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In graduate school, I recall a professor suggesting that the rational expectations revolution would eventually lead to much better models of the macroeconomy. I was skeptical, and in my view, that didn’t happen. This is not because there is anything wrong with the rational expectations approach to macro, which I strong support. Rather I believe .. MORE
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Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
In Revolution, Martin Anderson’s 1988 book about the Reagan revolution and about Marty’s role in things, Marty tells an interesting story about illegal immigration. On July 6, 1981, the Task Force on Immigration and Refugee Policy met in the White House. Marty was there. The Attorney General, William French Smith, presented his proposal .. MORE
Politics and Economics
Recent referenda on the minimum wage produced some striking results: The California proposal to raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour in steps by 2026 narrowly failed, 51%-49%. Opponents and backers amassed a combined $1.8 million war chest for the issue — the lowest amount of all the propositions on Californians’ ballots this year, according .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
The climate is getting hotter, and people are contributing to the change. What should we do about it? Many people think they’re fighting climate change and keeping the environment pristine by prohibiting development on huge chunks of land in California and otherwise making it prohibitively costly to build there. They’re wrong. Building restrictions in California .. MORE
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In his 2018 book Expert Failure, Roger Koppl discusses the influence of “big players” on expert opinion (pages 214-215, 230). A “Big Player” is an entity whose presence alone can influence individual behavior. Where Roger gives the example of the IPCC and the intelligence system in the US, it seems we’re also seeing it now .. MORE
Politics and Economics
The media is full of analyses as to why Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the recent election. At various times, I’ve mentioned factors like voter frustration over high inflation, illegal immigration, and woke excesses on college campuses. The more I think about the election, however, the less confidence I have in any single explanation. .. MORE
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I enjoy reading intellectual biographies – books dedicated to exploring how a particular person’s thinking evolved and developed through their lifetime. This, too, applies to intellectual autobiographies, where thinkers describe their own journey about how they came to believe what they believe. Of course, all such accounts should be taken with a pinch of salt. .. MORE
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Browse our archive of posts by author last nameBooks: Reviews and Suggested Readings
The 20th century produced fictional dystopias besides real ones, yet the best known – like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – originated in liberal democracies. All, however, owe much to a novel from one from one of the real dystopias, We, by the Soviet Union’s Yevgeny Zamyatin. Born in 1887, Zamyatin became a Bolshevik while a .. MORE
Economic Growth
Juliette Sellgren, a senior and economics major at the University of Virginia, has a podcast titled “The Great Antidote.” In October, she interviewed me about the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. She contacted me because I wrote, as I have done in most years since .. MORE
Central Planning
Economic planning, where the government uses policies such as taxation, subsidies, spending, or nationalization, in order to direct economic outcomes, is back in vogue. Its proponents often liken economic planning to planning done by individuals in the economy. The difference, they claim, is that national economic planning can help accomplish larger economic, national, or social .. MORE
Book Review of What Went Wrong with Capitalism? by Ruchir Sharma.1 Capitalism has a “Pretty Pig” problem. The reference is to a state fair livestock contest, where there is a judging of the beauty of adult swine. There are only two entrants, because adult swine just aren’t pretty. The first pig is brought out, and .. MORE
This book is about how the world’s religions have gained such power, what they do with it, and how abuses of this power can be constrained. —Paul Seabright, The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People,1 p. 6 Paul Seabright’s The Divine Economy investigates how religions gain adherents and acquire wealth and .. MORE
In 1976, Friedrich Hayek effectively read Samuel Smiles out of the classical-liberal movement. In The Mirage of Social Justice, Hayek said that the work of Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) constitutes a snare and a delusion for pro-capitalists. Smiles’s defense of free enterprise, Hayek lamented, seemed to be “the only defence of it which is understood by .. MORE
Characteristically, Friedman had a contrarian take on the Washington consensus. Ironically, the turn toward markets gave new life to the classic institutions of the postwar managed economy, namely the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). No longer working to stabilize a gold-backed currency, the two international organizations offered loans to emerging economies—typically conditional .. MORE
The higher deficits are more likely to result in higher interest rates. I don't expect the Fed to cave easily
Thomas L Hutcheson, November 16