The left-wing bias of economists alert: How textbooks are biased toward favouring tax hikes
03 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
The Economics of Europe’s Insane History of Putting Animals on Trial and Executing Them
02 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of religion, law and economics, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, taxation Tags: economics of religion, follow the money, Peter Leeson, rent seeking
The fantastically creative and insightful Peter Leeson published an article in the Journal of Law and Economics in 2013 on the practice of putting animals on trial in the Medieval ages.
Abstract
For 250 years insects and rodents accused of committing property crimes were tried as legal persons in French, Italian, and Swiss ecclesiastic courts under the same laws and according to the same procedures used to try actual persons.I argue that the Catholic Church used vermin trials to increase tithe revenues where tithe evasion threatened to erode them.
Vermin trials achieved this by bolstering citizens’ belief in the validity of Church punishments for tithe evasion: estrangement from God through sin, excommunication, and anathema.
Vermin trials permitted ecclesiastics to evidence their supernatural sanctions’ legitimacy by producing outcomes that supported those sanctions’ validity. These outcomes strengthened citizens’ belief that the Church’s imprecations were real, which allowed ecclesiastics to reclaim jeopardized tithe revenue
Leeson’s paper is also closely connected to Ekelund, Herbert, and Tollison’s (1989, 2002, 2006) and Ekelund et al.’s (1996) work. They study the medieval Catholic Church as a firm. They discuss how ecclesiastics used supernatural sanctions to protect the Church’s monopoly on spiritual services against heretical competition.
HT: Wired – fantastically-wrong-europes-insane-history-putting-animals-trial-executing/
The Tyranny of the Taxi Medallions
01 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of religion, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking Tags: taxi regulation
Keep your eye on what happens to consumers alert: Murray Rothbard on dumping
01 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
The first law of left-wing policy making
25 Sep 2014 3 Comments
in liberalism, Public Choice Tags: Leftover Left, progressive politics
HT: Heartland Institute
The Key to victory: Run against Piketty-nomics, Scott Sumner | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
23 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in income redistribution, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: 2014 New Zealand election, Piketty
This is good news:
New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index increased 1.1 percent, driven higher by power-company stocks, after John Key won a third term as prime minister. Key, a former head of foreign exchange at Merrill Lynch & Co., led his National party to a 48 percent victory in New Zealand’s weekend election, securing the first single-party majority in the South Pacific nation’s parliament since at least 1996. The main opposition Labour Party, which wanted to introduce a tax on capital gains and raise the minimum wage, suffered its worst defeat since 1922.
Perhaps Labour got their ideas from Paul Krugman.
When right-of-center parties are elected, they generally disappoint. Although right-of-center economists favor free markets, most conservative politicians do not. Abe (Japan) and Modi (India) are two recent examples of conservatives who promised reforms and failed to come through (thus far). Fortunately New Zealand is different.
Via http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/the_key_to_vict.html
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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