I suggest, Men and women tend to think alike in societies where there is Close-knit interdependence, religosity and authoritarianism, or Shared cultural production and mixed gendered offline socialising. Gendered ideological polarisation appears encouraged by: Feminised public culture Economic resentment Social media filter bubbles Cultural entrepreneurs. Here is the full piece, currently the best piece on […]
Alice Evans on the ideological gender divide
Alice Evans on the ideological gender divide
13 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, health and safety, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, gender wage gap, sex discrimination
Another gender gap gone
11 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economic history, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice
My TLS essay on the Clinton administration
10 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in human capital, labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality, welfare reform
Here is the link, I am reviewing a bad book on the Clinton administration (A Fabulous Failure, by Lichtenstein and Stern). Here is one excerpt: Clinton-era welfare reform is another area where many commentators go astray, and Lichtenstein and Stein are no exception. The Clinton pronouncement “I have a plan to end welfare as we […]
My TLS essay on the Clinton administration
LINDSAY MITCHELL: Labour hid developing welfare crisis
08 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family poverty
Lindsay Mitchell writes- When National became government in 2008, Finance Minister Bill English’s determination to understand the extent of benefit-dependency led them to commission Taylor Fry to produce annual actuarial reports. These were duly published at the MSD website every year but ceased when the government changed in 2017. Now however, an Official Information request […]
LINDSAY MITCHELL: Labour hid developing welfare crisis
Open Borders and Closed Courts: How the Supreme Court Laid the Seeds for the Immigration Crisis
06 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in economic history, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA Tags: constitutional law, economics of immigration
Below is my column in The Hill on the worsening situation at the Southern border and how the Supreme Court laid the seeds for this crisis over a decade ago. The courts have left few options for either the states or Congress in compelling the enforcement of federal law. Here is the column:
Open Borders and Closed Courts: How the Supreme Court Laid the Seeds for the Immigration Crisis
Breaking the Culture of Welfare Dependency
02 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, economics of education, entrepreneurship, health economics, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, property rights, Public Choice, unemployment, welfare reform Tags: Canada
One hope that has occasionally been expressed since the beginning of the modern era of Treaty of Waitangi (ToW) settlements, has been that the Iwi showered with money and empowered with control of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars worth of assets, would be able to then make a difference to all the […]
Breaking the Culture of Welfare Dependency
*The Case Against Education* Makes the WSJ
01 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economics of education, economics of information, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: screening, signaling
Douglas Belkin, who has an admirably adversarial publication record on higher ed, spotlights my The Case Against Education in his latest piece in The Wall Street Journal:One result of this transactional attitude has been a sharp increase in cheating. College is one of the few products whose consumers try to get as little out of…
*The Case Against Education* Makes the WSJ
The Rise of Human Capital
28 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in Gary Becker, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply
No economist was more responsible for the appreciation, understanding and analysis of the fact that people invest in improving their productivity than was Gary Becker.
The Rise of Human Capital
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
17 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, economic history, economics of information, economics of regulation, health and safety, history of economic thought, human capital, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, liberalism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, minimum wage, occupational choice, occupational regulation, poverty and inequality, unemployment, unions
A quarter century ago, economist Price Fishback published “Operations of ‘Unfettered’ Labor Markets: Exit and Voice in American Labor Markets at the Turn of the Century” in the prestigious Journal of Economic Literature. Fishback’s article is packed with insight… and understatement. But let’s back up. Virtually every standard history textbook describes U.S. labor markets before…
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
A congestion theory of unemployment fluctuations
17 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in business cycles, econometerics, economic history, history of economic thought, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, monetary economics, unemployment
Yusuf Mercan, Benjamin Schoefer, and Petr Sedláček, newly published in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. I best liked this excerpt from p.2, noting that “DMP” refers to the Nobel-winning Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides search model of unemployment: This congestion mechanism improves the business cycle performance of the DMP model considerably. It raises the volatility of labor market tightness tenfold, […]
A congestion theory of unemployment fluctuations
The population bomb
17 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in economic history, labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: ageing population
The Right and Wrong Way to Reduce Poverty, Part II
16 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family poverty
In Part I of this series, I explained that the War on Poverty, launched by Lyndon Johnson and expanded by other profligate presidents, has been bad news for both taxpayers and poor people. More specifically, I shared some academic research showing how it led to a big increase in dependency on government. Let’s expand on […]
The Right and Wrong Way to Reduce Poverty, Part II
Family leave and the gender wage gap
16 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economic history, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: economics of fertility, family leave, gender wage gap, marriage and divorce, sex discrimination
The gender wage gap has been decreasing slowly and steadily over time. At least, that’s what I thought until I read this 2023 NBER Working Paper by Peter Blair (Harvard University) and Benjamin Posmanick (St. Bonaventure University). They present the following graph of the gender wage gap in the US (for White women, compared with White men,…
Family leave and the gender wage gap
Even More Evidence Against Minimum Wage Laws
13 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, labour economics, labour supply Tags: minimum wage
As explained by public intellectuals such as Milton Friedman, Johan Norberg, John Stossel, and Orphe Divougny, the argument against minimum wage requirements is very simple. If politicians dictate that people can’t be employed unless they receive, say, $15 per hour, then workers who are worth less than than amount (because of low skills, no experience, […]
Even More Evidence Against Minimum Wage Laws
Zwolinski on the UBI
11 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, history of economic thought, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, Public Choice, public economics, welfare reform Tags: negative income tax, universal basic income
Philosopher Matt Zwolinski, co-author of Universal Basic Income: What Everyone Needs to Know, was a core member of the old Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, which shut down in 2020. Now’s he’s singledly-handed revived the BHL brand on his new Bleeding Heart Libertarian substack. Matt recently published a critique of my response to Chris Freiman on…
Zwolinski on the UBI
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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