The Unbroken Window

The resulting instrumental variables (2SLS) models suggest that Medicaid coverage significantly increases the utilization of medical care by low-income children. Specifically, Medicaid is found to substantially decrease the probability of going without a visit to a doctor’s office and significantly increase probability of hospitalization in the previous year. Increased Medicaid coverage is also associated with [...]

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The Massachusetts legislature is considering a ban on parents spanking their children. Who actually wants children to be physically abused? This is another case of some bloviating buffoon making a pronouncement which makes him seem like a caring, responsible legislator. The reality is quite the opposite. The cost of doing this is virtually zero to [...]

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I cannot speak to the truth of this story, but it reminds me of a great piece by John Stossel when describing natural gas to a lay audience in a segment about risk. I think you can see that video here …   Ban DHMO? A 14-year-old junior high school student, Nathan Zahner, of Eagle [...]

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Today I give thanks that I do not live in a country which has a monument on this list. At least not yet.  

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There is remarkably little construction activity in and around the city. The only noticeable bustle is on Interstate-10 just east of the airport. There are lots, I mean lots, of people just standing around. And I do not mean these guys. I can’t quite describe this well, but the city is missing all of the [...]

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My local ward representative, who just ran unopposed for reelection, sent out an e-mail talking about our city’s plans for redeveloping a blighted area of my neighborhood (Elm Street) and also a plan to require local schools to purchase a portion of their food from local sources. Needless to say, I was not thrilled with [...]

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we think that we are not competent to start businesses, then why do we think we are competent to initiate policies? That is Arnold Kling on the hubris of development planners.

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My wife and I really enjoy food shopping, so perhaps we are too serious about certain aspects of that experience. It occurs to me that someone needs to invent a deli counter meat and cheese slicer that also contains a scale on the same machine. The lines at the deli counter when we go are [...]

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Two candidates this week! Roland Fryer, a Harvard economist, joined the Education Department this year as chief equality officer. “Price of Helium Keeps Rising” … “more than a third of the world’s supply comes from a single U.S. government stockpile near Amarillo, Texas”

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This paper considers ordered vector spaces with arbitrary closed cones and establishes a number of characterization results with applications to monotone comparative statics (Topkis (1978), Topkis (1998), Milgrom and Shannon (1994)). By appealing to the fundamental theorem of calculus for the Henstock-Kurzweil integral, we generalize existing results on increasing differences and supermodularity for C1 or [...]

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