The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Health Care on Oct 24th, 2008
I ask my intro economics students to write a response paper to the question, “Should we allow a market in transplant kidneys?” UPDATE (as I post this, my wife calls me and tells me Grey’s Anatomy has an episode all about it! Coincidence? Clairvoyance? Something else?)
Posted in Institutions on Oct 23rd, 2008
Brad DeLong describes what exactly “we” have been doing, in a short and highly readable piece.
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Inequality on Oct 22nd, 2008
Study the following table for a moment: It shows the distribution of household income by race. For EVERY racial group you see that the median income of households have gone up, rather substantially, since 1975. There have even been some fairly sizable gains since 1995. How can you square this data with the “conventional wisdom” [...]
Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Oct 21st, 2008
How rich we really are. Quite possibly the most economically illiterate article, per word, I have ever read. My favorite quote, “”Consumer prices don’t change near as fast, because they are set by companies,” Lafakis said. “Commodity prices are set every day on an open market.”And that is from an “economist.” Or how about this [...]
Posted in Environment on Oct 21st, 2008
An under-appreciated paper in economics is David Van Zandt’s , The Lessons of the Lighthouse” in the Journal of Legal Studies in 1993.
Posted in Classical Liberalism on Oct 20th, 2008
The Price of Excess: There seems to be nothing we’ll say “no” to. $200 billion for Fannie and Freddie? Yeah, we’ll do that. The Iraq War? Sure, we’re in that. $700 billion in open-ended spending? Yeah, OK. How about some cuts? How about somebody with the maturity of an adult in the political class saying, [...]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Corporatism on Oct 20th, 2008
Country A: encouraging the poor to engage in the unrestricted trade or sale of land-use contracts, good for decades, … adopting such a system would be a significant move toward privatization.
Posted in Economic Illiteracy on Oct 20th, 2008
In the 1930s, “America” ran a trade surplus for 9 of the 10 years of that decade.
Posted in Environment on Oct 19th, 2008
A student of mine, and a darn good wide receiver to boot, had this letter published in his hometown paper:Who owns the deer? Ross has proposed a new ordinance that would ban people from feeding deer on their own property (“Hungry deer find allies in some residents,” Sept. 25). Many people are concerned that feeding [...]
“Thanks to Builders, a New Home!” “We need constructive ideas – offer them! Blank space provided for workers’ “Stop and punish harshly the lovers of the unearned rouble!” “We will safeguard the peace on the earth!” And my favorite… “The Demand is an Indicator of Quality” See more here.
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