The Unbroken Window

In all intellectual spheres comes a time when people debate how rigorously one must adhere to the “party line” in order to be considered a true “party member.” On the libertarian side of things, Murray Rothbard was perhaps the most stringent and forceful proponent of pushing ideological purity. Rothbard understood that the world was miles [...]

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Whether you believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming. Do you know what the best predictor of whether you believe gun control laws should be relaxed? It’s whether you believe the Fed is being too aggressive at the monetary spigot right now. Now ignore the reason you need to affiliate with a particular political party for the [...]

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In a working paper two students and I write: Stevans argues that, “most academic economists are concerned with studying such obscure topics as backward induction among chess players and the existence of monotone pure-strategy equilibrium in Bayesian games.” Does “most” mean more than half? Eighty-percent? Is there a right amount? He is onto something, of [...]

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Sort of an ironic title for the plan of Professor Frank, no? I call it the 6-6-6 plan — an across-the-board 6 percent national sales tax (on top of any existing state and local sales taxes) in effect from 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 6 a.m. on Black Friday. This plan would leave both stores [...]

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Has anyone who has ever written about this topic ever shopped in a grocery store for more than one person? I think I am going to randomly post our family meals up here for all to see, then tell me what you think about the meme, “the poor can only afford calorie dense, fatty, unhealthy, [...]

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There are some people who believe that there are limits to how much the receipt of additional income might be able to increase your level of happiness. I am not here to argue that. Rather, my thought for today is simpler: suppose you are one of these folks, do you also think that it would [...]

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We’ve run several pieces over the years highlighting the inconsistencies among the “Nudge” crowd. I probably unfairly bundle the “libertarian” paternalists with the more hard-core unapologetic paternalists, but these are matters of degree, not kind. The reason for my consternation is that I rarely (never in fact) see a consistent position among these behavioralists to [...]

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There are two aspects of our future health care needs that individuals need to consider. First, individuals want to protect themselves from the financial devastation that an unexpected and expensive medical condition might cause in their lives. When someone contracts a disease, perhaps a form of cancer, it can seriously reduce someone’s ability to work [...]

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Bilk Minnesota taxpayers for at least $300 million. Is there any end to it? Oh, and what’s that sound I hear? Is that a behavioral economist Amber Alert?

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It is well known in economics that it does not matter how governments choose to finance their spending. Suppose the government budget is $3.6 trillion. Whether they raise $3.6 trillion in taxes today and borrow none, or raise $2.3 trillion in taxes today and borrow $1.3 trillion or whether they raise no taxes today and [...]

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