Anne Boleyn, the second of Henry VIII’s six wives, is arguably the most famous. In 1523, she was betrothed to Henry Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland, but the engagement was abruptly called off. At the time, Anne was serving as a maid of honor to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife. […]
The United States has produced about twice as many unicorns (private startups valued at $1B+) as China and more than four times as many as the European Union. These numbers reflect deep institutional and cultural advantages in the U.S. startup ecosystem. Table: Number of Unicorns Created Since ~1990 Region Cumulative Unicorns United States ~1,950 China…
Tweet… is from my late, great colleague Walter Williams’s January 6th, 2011, column, “Settled ‘facts’ that just ain’t so“: U.S. manufacturing is going through the same kind of labor-saving technological innovation as agriculture. In 1790, farmers were 90 percent of the U.S. labor force. By 1900, only about 41 percent of our labor force was…
Regulations about abortion are often wildly controversial. But what effects to they actually have? Caitlin Myers addresses these issues in “From Roe to Dobbs: 50 Years of Cause and Effect of US State Abortion Regulations” (Annual Review of Public Health 2025, pp. 433-446). As a starting point, consider the years before and after the 1973 US Supreme Court…
There’s an enormous amount of data showing that people in the United States enjoy much higher livings standards than Europeans. That’s not too surprising since most European governments have adopted large-sized welfare states while Americans are (comparatively!) lucky in that we have a medium-sized welfare state. That’s all very straightforward and uncontroversial. What’s not completely […]
Maybe not, isn’t that a form of double counting? After all, defense spending is there to enable the production of other goods and services, it is not useful per se. Chandler S. Reilly and Vincent Geloso recalculate the history of U.S. economic growth using this new method: In fact, our corrections applied to the entire […]
Mark Carney announced last week that the King will open the Canadian Parliament in person later this month. It’s unusual for the Canadian Monarch to give the Speech from the Throne. The last time this happened was in 1977 when Queen Elizabeth II opened Parliament during her Silver Jubilee tour. Carney’s invitation is notable because […]
While healthcare in Canada’s single-payer health care system is technically free, its real price is measured in wait times. In 2023, the median wait time from a general practitioner’s referral to treatment reached 27.7 weeks—the longest ever and nearly triple the 9.3 weeks reported in 1993. (MuskegonPundit) To see this, think of “free” as…
Compulsory first-year courses come under fire. Graham Adams writes – This year, the University of Auckland launched mandatory courses focused on a particular view of New Zealand history, Te Tiriti, and indigenous “knowledge systems”— which is to say mātauranga Māori — for all first-year students. It doesn’t matter whether you’re studying engineering, accounting, science or arts, you […]
In a recent paper, Christopher L. Foote, Kristopher S. Gerardi, and Paul S. Willen report (pdf): This paper presents 12 facts about the mortgage market. The authors argue that the facts refute the popular story that the crisis resulted from financial industry insiders deceiving uninformed mortgage borrowers and investors. Instead, they argue that borrowers and […]
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.
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