19 Apr 2024 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, fiscal policy, great depression, history of economic thought, labour economics, macroeconomics, monetarism, monetary economics, unemployment
A Socialist Explains Why Socialism Can’t Work
13 Apr 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, history of economic thought, human capital, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, poverty and inequality, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, survivor principle, theory of the firm Tags: economics of socialism, regressive left
Not that the socialist in question, Professor Richard D. Wolff, realises that’s what he’s doing in the Q&A video below – and he’s not talking about traditional Communist Command and Controlled Economies. What he’s actually describing is a very pure form of socialism, the sort only vaguely imagined by Marx, Engels and other communists when […]
A Socialist Explains Why Socialism Can’t Work
A Conversation with Gary Becker
10 Apr 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, behavioural economics, comparative institutional analysis, discrimination, economic history, economics of education, economics of information, Gary Becker, gender, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality
Deirdre McCloskey: Innovation Begins in Our Minds
09 Apr 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, growth miracles, history of economic thought
Cuba Libre
05 Apr 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of crime, growth disasters, history of economic thought, human capital, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking Tags: Cuba
Martin Gurri has a very good, deep-dive on the current situation in Cuba. The wreckage of the Cuban economy really can’t be exaggerated. The perpetual blackouts are an apt symbol of a country that is headed for the dark ages. For the first time since the revolution, Cuba is begging the United Nations for food aid. Nearly […]
Cuba Libre
Productivity Syndrome and the Investment Prescription
30 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, economic growth, economic history, growth miracles, history of economic thought, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics
Economic productivity is about growing the size of the pie. I sometimes point out that no matter what your goal–spending increases, tax cuts, greater support for the poor, environmental protection–that goal is easier when the economic pie is growing. When the economic pie isn’t growing, after all, then all priorities have to pit potential winners…
Productivity Syndrome and the Investment Prescription
Book review: The Worldly Philosophers
21 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in history of economic thought
I just finished reading Robert Heilbroner’s excellent book The Worldly Philosophers. I forget who recommended it to me, but perhaps it was a mention in this blog by Dianne Coyle. Anyway, the book was first published in 1953 and has been through seven editions, with the last edition (which was the one I read) published…
Book review: The Worldly Philosophers
Claude 3 Opus does Austrian economics
20 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought Tags: entrepreneurial alertness
TC: Let’s say you were Peter Boettke, and looking to pen a critique of Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurship. You come from a slightly different branch of the Austrian school. How would you use that differential background to express your differences with the Kirznerian theory, which emphasizes alertness above all else as an entrepreneurial characteristic? “If […]
Claude 3 Opus does Austrian economics
100 Years of Rent Control in Sweden
17 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, history of economic thought, income redistribution, law and economics, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: rent control, Sweden
Bet On It reader Vanja Månborg knows a lot about rent control in Sweden. If you think Sweden is a country of thoughtful technocrats where government intervention works well, reading his guest post may make you think again. Here’s Vanja:Sweden has had rent control regulations since 1917 with less than two decades of pause between…
100 Years of Rent Control in Sweden
An Open Letter to Nobel-laureate Economist Angus Deaton
13 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, income redistribution, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle, unemployment Tags: creative destruction, free trade, tariffs
TweetProf. Angus Deaton Princeton University Prof. Deaton: Over the years I’ve learned much from your writings, and I regard your 2013 The Great Escape as one of the most important books published in the past 15 years. So I was quite surprised and disappointed to read that you, as you say, are now “much more…
An Open Letter to Nobel-laureate Economist Angus Deaton
Claude 3 Opus Also Fails Steve Landsburg’s Economics Exam
13 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, history of economic thought, industrial organisation
Almost one year ago, Steve Landsburg tried GPT-4 on one of his exams. It failed, badly. I tried out some of the same questions on Claude 3 Opus, by many accounts now the leading AI. It failed, badly. Steve’s exams are very clever. They aren’t technically difficult but they are tricky in the sense that […]
Claude 3 Opus Also Fails Steve Landsburg’s Economics Exam
The RCT Agenda
12 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, econometerics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, economics of information, economics of regulation, experimental economics, growth disasters, growth miracles, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, managerial economics, market efficiency, Marxist economics, occupational choice, organisational economics, property rights, Public Choice, public economics Tags: The fatal conceit
Randomized Controlled Trials: Could you be any more scientific? The book I’m now writing, Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets, insists that the randomistas of the economics profession actually have a thinly-veiled political agenda. Namely: To get economists to humbly serve the demagogues that rule the world instead of bluntly challenging their unabated…
The RCT Agenda
‘Swiftonomics’ and the optimal number of Taylor Swift examples
11 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of information, economics of media and culture, history of economic thought, industrial organisation
I was interested to read this recent article on Inside Higher Education, about ‘Swiftonomics’:Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, Nobel Prize winner and Distinguished Professor of economics at the CUNY Graduate Center, began working on the curriculum for the course last summer. Swift’s massive Eras Tour had just kicked off, creating such a frenzy…
‘Swiftonomics’ and the optimal number of Taylor Swift examples
This kind of macro theory is underrated
01 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, business cycles, fiscal policy, history of economic thought, job search and matching, macroeconomics, monetary economics Tags: real business cycle theory
Demand shocks as technology shocks: We provide a macroeconomic theory where demand for goods has a productive role. A search friction prevents perfect matching between producers and potential customers. Larger demand induces more search, which in turn increases GDP and measured TFP. We embed the product-market friction in a standard neoclassical model and estimate it […]
This kind of macro theory is underrated
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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