
17 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
Is Hollywood On A Dystopian Movie Binge? | FiveThirtyEight
17 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in liberalism, movies Tags: disutopia
It is also cheaper to make disutopian films.
Via http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/is-hollywood-on-a-dystopian-movie-binge/
New institutional economics and corruption — Indian perspective
17 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
Great blog with many interesting posts
A nice paper from Murali Patibandla of IIM-B.
He brings these interesting insights from New Institutional economics to help understand issues and corruption in India:
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Example of an economics exam from Harvard University in 1953
17 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics
Prof. Ric Holt (of South Oregon Univ) shares this interesting copy of the exam paper (via a group mail on history of economic thought).
Just take a look at the economics questions asked in Universities during those times. Needless to say all this has changed dramatically. Earlier it required understanding of history and economics, now it is just about math.As these guys determine the standards elsewhere as well, the disease has caught onto most parts of the world (if not all):
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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