In this month's article, Fred McChesney discusses some of the path-breaking work of economist Armen Alchian. McChesney shows that Alchian not only came up with important insights about property rights, but also looked at the effect of time on costs in a way that economists had not done rigorously. Alchian also was one of the first, if not the first, practitioners of the event study so beloved by financial economists. MORE

"With government and compulsory social insurance deficits running over 12 per cent of gross national product in Britain, over 8 per cent in France and over 7 per cent in Germany in 2009, with 2010 promising to repeat much the same, Europe's economy seems to be wading along knee-deep in red ink. Most commentators profess to be scared by the prospect, not so much because of the 2009 and 2010 numbers, but because of what they portend for the years of normalcy that must follow the exceptional emergency from which we are just emerging. Others, a defiant minority, call this "deficit hysteria". Sir Samuel Brittan, the senior columnist of the Financial Times, explains that if recovery comes, it will soak up the deficit and reduce the debt, while if it does not come soon, it won't but nor ought it to. Keynes might not have put it differently." MORE