Jon Klick finds that when courts in CA surprisingly invalidated a set of DEI laws, the market value of firms subject to those laws increased: California mandated that firms headquartered in the state include women (SB 826) and underrepresented minorities (AB 979) on their corporate boards. These laws, passed in 2018 and 2020 respectively, were […]
Mandated Board Diversity Reduces Firm Value
Mandated Board Diversity Reduces Firm Value
27 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economics of regulation, financial economics, gender, industrial organisation, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - USA Tags: efficient markets hypothesis, sex discrimination
The American Rōnin: How Displaced “Disinformation Experts” Are Seeking New Opportunities in Europe and Academia
27 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, economics of information, economics of media and culture, entrepreneurship, financial economics, industrial organisation, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: 2024 presidential election, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
Below is my column in the Hill on the new American emigres: “disinformation experts” who are finding themselves unemployed with the restoration of free speech protections. Here is the column:
The American Rōnin: How Displaced “Disinformation Experts” Are Seeking New Opportunities in Europe and Academia
No, the GOP Should Not Impeach Federal Judges Over the Trump Challenges
27 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, law and economics, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: 2024 presidential election
One of the greatest abuses of the Democratic party in the past eight years has been their use of impeachment investigations and charges against their political opponents. From President Donald Trump to conservative justices, liberal members have demanded impeachments over everything from opposing the NFL kneelers to hanging revolutionary-era flags. Now, some Republican members are […]
No, the GOP Should Not Impeach Federal Judges Over the Trump Challenges
Conspiracy theories and science denial
26 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, economics of education, economics of information, economics of media and culture, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: conjecture and refutation, conspiracies theories, philosophy of science
Conspiracy theories and science denial are two phenomena that often intersect, influencing public discourse and societal trust in authoritative knowledge sources. This essay explores their connection, elucidates the psychological and social mechanisms underpinning them, and provides examples to demonstrate how these two manifestations of skepticism reinforce each other, often with deleterious consequences. The Connection At […]
Conspiracy theories and science denial
Bill Maher vs. Jon Lovett on trans rights
26 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, health economics, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: free speech, gender gap, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
Jon Lovett is identified by Wikipedia as . . . . an American podcaster, comedian, journalist, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. All three formerly worked together as White House staffers during the Obama administration. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. […]
Bill Maher vs. Jon Lovett on trans rights
More tacit recognition of two sexes in humans
26 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, economics of media and culture, gender, health economics, human capital, labour economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: free speech, gender gap, life expectancies, political correctness, regressive left
This article was mentioned in a comment by reader Ted Gold, but I thought I would highlight it just to show that when the rubber meets the road, people recognize that, yes, there are just two sexes. This is from the NYT on Feb. 25th. Click headline to read, or find the article archived here. […]
More tacit recognition of two sexes in humans
Hire Don’t Fire at the FDA
26 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, health economics, politics - USA Tags: 2024 presidential election, drug lags
As a longtime critic of the FDA, you might expect me to support firing FDA employees—not so! My focus has always been on reducing approval time and costs to speed drugs to patients and increase the number of new drugs. Cutting staff is more likely to slow approvals and raise costs. To be fair, we’re […]
Hire Don’t Fire at the FDA
The fundamental fallacy of the “sex spectrum”
24 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: Age of Enlightenment, conjecture and refutation, free speech, gender gap, philosophy of science, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
While thinking about about objections to the sex binary—usually discussed in humans but sometimes in other species—they all seem to come down to a single assertion: “Sex is complicated in both development and expression, involving chromosomes, behavior, hormones, genitals and even psychology. Therefore there are more than two sexes.” One example of this is from […]
The fundamental fallacy of the “sex spectrum”
Corruption is wrong
22 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: 2024 presidential election, bribery and corruption
Chris Christie writes: In my seven years as the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, we brought 130 cases of political corruption. Though I have been a lifelong Republican, corruption has no party—the cases were against Republicans and Democrats alike. The reason those cases were so important was that it showed citizens […]
Corruption is wrong
Richard Dawkins on the “tri-societies” fracas on sex (and a call for signatures)
22 Feb 2025 1 Comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, gender gap, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
And so we come to the last sex post of the day—about a new piece by Richard Dawkins on his Substack site, The Poetry of Reality. Richard points to what he sees as arrant hypocrisy in the statement on biological sex by the Presidents of the SSN, ASN, and SSB. As I mentioned in my […]
Richard Dawkins on the “tri-societies” fracas on sex (and a call for signatures)
The U.S. government’s new definition of sex
21 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of crime, economics of education, gender, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: free speech, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
There will be a few posts on the definition of sex today, as everything “dropped”—as the kids say—at the same time. First, on January 20, the Trump administration issued an executive order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”—an attempt to efface gender ideology from the government and […]
The U.S. government’s new definition of sex
The Accumulation of Regulation
21 Feb 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, regulation Tags: employment law
Like many who do business in California, I often complain about the regulatory burden (free at last!) People will ask, “So what one regulation would you get rid of?” The problem is that this is a really hard question to answer because in most cases it is not any one regulation in particular, but the…
The Accumulation of Regulation
Our letter to the three societies on the definition of sex—with signers
20 Feb 2025 1 Comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, property rights Tags: Age of Enlightenment, conjecture and refutation, free speech, gender gap, philosophy of science, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
Six days ago I posted a group letter to the Presidents of three ecology/evolution/systematics societies who had issued a joint statement that many of us found deeply misguided. As I wrote at the time: The Presidents of three organismal-biology societies, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and […]
Our letter to the three societies on the definition of sex—with signers
“The Threat From Within”: J.D. Vance Delivers a Historic Defense of Free Speech
18 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, political change, politics - USA Tags: 2024 presidential election, Age of Enlightenment, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
Below is my column in the Hill on the historic defense of free speech by Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich last week. Where John F. Kennedy went to Berlin to declare “Ich bin ein Berliner,” Vance in Munich to declare a type of “Ich bin ein Amerikanisch.” He spoke of free speech as an […]
“The Threat From Within”: J.D. Vance Delivers a Historic Defense of Free Speech
Trump Officially Ends Biden-Era War On American Appliances
17 Feb 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of climate change, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, liberalism, politics - USA Tags: 2024 presidential election, climate activists, climate alarmism
“In recent years, burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the development of these resources, limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens,” Trump stated in the executive order. “These high energy costs devastate American consumers by driving up the cost of transportation, heating, utilities, farming, and manufacturing, while weakening our national security.”
Trump Officially Ends Biden-Era War On American Appliances
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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