TweetWant to get a few hours’ worth of solid learning in less than 35 enjoyable minutes? Listen to my Mercatus Center colleague David Beckworth’s podcast (from October 2022) with George Selgin on the New Deal. Seriously. It will be 34-plus minutes very well spent. George’s book – False Dawn – is forthcoming from the University…
George Selgin on the New Deal and Recovery (and Relief and Reform)
George Selgin on the New Deal and Recovery (and Relief and Reform)
18 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, fiscal policy, great depression, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, monetary economics, unemployment
America’s top one percent has not been seeing a rising income share
18 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics Tags: top 1%
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column. The opener is this: Can a single self-published paper really refute decades of work by three famous economists? If the paper is the modestly titled “Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends,” then the answer — with qualifications — is yes. And…
America’s top one percent has not been seeing a rising income share
Queensland University of Technology completely ditches merit-based hiring, favoring gender, “looks”, and personality
18 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: affirmative action, sex discrimination
This gem of a story is about how one Aussie university went to the logical endpoint of the diversity-trumps-merit controversy: Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane is apparently about to hire solely on the basis of diversity, and has erased any mention of the word “merit” in its hiring policy. This of course is ridiculous, […]
Queensland University of Technology completely ditches merit-based hiring, favoring gender, “looks”, and personality
On the 50th anniversary of the DPB
16 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of education, gender, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: economics of fertility, marriage and divorce
The Domestic Purposes Benefit has been variously described as a “disaster” (David McLoughlin 1995), an “economic lifeline” (Jane Kelsey 1995) and “an unfortunate experiment” (Muriel Newman 2009).Its effect on family formation can never be definitively ascertained. But the growth of the sole parent family dependent on welfare has correlated with more poverty, more child abuse…
On the 50th anniversary of the DPB
Boys are faster
15 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, sports economics Tags: political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative | Hoover Institution
15 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great depression, great recession, history of economic thought, inflation targeting, labour economics, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics, unemployment Tags: monetary policy
Jennifer Burns on Milton Friedman 11/13/23
14 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, business cycles, comparative institutional analysis, econometerics, economic history, economics of education, economics of regulation, fiscal policy, great depression, history of economic thought, labour economics, liberalism, libertarianism, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics Tags: monetary policy
Police versus Prisons
13 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, economics of crime, Gary Becker, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice
Here’s a remarkable graph from the Council of Economic Advisers report on incarceration and the criminal justice system. The graph shows that the United States employs many more prison guards per-capita than does the rest of the world. Given our prison population that isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that on a per-capita basis we employ 35% […]
Police versus Prisons
Econ Duel: Is Education Signaling or Skill Building?
11 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of education, economics of information, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: signaling
Bari Weiss proposes ending DEI
11 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: affirmative action, free speech, political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left, sex discrimination
Bari Weiss, head of the Free Press, just published this article on her website, but it appeared in Tablet, in identical form, a few days ago. You can click on the headline below to read it, or go here to see it on her site. As the subheader on her FP article says, “It’s not […]
Bari Weiss proposes ending DEI
Roland Fryer on Race, Diversity, and Affirmative Action
11 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, discrimination, economic history, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: affirmative action, racial discrimination
Reflections on the TCU Capitalism versus Socialism Debate
08 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic growth, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, Marxist economics, poverty and inequality, privatisation, property rights, Public Choice, public economics Tags: economics of socialism, Sweden
Two days ago at Texas Christian University, I debated Scott Sehon, chair of Bowdoin College’s Philosophy Department, on Capitalism versus Socialism. (Video forthcoming eventually). My opening statement was a slight variation on the one I wrote for an earlier debate on the same topic with Elizabeth Bruenig. Sehon’s opening statement was adapted from his Socialism:…
Reflections on the TCU Capitalism versus Socialism Debate
Still under-policed and over-imprisoned
07 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of crime, Gary Becker, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice, Public Choice Tags: crime and punishment, criminal deterrence, law and order
A new paper, The Injustice of Under-Policing, makes a point that I have been emphasizing for many years, namely, relative to other developed countries the United States is under-policed and over-imprisoned. …the American criminal legal system is characterized by an exceptional kind of under-policing, and a heavy reliance on long prison sentences, compared to other […]
Still under-policed and over-imprisoned
07 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, economics of education, growth disasters, growth miracles, human capital, labour economics
Ralph Hawtrey, Part 1: An Overview of his Career
06 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic history, fiscal policy, great depression, history of economic thought, labour economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, unemployment
One of my goals when launching this blog in 2011 was to revive interest in the important, but unfortunately neglected and largely forgotten, contributions to monetary and macroeconomic theory of Ralph Hawtrey. Two important books published within the last year have focused attention on Ralph Hawtrey: The Federal Reserve: A New History by Robert Hetzel, […]
Ralph Hawtrey, Part 1: An Overview of his Career
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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