Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
08 May 2026 Leave a comment
in Adam Smith, applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, health economics, history of economic thought, liberalism, Marxist economics
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…
Grow the Pie, Skip the Sermon
08 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, history of economic thought, labour economics, macroeconomics, unemployment
Do market-oriented reforms cause economic growth? This paper revisits this question using a cross-country panel of reform episodes identified from various changes in well-known economic freedom and structural reform indices. We exploit the timing of reforms using distributed-lag and event-study frameworks that trace the dynamic response of per-capita GDP. We find little evidence of immediate…
Do Market Reforms Cause Growth?
05 May 2026 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of regulation, health economics, Marxist economics, transport economics Tags: Cuba, life expectancies
I have received news that a short article submitted to Health Policy & Planning has been accepted for publication. In the article, I argue that the statistics regarding Cuba’s health care are distorted by the incentives generated by the target system under which physicians must operate (at the threat of penalties). To meet their targets, they re-categorize […]
Forthcoming – Cuban Infant Mortality and Longevity: Health Care or Repression?
04 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, econometerics, economic history, growth miracles, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, international economics, survivor principle Tags: China, free trade
TweetThis post by Oxford economist J. Zachary Mazlish is very good; I encourage you to read it. (HT David Levey) Nevertheless, there are two points that I think to be worth making in response to Mazlish’s post. I will here make one of these points. I’ll make the other of these points in a follow-up…
China Shock 2.0 vs. China Shock 1.0
03 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, macroeconomics Tags: European Union
The world’s big economic policy battle is not capitalism vs. socialism. Other than a few primitive backwater nations like Cuba and North Korea, genuine socialism has largely been vanquished. Instead, the battle in most countries largely revolves around the size of the welfare state. At the risk of over-simplifying, here are the three choices. Should […]
The United States vs. Europe, Part V
01 May 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, war and peace Tags: Nazi Germany, World War II
On 29 April 1945, Hitler completed his will and last political testament and married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun. He also received the news that Benito Mussolini met his death in Italy. Mussolini’s corpse, along with that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, had been smashed in fury by a mob and hung upside down outside […]
The Reporting of Hitler’s Death
01 May 2026 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of crime, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics Tags: economics of slavery
The False Simplicity of Blaming “the West” Alone for the African Slave Trade On March 25, 2026, the UN General Assembly adopted a controversial resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the “gravest crime against humanity,” championed by Ghana on behalf of the African Union. The resolution, passed with 123 votes […]
African and Muslim roles in the African slave trade
30 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in economic history, health economics Tags: economics of pandemics
30 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, econometerics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, growth disasters, growth miracles, history of economic thought, Public Choice
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…
How Reform Happens
29 Apr 2026 1 Comment
in defence economics, economic history, economics of crime, law and economics, laws of war, war and peace Tags: Nazi Germany, The Holocaust, World War II
Dachau was the first concentration camp built by the Nazis. It opened on 22 March 1933. Twelve years, one month and one week later, the US Forces liberated the camp. The troops were horrified by what they saw. Below are just some testimonies. A letter by Sgt. Horace Evers Dearest Mom and Lou, Just received […]
Dachau Liberated
29 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: creative destruction
We do not know whether technological unemployment swept across England in the wake of the British Industrial Revolution. In this paper, I propose an approach to quantify jobs lost to, and created by, creative destruction in the 19th century. Using over 170 million individual records from the full-count British census (1851–1911), I generate sub-industry “task”…
Technological unemployment in Victorian Britain
29 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, war and peace Tags: unintended consequences
War is so terrible that the first moral impulse is often to demand that it stop immediately. That impulse is understandable. No decent person can look at destroyed cities, dead civilians, grieving families and exhausted soldiers without longing for silence, relief and peace. But the demand for a ceasefire can also become a flawed knee-jerk […]
Against Instant Ceasefires
28 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply Tags: creative destruction
Everyone knows the Luddites smashed looms. What is less appreciated is that the loom was the first serious programmable device — the direct ancestor of the computer. Thus, the Luddites weren’t just the first to resist automation. They were the first to attack AI. The Jacquard loom, introduced in France circa 1805, used a chain…
The Luddites Were the First to Attack AI
27 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, industrial organisation Tags: industry policy
Tweet… is from page 815 of Richard Nelson’s and Richard Langlois’s February 1983 Science paper titled “Industrial Innovation Policy: Lessons from American History”: A quick reading of the case studies is enough to dash any supposition that technological change is somehow a cleanly plannable activity. In fact, it is an activity characterized as much by…
Quotation of the Day…
27 Apr 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, labour economics, labour supply
In the 1990s, Americans used to work much more than non-Americans. Nowadays, about half of the gap in hours worked has reversed. To evaluate the convergence of working hours, we develop a tractable model of labor supply enriched with multiple sources of heterogeneity across individuals, an extensive margin of participation, multi-member households, and an elaborate…
Why do Americans No Longer Work So Much More Than Non-Americans?
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
A History of the Alt-Right
Econ Prof at George Mason University, Economic Historian, Québécois
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
WORLD WAR II, MUSIC, HISTORY, HOLOCAUST
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Res ipsa loquitur - The thing itself speaks
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.”
Researching the House of Commons, 1832-1868
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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