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 Development on Dec 17th, 2011
My local town is run incredibly well. Our school taxes are high but that is because folks are rich where I live (among other reasons). What is most impressive is how well the towns themselves are run, the level of amenities they provide and the quality of the services they provide, based on the tax [...]
Posted in Development, Inequality, Voluntary Society on Nov 15th, 2011
Just finished a book called Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills that Shaped the American Economy. I was uninspired by the book, but it did contain several interesting histories of companies such as Kohler, Hormel, Corning and Hershey that people may find useful. One theme that is woven throughout the book, but not [...]
Posted in Development, Religion on Nov 6th, 2011
No particularly deep point here … but I contend that if we took every single dollar of taxation and instead directed it to religious institutions, we’d be a heck of a lot poorer today than otherwise. I used to think precisely the opposite.
Posted in Development, History on Jun 10th, 2011
(wintercow: This is part 2 of a series from guest blogger Michael Marotta). Detroit was unimportant when the Federal Reserve Board was created in 1912. Federal Reserve Banks were established in Cleveland and Chicago, also both St. Louis and Kansas City; but, like the entire West between Dallas and San Francisco, Michigan was still an economic [...]
Posted in Development, History on Jun 9th, 2011
(wintercow: I have asked Michael Marotta to put together a few posts on his observations from living in Michigan, this is part 1 of a 2 part series) Every Labor Day since 1961, several thousand Michiganders walk across the Mackinac (rhymes with Saginaw; honest) Bridge that ties the “U.P.” (Upper Peninsula) with the “Mitten” (Lower [...]
Posted in Development on Dec 9th, 2010
In today’s headlines: Another 17 of America’s richest people, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, junk bond pioneer Michael Milken and AOL co-founder Steve Case, have pledged to give away most of their wealth. … those who pledge are committing to give away at least half of their wealth to philanthropic causes either before or after they [...]
Posted in Development on Sep 22nd, 2010
From Bret Stephens at the WSJ: but my own impression of Ahmadinejad was that he was easily the smartest guy in the room. He mocked us in a way we scarcely had the wit to recognize. We belittle him at our peril.
Posted in Development on Jul 1st, 2010
Output fell by over 30% during the Great Depression. Unemployment was 25% and more than half of Americans did not work. The Depression lasted for over a decade. Yet, during the decade of the 1930s, life expectancy at birth increased by more than 6 years. Now this is not likely due to the fact that [...]
Posted in Development on Jul 23rd, 2008
And why not elsewhere? It is a popular question. A recent paper sheds additional light: This paper sets out to test, with a formal computational general equilibrium (CGE) model, the role of trade with the New World, and trade itself, in explaining the growth of productivity and income in Industrial Revolution Britain. We find, to [...]
Posted in Development, Education on May 2nd, 2008
This paper examines why developed countries are monogamous while rich men throughout history have tended to practice polygyny (multiple wives). Wealth inequality naturally produces multiple wives for rich men in a standard model of the marriage market. This paper argues that the sources of inequality, not just the level of inequality, determine the equilibrium degree [...]
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