“In 1940, Hayek (1940 [1972], 198-199) wrote an article that analyzed and criticized Lange’s model in great detail and explained, point by point, which implications of the model were problematic. Lange was deeply impressed by these critiques, and acknowledged that Hayek had succeeded in raising a series of essential errors and problems with the model: «There is no question that you have succeeded in raising essential problems and in showing gaps in the pure static solution given by me. I intend to work in this subject and give an answer to your paper … sometime in the fall.» (Lange, in a letter to Hayek dated August 31, 1940) Such an answer never came.”
Imagine what would have become of declaring who won the socialist calculation debate if this 1940 letter was better known. Hayek never mentioned the letter. The letter from Lange was found in Lange’s complete works published in 1973 in Polish.
A decade ago, I coauthored a report looking at how greater localism and subsidiarity could be achieved in a very centralised country where local councils have variable capabilities. We settled on policy trial areas. The basic gist was as follows. First, a community would pitch a policy trial area – a special economic zone – with different policy…
SummaryThis chapter, on “Conservation, Ecology, and Growth,” is an early statement of free-market environmentalism. It begins by ridiculing leftists’ decades of contradictory complaints about capitalism: “Stagnation; deficient growth; overaffluence; overpoverty; the intellectual fashions changed like ladies’ hemlines,” and quoting one of Schumpeter’s best lines:Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death…
As far as I know, Matt Mitchell and I are not related, but we both have a low opinion of socialism. He covers a lot of ground (defining socialism, the role of prices, socialism’s death toll, and the myth of Nordic socialism) in this 15-minute interview. Matt does such a good job that I didn’t […]
I don’t often claim to be ahead of the curve, but I’m going to pat myself on the back in today’s column about Swedish economic policy. More than 16 years ago, I started writing about Sweden’s shift from statism to markets. More than 14 years ago, I praised Swedish policy makers for significantly reducing the […]
My best read of the evidence is that a union raises wages by around 7% for currently unionized employees. The wage gains from a redistribution of rents evenly across workers. Wage compression exists, but redistribution from worker to worker is only a small part. These are the current effects – unionizing more of the economy […]
A Constitutional Trojan Horse: advancing change through political stealth Trade Minister Hon Todd McClay has announced that the New Zealand-India free trade agreement has been signed and that the formal parliamentary treaty scrutiny process is now under way. The full text of the agreement is now public and has been referred to Parliament’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee […]
In mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral systems, an “overhang” seat can result if a party wins more seats via the nominal tier (of, typically, single-seat districts) than it would be entitled to if a regular proportional-representation (PR) systems were used.
When I’m in Britain or Ireland, one of my favourite sightseeing trips is to visit medieval castles. Even the ruined ones are fun to visit. Actually, maybe the ruined ones are more fun to visit, because you get to imagine what they would have looked like in their heyday. Britain and Ireland are full of castles,…
In a recent Substack essay, “The progress movement needs a better theory of progress,” Brink Lindsey argues that the progress movement has settled for too thin a vision. It focuses on wealth creation and technological advance, he says, when it should adopt a “fuller conception of progress”—one that promotes “spiritual welfare” and thicker accounts of…
A few months ago, a high school econ student asked me to zoom with his class. I’m working against a tight deadline for Blockade, so I was inclined to decline. But the student’s list of questions was so ambitious that I decided to make the time. See for yourself:Here is the plan:- 5 minutes -WELCOME…
What determines whether and how regulations are reformed? We use a newly constructed data set of 3,590 successful and failed regulatory reforms in 189 countries, between 2005 and 2022, to address this question. We document that regulations have become more business friendly in some regulatory domains but not others. We also show that regulations are…
I spoke to my friends at the Sloavkian think tank INESS (the Institute of Economic and Social Studies) recently. We talked about my 2025 paper Anti-Capitalism and Public Health and you can watch the video below.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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