|
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
A Category Archive (287 entries)
|
|
November 6, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
It looks like I will have two books come out in the same month. The first one will be out in two weeks, but you cannot pre-order it on Amazon. The second one will be out in three weeks, and... MORE
November 4, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
The book that Amazon does not want you to read can now be ordered from Barnes and Noble. The cover image is incorrect. The book itself is something that Nick and I are very proud of.... MORE
November 2, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
From someone who works at one of the companies involved in publishing our book: The issue with this book is that the record is locked. What this means is that either Encounter or the publisher has made a sticky change... MORE
November 1, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Am I too weak to resist financial crisis porn? The latest example of my shameful indulgence is The Greatest Trade Ever, by Gregory Zuckerman. As with Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail, I could not put it down. Even... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Nick Schulz did some nosing around, and he thinks this might explain some of the peculiarities of the publication process with our book. Perseus Distribution, a member of The Perseus Books Group, and Encounter Books announced...that they have entered into... MORE
October 29, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I've talked before about the new book by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, titled This Time is Different, which is about how financial crises have been around a long time and have a lot in common with one another. (You... MORE
October 28, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
1. From Poverty to Prosperity is supposed to ship to distributors next week. I'll believe it when I see it. So far, I have not seen any printed version--only electronic galleys. There will be no review copies available prior to... MORE
October 25, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
"Hold on, hold on," [Ruth] Porat said in disbelief. "You're calling me on a Sunday night saying that we just spent the entire weekend on Lehman and now we have this [AIG]? How the [foul language] did we spend... MORE
October 22, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Empire of Liberty, by Gordon Wood. Part of the Oxford series on American history, it focuses on the period 1789-1815. So far, I find myself thinking about it in the context of the Cowen-Hanson theory of political behavior and also... MORE
October 21, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Today I got a free sample chapter from the Stand-Up Economist's The Cartoon Introduction to Economics. It was so good that I immediately pre-ordered the complete book. Keep up the good work, Yoram - you could become the Larry Gonick... MORE
October 15, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I just read my advance copy of Superfreakonomics. Overall, it's better than the original. It's still cutesy, but stronger in the "who cares?" factor.The highlight: "What Do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo Have in Common?," a surprisingly skeptical look at... MORE
October 10, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Larry Gonick has finally completed his magisterial five-volume cartoon history of the universe. It all started with The Cartoon History of the Universe 1 (1990), followed by The Cartoon History of the Universe 2 (1994), and The Cartoon History of... MORE
September 30, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Cato's Caleb Brown and I recorded a podcast about Unchecked and Unbalanced, which I gather will appear in late November. If you listen for the eight minutes or so, I think you will get a rough sense of the issues... MORE
September 16, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
David Gordon, possibly the world's greatest fact checker, reviews Tyler's new book here.... MORE
September 7, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Both forthcoming books now have Amazon pages. Neither is published yet, but pre-orders would be appreciated. From Poverty to Prosperity. Unchecked and Unbalanced.... MORE
August 31, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
No, it's not that he's going to get fired by Harvard for casually invoking the Great Unmentionable to explain intergenerational income correlations. It's that he is teaching a seminar at Harvard for first-year economics students. What 10 books to assign?... MORE
August 30, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Ed Leamer's new book is called Macroeconomic Patterns and Stories: A Guide for MBA's. I do not know why he positioned it as a guide for MBA's. It is clearly a treatise, aimed at the economics profession, to try to... MORE
August 19, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Robin Hanson pulls together various threads and concludes, So it seems the US has a finance and policy elite defined by college ties and related social connections, an elite with a strong sense that only people in their circle can... MORE
August 6, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen points to a fascinating paper that measures prosperity by looking at how much light shows up on a satellite image. It turns out that Nick Schulz was thinking along the same lines when he suggested that the cover... MORE
August 5, 2009
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
From the Stern Business School. Strongly recommended. One excerpt: The whole purpose of securitization is to lay risks off the economic balance-sheet of financial institutions. But the way securitization was achieved, especially during 2003-2Q 2007, was more for arbitraging regulation... MORE
July 31, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
This has been a week of nostalgia. As I moved from 8 Carow Hall to 11 Carow Hall, I learned two things:1. Progress has turned the bulk of my possessions (especially hard copies of articles) into trash. 2. Time has... MORE
July 21, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Michiko Kakitani reviews David Wessel's new book, In Fed We Trust. She likes it more than I do. I think it is too much of an insider's narrative. There are two dimensions on which people differ about the financial crisis.... MORE
July 16, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Will Chamberlain writes (Will, not Wilt), Romer, clearly having been influenced by our ideas about bloodless instability, argues that we need to be able to create new countries, without the use of military force, in order to gain access to... MORE
July 15, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok looks at a study showing the increasing churn in the U.S. economy. The topple rate is a measure of how the rank of large firms on return of assets changes over time. The topple rate has increased by... MORE
July 6, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
A commenter points to Bryan's critique of A Conflict of Visions, which makes a number of good points. Bryan concludes, What really puzzles me is why Sowell did not try a much simpler typology. Why not simply distinguish between advocates... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
My excuse for not reading A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell was that I had already read a fair amount of his other work, and how much new could he have to say? But John Baden pressed me to... MORE
July 1, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Reviewing Tyler Cowen's Create Your Own Economy, Ben Casnocha writes, when culture is free and a click away, as it is on blogs and Twitter and the broader Internet, we sample broadly and consume it in smaller chunks: "When access... MORE
June 24, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I have temporary custody of a draft manuscript of a new book by Matt Ridley. The title of the book is tentative, but the subtitle is "Economic progress and the evolution of the future." Once the book comes out, it... MORE
June 20, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Charles I. Jones and Paul M. Romer write, By something like 1300 A.D., China was the most technologically advanced country in the world, with a large integrated population. According to the Lee model, it should have persisted indefinitely as the... MORE
June 10, 2009
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Daron Acemoglu writes, [Prior to 1800,] growth was never based on continuous technological innovations; thus it never resembled the technology-based growth described in Chapters 13-15. Third, in most cases economic institutions that would be necessary to support sustained growth did... MORE
June 6, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Robert Burton writes, The message at the heart of this book is that the feelings of knowing, correctness, conviction, and certainty aren't deliberate conclusions and conscious chohices. They are mental sensations that happen to us. That is from the conclusion... MORE
June 5, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Eric Falkenstein summarizes many books on the financial crisis, concluding For me, the best explanation comes from two parts. Stan Liebowitz's account on how we slowly eroded mortgage standards with the best intentions, led by academia, regulators, legislators, and investment... MORE
June 2, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
How markets free individuals from degrading family ties.Approaching several people for loans before getting one is not merely an inconvenient outcome of the financial shallowness of the informal sector, but a source of stress and shame.For migrants who have left... MORE
June 1, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I really liked Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 A Day. Westerners tend to think of the world's bottom billion as charity cases. The harsh and amazing reality, though, is that they largely stand on... MORE
May 29, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
A commenter recommended Daniel Nettle's book on Personality. It was a good recommendation. Various lines of evidence suggest that our interest in money--and the material goods it buys--is mainly as a marker of comparative social status. Some more notes and... MORE
May 28, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Did the NBER create an RSS feed for abstracts of new working papers? http://www.nber.org/rss/new.xml I didn't notice this feature at the nber site, but my Google reader suggested it to me.... MORE
May 27, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
He writes, many of the new-fangled types of intelligence that have become popular recently...boil down to general intelligence plus some combination of the Big Five personality traits. Social intelligence...seems rather well predicted by a combination of general intelligence and extraversion,... MORE
May 21, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Geoffrey Miller writes, Many products are signals first and material objects second. I am only a little way past the introduction to Spent. Tyler has already read it. So has Robin. So far, Miller hasn't told me anything that Robin... MORE
May 19, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Michael Lewis cribs from Alice Schroeder's biography. He seems always to have been something of a physical and emotional coward. He is actually less wary in his financial life than he is outside of it. He avoids social conflict, unless... MORE
May 14, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Rightly or wrongly, autistics are often seen as staking out their independence from the group and from group norms. They're seen as questioning the psychological power of the leaders and bullies and indicating that they do not, within their... MORE
May 11, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Russell Hardin describes an economic theory of what people "know" (I keep wanting to substitute "believe" for "know"). we can explain bits of knowledge that a given person has as being substantially affected by the costs and benefits of obtaining... MORE
May 7, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I asked, "If we had a product that allowed us to put questions and answers on your Web site, and this product wouold make all the e-mails go away, would you buy it?" Now here's a good lesson in... MORE
May 6, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I've repeatedly braved mockery by naming Atlas Shrugged as my favorite novel. So I'm overjoyed to see one smart guy move from mockery to admiration as a result of... actually reading Rand's masterpiece. From Patri son of David son of... MORE
April 21, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Here's a note I just sent Mike Huemer:Your latest essay is so wonderful that it gives me an idea: You should write a book on applied ethics, with the immigration essay and the gun control essay as models. Instead of... MORE
April 18, 2009
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
Robert J. Barbera's new book is called The Cost of Capitalism. On p. 182-183, he writes, For Minsky, government activism, to thwart the deflationary effects of banking crises, is the cost of capitalism, In the preface, he writes, Minsky's thesis... MORE
April 4, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Last year, I bought The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels, which in turn led me to buy dozens of its recommendations. I'd like to blog virtually every one, but only a handful have enough social science to review at EconLog. ... MORE
March 31, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Jonah argues that we have become belated converts to the Liberal Fascism thesis. And Arnold Kling who said my book was in fact written by three people -- "Goldberg the revisionist historian, Goldberg the outraged conservative child, and Goldberg the... MORE
March 20, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In Be the Solution, Michael Strong writes (p. 66-69), Are altruists occupationally prone to anger? Well,, it turns out that they are, in fact, biologically inclined to be angry and punitive toward those who they perceive to be not being... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Win the Fraser Institute's Money. They want you to enter a contest about what to measure in order to improve public policy. In Be The Solution, Michael Strong cites the Fraser Institute's measures of economic freedom and how well they... MORE
March 17, 2009
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Philip Greenspun writes, The logical conclusion from reading this book is to prefer a new state to an old state, a newly stable state to a long-stable state, and a new industry to an old one. Read the whole thing,... MORE
March 15, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Jennifer Roback Morse was almost my colleague - she left the Public Choice Center in 1996, a year before GMU hired me. She's a libertarian economist, a blogger, and passionate about the economics of the family. I've only met her... MORE
March 13, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I'm reading Be the Solution, by Michael Strong. I'm about 50 pages into it. The book combines a passion for capitalism, a passion for solving social problems, and some New Age spirituality. Think Ayn Rand meets Stephen Covey. I see... MORE
February 27, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen reports on the barbecue competition. He and I, along with a Princeton University Press person, Seth Ditchick (sp?) arrived in time to go to lunch at Oklahoma Joe's. It was the best BBQ I can remember ever having.... MORE
February 5, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
David Henderson
In his excellent post this morning on Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, Bryan Caplan, in my opinion, slightly understated the case for Hazlitt. I agree with everything Bryan said, but he gives the impression that Hazlitt's treatment is simplistic.... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Walter Block has written a new intro to Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson:Writing this introduction is a labor of love for me. You know how women sometimes say to each other "This dress is you!"? Well, this book is... MORE
February 4, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller do not come to praise mainstream macroeconomics. Keynes' followers rooted out almost all of the animal spirits...that lay at the heart of his explanation for the Great Depression...They...minimized the intellectual distance between The... MORE
January 24, 2009
The For a New Liberty Book Club continues on Monday, when I'll post my thoughts on chapter 2. I plan on doing a chapter every Monday until the book's done. Anything less would be, as Rothbard loved to say, "Monstrous!"... MORE
January 20, 2009
Here's my plan: I'll lead off each discussion of Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty with (a) a brief summary of the chapter of the week, and (b) some critical comments. But this is your book club, so in the... MORE
January 19, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Two books arrived in the mail while I was away. I was at a Liberty Fund seminar. During a conversation at dinner, someone introduced me to some concepts due to Michael Oakeshott. Gene Callahan explains it, Central to Oakeshott's last... MORE
January 14, 2009
Tyler's been having fun with his MR Book Club on Keynes' General Theory:I will go through the book, chapter by chapter, with an eye toward a deeper understanding of what Keynes wrote and why it is, as Greg says, so... MORE
January 12, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
The latest Critical Review is a full-issue symposium on The Myth of the Rational Voter. Stephen Bennett and CR editor Jeff Friedman lead off with a novella-length frontal assault on the book. Then there's seven more critiques from David Colander,... MORE
January 5, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Despite my admiration for Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe series (which includes his Cartoon History of the Modern World), I can't recommend his Cartoon Guide to American History. It's good on the Indians and slavery, but the rest... MORE
December 29, 2008
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Louis E. Carabini writes, There are those inclined to liberty--freedom of the individual to live his or her life in any peaceful way. And there are those who are inclined to mastery--permitting others to live their lives only as another... MORE
December 24, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
For centuries, the State (or more strictly, individuals acting in their roles as "members of the government") has cloaked its criminal activity in high-sounding rhetoric. For centuries the State has committed mass murder and called it "war"; then ennobled... MORE
December 22, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
During this season of good cheer, I am reading A World Undone, G.J. Meyer's history of the first World War. Men with the power to decide the fate of Europe did the things that brought the war on and failed... MORE
December 16, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
After my my previous post on John Bruer's The Myth of the First Three Years, I sent him the following email:Hi John, I just blogged *The Myth of the First Three Years*, and my readers were interested in knowing your... MORE
December 9, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I read John Bruer's The Myth of the First Three Years en route to Singapore. You might be expecting a rehash of The Nurture Assumption, but this book focuses specifically on attempts to use neuroscience to establish the existence of... MORE
December 1, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
It's amazing that during a resurgence of Somali piracy, I have a colleague who is an expert on both Somalia and piracy. He's Peter Leeson, the Pirate King of Fairfax. And now you can finally pre-order his new economic history... MORE
November 16, 2008
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Reviewing Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion, William Easterly writes, Collier comes perilously close to another statistical fallacy known as selection bias. He chose the countries that belong to his Bottom Billion on the basis of their poverty today, and then... MORE
November 6, 2008
Economic Methods
Arnold Kling
Felix Salmon writes, one of the problems with such research is the way that it's presented to the public, through newspaper and magazine articles, or TED lectures, or the online dissemination of pre-pubication versions of papers. The stuff which gets... MORE
October 22, 2008
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
In response to my post on the porn that is modern macro, readers naturally asked me for alternatives.... MORE
October 12, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Scratch Beginnings is a chronicle of recent college grad Adam Shephard's fascinating self-experiment:I am going to start almost literally from scratch with one 8' by 10' tarp, a sleeping bag, an empty gym bag, $25, and the clothes on my... MORE
September 23, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I recently re-read both volumes of Art Spiegelman's Maus. If you've never heard of it, it's an autobiographical graphic novel where the author gets his father to tell the story of how he survived the Holocaust. The Jews are mice,... MORE
September 14, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
George Will writes, The spontaneous emergence of social cooperation—the emergence of a system vastly more complex, responsive and efficient than any government could organize—is not universally acknowledged or appreciated. It discomforts a certain political sensibility, the one that exaggerates the... MORE
September 7, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder. The book profiles Paul Farmer, a physician who has dedicated his life to improving health in underdeveloped countries, particularly Haiti. Farmer is at least as comfortable living and healing amid squalor as he is... MORE
September 5, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Greg Mankiw has the 8-minute video. It's worth watching. Shiller is a very independent thinker. He says that what we need is more financial innovation, not less. He says that we should not have been trying to urge so many... MORE
August 31, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
The September-October issue of The American. The articles have not yet started dribbling from the dead-tree version to the web site. You can leave aside the article that editor Nick Schulz and I contributed, which is an expansion of the... MORE
August 27, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Bruno S. Frey and Reiner Eichenberger write, externalities are not technologically but rather socially determined. There are no inherent properties of a good or service producing external effects, therefore, citizens have to use the political process to determine what is... MORE
August 26, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
The paperback version of my book is now in stock at Amazon, for the low low price of $12.21. It's got a new introduction, including a reply to several prominent reviews. I think my favorite is my response to Daniel... MORE
August 25, 2008
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
We discuss his new book, The Price of Everything, and spontaneous order vs. central planning and design. Perhaps the most interesting part of the discussion concerns the issue of how to view political decisions. One tends to view them as... MORE
August 6, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, When Scott Page's book The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies came out, I assumed it would be a flabby, politically correct snooze-fest. Over a year ago, I wrote, My guess... MORE
August 4, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Robert Shiller has a new book, The Subprime Solution, due out in three weeks. [UPDATE: if you can't wait for the book, you can go to Mark Thoma is showing a Youtube.] The publication process has gone incredibly quickly. Obviously,... MORE
August 2, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Christopher Howard writes, Some of the largest tax expenditures today appeared as early as 1913...few people actually benefited...The original income tax applied only to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. By the late 1930's, only about 6 percent of Americans... MORE
July 22, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Probably thanks to the new movie trailer, the classic graphic novel The Watchmen is now #2 on Amazon. It's well-deserved. I can't say enough good things about this book - I've read it at least ten times. But for skeptical... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Joe Nocera picks the best business narratives. I assume this means a book that describes an individual, a company, an event, or an era. I agree with him that Barbarians at the Gate (about the RJR-Nabisco takeover) and Liar's Poker... MORE
July 17, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Y: The Last Man is an amazing series of graphic novels about what happens to the world after a suddenly plague eliminates the male gender (minus the title character and his pet monkey). Volume 10, the final book in the... MORE
July 16, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Bruno Frey writes, procedural utility has also been found to play a role in consumers' decisions. The first evidence of this was presented by Kahneman, et al., who investigated customers' reactions to a situation where the price of a good... MORE
July 9, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Clay Shirky writes, If I had to pick one method of rebooting civic life, it would be by finding new ways to grant groups the legitimacy essential to pursuing long-term and constructive goals on their own. This is in the... MORE
July 8, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I went to this event, featuring Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat, authors of Grand New Party. Some observations:... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In The Machinery of Freedom, p. 132, Friedman writes, Imagine buying cars the way we buy governments. Ten thousand people would get together and agree to vote, each for the car he preferred. Whichever car won, each of the ten... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
The book was first published in 1973, with a revised edition in 1989. I just got around to reading it. Some excerpts and my commentary follow.... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
He wrote, The right to decide whether or not I turn on the lights in my house is worth more to me than to my neighbors, so in principle I should be able to buy their permission. The problem is... MORE
June 27, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Here's former Econlog guest blogger Eric Crampton's review of Ariely's Predictably Irrational. Highlight:Taken as a set of lessons for self-improvement, the book is very good... But these sorts of private solutions don’t seem to be Ariely’s main interest. He wants... MORE
June 22, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Drew Westen's The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation came out about a month after my Myth of the Rational Voter. Our sales have been neck-and-neck on Amazon for a long time. But... MORE
June 18, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Eamonn Butler's The Best Book on the Market: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Economy gets right down to business, without any introduction explaining who is the target audience and what they should get out of it. Maybe... MORE
June 17, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Earlier, I wrote in praise of The Price of Everything, Russ Roberts' latest didactic novel. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. I thought his other fictional attempts to teach economics were decent, but in my opinion this one represents a... MORE
June 15, 2008
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
Ruth Lieber says, It's hard to imagine the invisible hand. After all, it's invisible. Leaving things alone, leaving people to their own desires and dreams would seem like the last way to make the world a better place. So most... MORE
June 13, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
If your willingness to pay for my book is greater than $13.99 and less than $19.77, you'll be pleased to learn that you can now pre-order the paperback edition for $14.00. This edition has a new intro where I briefly... MORE
June 6, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Eric Falkenstein is not such a fan of The Black Swan and its author. Taleb’s style is to criticize experts of all sorts severely, while implying that both he and his reader or listener are exempt from their many biases...deflating... MORE
June 4, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I Kindle-bought Simon Winchester's The Man Who Loved China. The "Needham question" is why, if China was so advanced technologically up to 1400, was it so behind 400 years later. That is a fascinating question, but the book is all... MORE
May 29, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I like to catch up on the classics on vacation. Tyler recommended Gogol's Dead Souls. I normally despise blogs with big block quotes, but for the best passage so far in this very very good work, I'll make an exception:Of... MORE
May 24, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I'm Kindling The Pentagon's New Map, an infamous book from 2004 by Thomas P.M. Barnett. I liked this paragraph (on p. 129). A Chinese friend of mine who had been active in the democracy movement explained..."Before Tianenmen, we believed that... MORE
May 12, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
This review suggests a book that reminds me of Robin Hanson and Tyler Cowen. our brains didn't evolve in a way that allowed us to thoroughly evaluate how well our beliefs represent reality. ...Marcus does supply us with a whole... MORE
April 24, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
James Schneider, my best friend from Princeton, has written my favorite novel of the 21st century, entitled Riding Tigers. I'd compare it to A Confederacy of Dunces. It's a coming-of-age story filled with quirky characters, a plot that keeps you... MORE
April 22, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I review Philip Carl Salzman's Culture and Conflict in the Middle East. I write, Salzman sees differences between growing crops and raising livestock. Growing crops fosters a society rooted in the soil, with strict hierarchy and strong, predatory central government.... MORE
April 16, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I just finished Sylvia Ann Hewlett's fantastic Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children (used copies on Amazon going for as little as 8 cents!). This book is full of great material on a wide range of... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
On page 139 of Second Nature, Haim Ofek writes, In close analogy with the female role in sex selection, customers (of both sexes) seem to be highly inquisitive about the merchandise they seek to acquire; thus collecting information, checking warranties,... MORE
April 14, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Second Nature, by Haim Ofek. It was written in 2001. It tries to address some puzzles in evolution and in ancient economic history. For example, why is the human brain overdeveloped, in the sense that it is larger than necessary... MORE
April 8, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Suppose you're writing a popular book. You expect to finish in two years. Your goal is to maximize sales of the book. What's your optimal blogging strategy? Don't mention it until the book is about to be released? Tireless self-promotion... MORE
March 24, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Crisis of Abundance is now in paperback, for ten bucks at Amazon. The fact that Peter Orszag, no ideological fellow-traveler of mine, sounds many similar themes indicates to me that I can feel justifiably proud of the book. Two changes... MORE
March 23, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Murat Iyigun says he cannot wait to get his hands on Joel Mokyr's forthcoming book, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain. Nicholas D. Kristof writes about Matthew Connelly's Fatal Misconception, making it sound like a cross between Liberal... MORE
March 11, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Is on the Claremont Review web site (it did not make the dead-tree publication). How is it that in the 19th century, England came to have dominion over so many lands and so many peoples? Though he uses modern quantitative... MORE
February 29, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Shanghai Daily takes the prize for the strangest review of my book:True, economics is about profit maximization, and when this is considered the central concern of the state, decision-making becomes much easier. But what is wanted today is not rational... MORE
February 19, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
A representative sentence from John Darwin's history of the world since 1400, After Tamerlane (p. 305). The steamship and railway were the battering rams with which European traders could break the monopolies that African coastal elites and their inland allies... MORE
February 11, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
If you haven't read The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris, you simply must. Years later, this paragraph is still with me:People sometimes ask me, “So you mean it doesn’t matter how I treat my child?” They never ask, “So you... MORE
February 8, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Herbert Gintis already wrote a surprisingly critical review of Krugman's last book; now he's written a glowing review of Thomas Sowell's latest, Economic Facts and Fallacies:Thomas Sowell is a serious economist and a fine writer. There is not a single... MORE
February 3, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea and Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, two autobiographical books by Guy Delisle. Pyongyang will blow you away - especially when you realize that this is the most visual story about North Korea that a... MORE
February 2, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Alan Krueger's book tests the popular story that poverty is the root cause of terrorism. Macedonia: What Does It Take to Stop a War? focuses on a similarly popular "root cause" of war: ethnic tension and mistrust. This autobiographical graphic... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
How many times have you seen the bumper sticker "If you want peace, work for justice"? And what do you think the person who pasted that sticker had in mind by "justice," anyway? If you use the other stickers that... MORE
January 31, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Arnold has just read my favorite novel. Here's my reaction to his reaction:What I like is the "in your face" defense of businessmen and the unremitting attack on the "looters" of government. Rand is uncanny in her depiction of government... MORE
January 30, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand and The Dismal Science by Stephen Marglin... MORE
January 23, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Today I kick off Marginal Revolution's Book Forum on Tim Harford's new The Logic of Life. It's a great book, well-written and full of interesting arguments. In later posts (either here or at MR) I'll challenge several of his arguments... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
My review of the book is here. I would argue that it is many books, written by an author with Multiple Personality Disorder. There is Goldberg the revisionist historian, Goldberg the outraged conservative child, and Goldberg the troll. ...The most... MORE
January 21, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I just got my copy of David Henderson's Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. I've loved this book since the first edition, and now that I'm a contributor, I love it all it the more! But seriously, this book is fun to... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Don Boudreaux talks about his new book, Globalization. He does not believe in "victims of trade," "our collective trade deficit," or other popular notions. If you digest his arguments, you will know more about the trade issue than most economists.... MORE
January 13, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Scoff if you must, but I take great joy from most of the negative reviews of my book, especially the ones that analyze my psychology. They are often eerily perceptive. Here's a highlight from the latest one on Amazon: What... MORE
December 31, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Besides Laika, here are three graphic novels I've thoroughly enjoyed on vacation:American-Born Chinese. Blends Chinese mythology with the themes of stereotype accuracy (?) and self-acceptance, without falling into cliche. The tale of the Monkey King works whether you're five or... MORE
December 29, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Power and Plenty is the name of a new book by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke. Chapter 6, "Trade and the Industrial Revolution," is worth reading.... MORE
December 27, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Laika, a semi-historical graphic novel about the famed canine cosmonaut, may be the best dog story ever told. I was on the verge of tears by the end. As he tells the tale of the first Earthling in space, writer-artist... MORE
December 21, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I still remember Ben Bernnake telling me: "Having a good paper isn't enough. You've also got to think about moichendizing." I took his lesson to heart - and then some. The more I thought about my book's eye-candy cover, the... MORE
December 19, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
David Leonhardt says that it is Overtreated, by Shannon Brownlee. it’s the natural outgrowth of our fee-for-service health care system. It turns doctors into pieceworkers, as Ms. Brownlee puts it, “paid for how much they do, not how well they... MORE
December 10, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
The Financial Times has named The Myth of the Rational Voter one of the best books of 2007. And I'm in some good company, though one could argue that the most convincing endorsements come from people who don't share my... MORE
December 9, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
The New York Times gets around to giving a review to Gregory Clark's book, which I called one of the two high-impact economics books of 2007. Ben Friedman writes, he repeatedly insists that this was the world in which humans,... MORE
December 6, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Here are my opinions.... MORE
November 27, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Bill Greene writes, While a major theme of this book is that a historical progress has bubbled up from the bottom -- from the actions of the common men and women of history--a secondary theme is that most of history’s... MORE
November 20, 2007
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Joel Johnson writes, the $400 premium just to get the Kindle reader isn't the last fee you'll pay. I'm not talking about paying for eBooks from Amazon, which are priced typically at $10 or less, but for the additional fees... MORE
November 10, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Is called The Logic of Life. I hated the introduction. At one point, Harford writes, Might there not be such a thing as a rational blowjob? I don't think of myself as a prude, but I wound up muttering to... MORE
November 8, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Clive Crook quotes from Robert Solow's review of Gregory Clark's book. Clark's pessimism about closing the gap between the successful and less successful economies may derive from the belief that nothing much can change unless and until the mercantile and... MORE
October 28, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I never would have expected to enjoy a book about black studies, especially one that refrains from pointed criticism of the field. But things don't always work out as I expect. Yes, I've got a confession to make: I really... MORE
October 24, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Dan Klein closes his critique of The Myth of the Rational Voter with recommendations for the next edition:1. Soften the emphasis on beliefs and bias. Go more with bents. 2. Drop all “rational” talk. Just go with terms like folly,... MORE
October 22, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Last week at George Mason, Dan Klein delivered a lengthy critique of my book at Pete Boettke's seminar. Now Dan's kindly made the full text of his statement available here. His praise on the first page is effusive enough to... MORE
October 19, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
After reading his book One Economics, Many Recipes, I keep imagining myself debating Dani Rodrik...and losing. Kling: I favor limited government. Rodrik: I favor right-sized, adaptive government. Government must select policies and regulations that take into account local history and... MORE
October 4, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Around the GMU lunch table, we've long joked that we ought to ship Tyler Cowen over to Princeton. At GMU, Tyler's contrarian nature and libertarian instincts wage a daily intifada. The best way to bring peace to Tyler's war-torn mind:... MORE
September 12, 2007
Economic Methods
Arnold Kling
In summing up his reaction to Gregory Clark's book, Tyler Cowen writes, Greg wants an explanation with a Malthusian or a Ricardian rigor and logic. I believe our explanations will be more like those of history than of economics. That... MORE
September 10, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Mark Smith's The Right Talk: How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society into the Economic Society is full of insight. He crushes the myth of Republican "bait-and-switch" - the idea that Republicans focus on the culture wars during elections to mask... MORE
September 8, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In the foreword to Imperfect Knowledge Economics, by Roman Frydman and Michael D. Goldberg, 2007 Nobel laureate Edmund S. Phelps writes, The authors argue that if we aspire to build models that apply to modern economies--economies whose central functioning is... MORE
September 6, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I think that Tyler Cowen's first book club experiment has to be counted a success. Check out the comments on the latest post. For example, Gregory Clark, the author of the book under discussion, writes, As I thought about it... MORE
September 5, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I just finished Aubrey de Grey's Ending Aging. I think that anyone who likes reading science books for pleasure would enjoy it. I'll have more to say later. I'm about halfway through Supercrunchers by Ian Ayres. It's about the rise... MORE
September 4, 2007
Price Controls
Arnold Kling
Richard E. Wagner writes, There is an equivalence between a tariff and a quota as these are drawn on the blackboard...They are not, however, equivalent in practice. A tariff and a quota generally involve different institutional frameworks...With the quota, the... MORE
August 29, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
That's an alternate title for my book suggested by Imaginary Politics. I think I would have stuck with The Myth of the Rational Voter, but it's still too bad this wasn't an option in the title contest!... MORE
August 28, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
If neither the typical economist nor Milton Friedman himself qualify as market fundamentalists, who does? The only plausible candidates are the followers of Ludwig von Mises and especially his student Murray Rothbard. The latter does seem to categorically reject the... MORE
August 20, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I'll excerpt quotes from some of these books below. The Bottom Billion, by Paul Collier. This book has been highly recommended by other bloggers affiliated with George Mason, and I agree. His thesis is that economic development is taking place... MORE
August 7, 2007
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
According to Tyler Cowen, it's right here. He says (it's an interview with Bloomberg's Tom Keene) that right now blogs are the best place to learn economics. Probably not if your goal is to pass the exam. But it's an... MORE
August 6, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I'm looking for current events that work well as "hooks" to promote my book. Question: Where in recent headlines do you most clearly see the stamp of voter irrationality? Don't hold back!... MORE
August 2, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Today's the release date for Tyler Cowen's Discover Your Inner Economist. You've lost your chances to read the secret blog and get a personal podcast, but at least you can still buy the book! As I've said before, if you... MORE
August 1, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Russ Roberts is asking readers of his blog to help him name his next book. Is this getting to be a GMU tradition? If so, I think Russ needs to use higher-powered incentives... like... an interview on EconTalk! Trust me,... MORE
July 31, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
True story: While I was on vacation, I got a phone call from Good Morning, America, asking me to talk about my book, The Selfish Reason to Have More Kids. The main problem, I told them, is that a few... MORE
July 30, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Perhaps the most amazing thing about Robin Hanson is his determined literalism. He listens to your exact words, and evaluates your specific statements as true or false. If you want to reach truth, it really helps to have someone like... MORE
July 23, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
The New York Magazine profiles Tyler's new book. My favorite part:Cowen’s book does run up against another kind of scarcity. There are not enough economic tricks that distill neatly into interesting advice. When he discusses the techniques for motivating your... MORE
July 20, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I review "Call of the Entrepreneur." I can imagine "The Call of the Entrepreneur" being shown to people in other countries. It has already been viewed by a large preview audience in Africa. I would like to see it translated... MORE
July 8, 2007
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
This fall in Harvard's introductory class, I think Greg Mankiw should have his students watch The Call of the Entrepreneur. One of the segments is a clear explanation given by a Wall Street lawyer of the value added by financial... MORE
July 3, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Patri Friedman says that John Lott got his facts on hypoallergenic cats wrong... among other things. Anyone want to take sides?... MORE
July 2, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
True order of events: 1. I put my graphic novel on my webpage. 2. Tyler blogged it. 3. Tim Kane read Tyler's blog and emailed me about our shared interests in economics and comics. Plus he turned out to be... MORE
June 30, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Check out The Right Number, an online graphic novel that effortlessly takes you from a charming vignette to an uber-creepy exercise in data mining. Not enough to make you give it a try? Let me add that it's by the... MORE
June 26, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
If Russ Roberts asks you to do a podcast for EconTalk, you'd be a fool to refuse. He gave me the most perceptive and engaging interview I've ever done. (And Robin Hanson tells me the same about his EconTalk podcast,... MORE
June 25, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Here's some advice from Discover Your Inner Economist that I won't be following: Think of "the economics of the family" as The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name. If you are the economically informed member of your family, or... MORE
June 21, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
November 3, 2004 - that's the day the world learned that Bush had been re-elected. I'd like to confess my first reaction to the results. Are you ready for some ugly narcissism? I hope so, because when I saw the... MORE
June 20, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Quick followup on my first guest post for the Economist: I wrote this on Sunday night, when the Amazon rank for Discover Your Inner Economist was about #40,000: Fun as Lott, Frank, and Landsburg’s books are, I don’t expect to... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
For readers who pre-order his forthcoming Discover Your Inner Economist, Tyler Cowen offers access to a secret blog. I did not go for this inducement, but nonetheless found myself holding an advance copy, sent by the publisher. More thoughts below... MORE
June 17, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
It's a great day when my four-year-old sons and I agree on a book. (While we're on that subject, Happy Father's Day!) Our latest pick: William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. This charming picture book will teach you more... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
The Levitt-Lott feud is already the stuff of legends. By billing his latest book as "A Rebuttal to Freakonomics and More," Lott has made it clear that the feud's not over. If you're like me, squabbling is a big turn-off,... MORE
June 15, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
The best sentence I read this week: Brian Doherty has done for twentieth century libertarianism what Tacitus did for first century Rome.That's from Jerome Tucille's review of Radicals for Capitalism. If you haven't read it, you should.... MORE
June 3, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Randall E. Parker's The Economics of the Great Depression costs $125. The contents of the book are outstanding--more on that further on in this post. But the price stands out even more. I believe that one can construct an economic... MORE
May 30, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
My book has been excerpted as a Cato Policy Analysis.... MORE
May 29, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Advising would-be entrepreneurs with no business background, Ben Casnocha writes, Learn by doing, learn by failing. ...Leave the office and go immerse yourself in the life of the customer. ...Your network is probably larger than you think. Somewhere in this... MORE
May 28, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I'm supposed to be on RNN tonight at 8 PM. You can watch the videocast live.... MORE
May 26, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies: DONALD It's, like, I once saw this picture of a snake swallowing it's tail -- Kaufman collapses, puts his head in his hands. KAUFMAN Ourobouros. DONALD I don't know... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
The rumors are true - The Myth of the Rational Voter gets a write-up in tomorrow's New York Times Magazine. Here's tomorrow's story today: Caplan’s complaint is not that special-interest groups might subvert the will of the people, or that... MORE
May 25, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
My first domestic t.v. interview went well, but the airdate will probably be pushed to Monday. Rumor has it that Sunday's New York Times Magazine will mention me, so the producers thought it wise to wait and capitalize on the... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Christopher Hayes writes, the book eats its own tail. Caplan wants to grant a presumptive authority to the consensus view of economists, but the consensus view of economists is that voters are rational, which is, of course, precisely the position... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
One of the reasons that I'm not jumping on the bandwagon for Thomas McCraw's new Schumpeter biography is that I think that Jerry Z. Muller provides more insight into Schumpeter using many fewer words in The Mind and the Market,... MORE
May 24, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I'm supposed to be interviewed tomorrow on RNN's Real Politics Live with Richard French. Just when I was getting comfortable with radio, I have to adapt to TV! P.S. If they put up a videocast, I'll link to it.... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Here's the podcast of my 40-minute Saturday interview with David Strom on Minneapolis's WWTC. Self-evaluation: Good performance by me thanks to a sympathetic host.... MORE
May 22, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Economic conferences rarely produce great papers. Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and the Growth Mechanism of the Free-Enterprise Economies, a conference dedicated to the work of William Baumol, is typically pedestrian, with particularly forgettable contributions from Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow. However, there... MORE
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Arnold Kling
A reader asks, Bryan Caplan's new book (which I look forward to) says voters are irrational. Do you think they would be more or less rational in a society with high migration rates? I am reading Amy Chua's World on... MORE
May 21, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I was just on BBC Radio 3's Night Waves program. Here's the podcast - skip ahead about 20 minutes for my interview. Self-evaluation of my radio performance: Much improved. P.S. This is just a temporary URL; I'll post an update... MORE
May 18, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
My Amazon sales rank has hit #552. What Brad DeLong hears from David Romer carries great weight in this world. Verily.... MORE
May 17, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Brad DeLong passes along a book recommendation. Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter is, [David Romer] says, brilliant: everybody should read it. But you already have ordered your copy, right?... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Robert Solow, in the guise of a review of McCraw's biography, reviews Schumpeter himself. The man was all problems, and one very important idea. Earlier, Solow describes his own experience of Schumpeter. I attended his courses on advanced economic theory... MORE
May 15, 2007
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
One of Tyler Cowen's readers asks for recommendations of books that examine the cultural requirements for liberty, and Tyler has a number of good suggestions. My instinct is to start with an evolutionary perspective. How did we get out of... MORE
May 12, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, and Carl J. Schramm write (p.91), Of the twenty-five largest firms in the United States in 1998, eight did not exist or were very small in 1960. In Europe,... MORE
May 11, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
From the book du jour, Thomas K. McCraw's Prophet of Innovation: Compared to Keynes, Schumpeter had no reason to think that life was something a person could expect to enjoy automatically. It was one thing to grow up in Britain--stable,... MORE
May 3, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Reviewing a new edition of The Road to Serfdom, Roger Kimball writes, In the end, though, the really galling thing about the spontaneous order that free markets produce is not its imperfection but its spontaneity: the fact that it is... MORE
May 2, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Here's me on the BBC's "Thinking Allowed." Just skip ahead about two minutes to get started. I stumbled at the beginning, and I'm still kicking myself for it, but at least it was a learning experience. Hopefully I'll be posting... MORE
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
With his new book, Poverty and Discrimination, Kevin Lang becomes my go-to guy on poverty. I disagree with him on some important and emotional points, and I'll have more to say about that at a later date. But I want... MORE
May 1, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
A student has pointed out that Barnes & Noble is selling my book for just $23.96, 20% off the Amazon price.... MORE
April 26, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I just finished The Difference, by Scott E. Page. I cannot tell whether he has new ideas, or simply weird packaging for ideas that are not very new. He talks so much about prediction markets, sources of cognitive bias, and... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
About a year ago, I asked blog readers to help me pick a title for my book. Now Justin Fox is offering me a catchy title and co-author: I'm thrilled to announce that Bryan and I will be collaborating on... MORE
April 25, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Diane Coyle, in a new book The Soulful Science, writes Branko Milanovic points out that more than a third of Brazilians are richer than the poorest 5% of French people. He calculates a 10% probability that French aid to Brazil...will... MORE
April 23, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
When I read to my kids, I rarely editorialize. I figure that if they want my opinion, they'll ask. But when we read Where Does the Garbage Go? this morning, I had to speak up. As you could guess, the... MORE
April 22, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
More Sex (Steven E. Landsburg's new book), did not turn me on as much as it did Bryan (see here and here). I would give it a mixed review. I think that a good teacher could use some of the... MORE
April 15, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Since my own book is about to come out, it seems like a bad time to praise the competition. But I'm going to do it anyway. Steve Landsburg's More Sex is Safer Sex is fantastic. Once again, Steve has written... MORE
April 13, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
My book now physically exists. I held it in my hands. But never fear, there's still time to pre-order. Why not go ahead? Even if you hate the book, the cover alone is worth the price of admission. :-)... MORE
April 10, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In an interview, Freeman Dyson says, In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status.... MORE
April 8, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
From p. 402 of The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre N. McCloskey: Associate Justice Holmes declared in the Buck v. Bell opinion of 1927 that "it is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for... MORE
April 4, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Robert L. Hetzel writes, it is hard to account for the near-consensus in macroeconomics in the post-war period and also the antagonism that met Friedman’s challenge to that consensus. In order to place his ideas in perspective, this section provides... MORE
March 28, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
The Science of Success, by Charles G. Koch, takes an "Austrian" approach to business. Nick Schulz liked it. Koch has published a new book that provides people who care deeply about business and politics something important to think about -... MORE
March 19, 2007
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
Here at GMU, there are always radicals for capitalism. But it is only on 4 PM Wednesday, March 21, that we will have Radicals for Capitalism, and its learned and witty author, Brian Doherty. See here for more info.... MORE
March 18, 2007
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
In the book that everyone is reading but I'm still only 2/3 through, Brian Doherty writes, [David] Friedman points out the intriguing datum that tipping in taxi cabs--almost purely a situation of paying for a public good because of social... MORE
March 4, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In my opinion, the authors of The Logic of Political Survival should not be criticized for mishandling data. They should be arrested. Imprisoned. Only released back into the community with warnings to neighbors to protect your children.... MORE
February 10, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I've been reading drafts of Brian Doherty's history of modern libertarianism since 1994. Now this remarkable labor of love - winningly titled Radicals for Capitalism, is, at last, complete. And it rocks. Even though I've repeatedly read earlier versions of... MORE
February 3, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I was sent a copy of Daniel N. Shaviro's Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March Toward Bankruptcy. Our march toward government insolvency is a complex historical event with multiple causes. The central causes involve health care technology and demographics,... MORE
February 2, 2007
Politics and Economics
Bryan Caplan
The most intellectually serious proponents and fellow travellers of anarchism are, paradoxically, a bunch of stodgy economists. That's one of the lessons of Ed Stringham's new 700-page anthology, Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice. This volume brings... MORE
January 22, 2007
Cross-country Comparisons
Arnold Kling
Shortly before he died, Milton Friedman gave the Wall Street Journal an email interview. China has maintained political and human collectivism while gradually freeing the economic market. This has so far been very successful but is heading for a clash,... MORE
December 11, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
My book won't be out until April, but Princeton University Press has already put up a nifty promotional webpage for it. P.S. You can now pre-order my book from Amazon.... MORE
December 7, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Monday, January 29, PBS will air a 90-minute documentary on Milton Friedman. These folks sent us a press release. Personally, I never check the TV listings. If it weren't for the fact that the Cardinals were in the World Series... MORE
December 4, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
The above graph is lifted from a forthcoming book by Surjit S. Bhalla, called Second Among Equals: The Middle Class Kingdoms of India and China. It shows the share of the middle class in world population rising from 2... MORE
November 27, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I write, Continental Europe is set up to preserve large public sectors, large banks, and large corporations. For individuals, the promise is stable jobs, a stable business environment, and collective sharing of the costs of unemployment,... MORE
November 19, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I just read a good chunk of John Mueller's Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them. It's a mighty blow against the most powerful form of pessimistic bias that's afflicted the... MORE
November 8, 2006
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
Walter Williams writes Professors James Gwartney (Florida State University), Richard Stroup (Montana State University) and Dwight Lee (Georgia University), three longtime colleagues of mine, have recently published "Common Sense Economics." It's a small book, less than 200 pages, that addresses... MORE
October 16, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
from the B-school at Carnegie-Mellon. My top three from the list would be David D. Friedman's Hidden Order, for lively examples and breadth of coverage; Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street, for its explanation of how economic theory applies... MORE
October 13, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I'm in love with the jacket for my book - coming in April, 2007. Kudos for the Princeton University Press art department. Leave it to Robin Hanson, of course, to point out that the jacket is more optimistic than the... MORE
October 8, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I finally got around to reading Richard Bentall's Madness Explained. It's a fun book, but as expected, it falls short of its ambitious title. Bentall's been criticized as a Szaszian, and it's easy to see why. Like Szasz, Bentall is... MORE
September 14, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Don Boudreaux loves Tolstoy too. If only GDP were proportional to literary talent, the Russians would be the richest people on earth.... MORE
August 26, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
My former student Stephen Slivinski, now director of budget studies at Cato, has just published his first book, Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government. There's lots of neat stuff in this book,... MORE
August 10, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Science-fiction author Neal Stephenson, in an interview 18 months ago, said Speaking as an observer who has many friends with libertarian instincts, I would point out that terrorism is a much more formidable opponent of political liberty than government. Government... MORE
August 1, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
...buy a book where I wrote one of the chapters. It's Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion, edited by Edward W. Younkins.... MORE
July 3, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Christopher Chantrill clearly gets my concept of trust cues. [Nicholas] Wade tells his readers other disturbing facts. Genetic analysis strongly suggests that all men are descended from a single male, and all women from a single female. On top of... MORE
June 27, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Crisis of Abundance made a list of ten "books that drive the debate" recommended by the National Chamber Foundation, a group of business leaders. The full list: 1. Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy, by... MORE
June 25, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I have been lucky that my last two book purchases both proved interesting--I think I saw both mentioned on Arts and Letters Daily, so it's not all luck. I have mentioned Frederick Crews' Follies of the Wise. I just finished... MORE
May 30, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I discuss David Warsh's Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations in my latest essay. David Warsh, a uniquely dedicated journalist, turns economics into melodrama. He takes a number of risks, both in terms of content and style, and not all... MORE
May 25, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Don Boudreaux writes (you'll need to scroll down if you follow the link), Arnold Kling is as well-credentialed and technically skilled as any economist. He has a knack for using metaphors and analogies effectively; his sentence construction is clear; he... MORE
May 15, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
On my reading list, a commenter complained that I did not recommend books with which I disagree. Although I disagree with some of Harford, some of Blinder, and much of Warsh, the point is well taken.... MORE
May 12, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
It's all official. My book, entitled The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, will be published by Princeton University Press in early 2007. I put the final version in the mail today. The winner of the... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Greg Mankiw's list has a list of suggested readings for an economics undergraduate that are fun enough that you would not be embarrassed (well, not too embarrassed) reading them at the beach I have no quarrel with his suggestions of... MORE
May 10, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
is here. I should start by saying that the book does not contain a single major policy recommendation that is politically palatable today. That fact will greatly limit its appeal to most Washington wonks. To gauge their reaction to Crisis... MORE
May 1, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Greg Mankiw writes Caplan offers readers a delightful mixture of economics, political science, psychology, philosophy, and history to resolve a puzzle that, at one time or another, has intrigued every student of public policy. (Bryan: You can use that as... MORE
April 20, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
comes from a book review of Richard Parker's biography of John Kenneth Galbraith. LBJ threw away one of his drafts for a speech with the remark: ‘Did y’ever think, Ken, that making a speech on economics is a lot like... MORE
March 24, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
In 1992, I read an essay that changed my life: "Moral Objectivism," by the Wunderkind philosopher Michael Huemer. Even as an undergraduate, Huemer had a gift for making the hardest questions simple: [S]ubjectivism must say (1) that moral judgements are... MORE
March 19, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I'm a huge fan of Judith Harris' The Nurture Assumption, which powerfully debunks the idea that how your parents raised you has a large effect on how you turned out. Now she's got a new book, No Two Alike, which... MORE
February 8, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
If you know anything about my book, you'll wonder why I'd use democratic means to select the title. The main answer, of course, is that Econlog readers are the rational voter exception that proves the irrational voter rule! Here's my... MORE
January 30, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Thanks so much to everyone who suggested titles for my book. I'll be mulling this over for a while, but my readers will be the first to know once I've made up my mind. P.S. Despite the title, I am... MORE
January 27, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Since Arnold is already pumping up my book, and it's been accepted by a major university press, it's time to announce my official Title Contest. If we've learned anything from the success of Freakonomics, it's that titles matter. And while... MORE
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Although I like Bryan Caplan's new book, I disagree with treating government as an elected dictator. Another aspect that troubles me is Caplan's brand of elitism.... MORE
January 17, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I am engrossed by Daniel Brown's A New Introduction to Islam. It's packed with juicy scholarship. A standard history will tell you that Islam swept the Middle East in the space of thirty years. What it won't tell you is... MORE
January 15, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The main finding in Philip Tetlock's awe-inspiring Expert Political Knowledge is that open-minded "foxes" are better predictors than theory-driven "hedgehogs." But toward the end of the book, he has a fascinating chapter about a fascinating exception. Background: There's a whole... MORE
December 26, 2005
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Philip Tetlock, one of my favorite social scientists, is making waves with his new book, Expert Political Judgment. Tetlock spent two decades asking hundreds of political experts to make predictions about hundreds of issues. With all this data under his... MORE
December 5, 2005
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
About Tim Harford's book, The Undercover Economist, I write, I am tempted to review it as if it were a textbook. Not because it resembles the freshman textbooks that are commonly used today, but because it resembles what I believe... MORE
November 29, 2005
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Patri Friedman has posted his interview of the Underground Economist himself, Tim Harford, at Catallarchy. My main quibble is when Tim says: People who oppose the use of markets in healthcare can point to two genuine problems: illness is extremely... MORE
November 10, 2005
Labor Market
Bryan Caplan
Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun wisely tells us: "Every Hun has value even if only to serve as a bad example." In this spirit, a coven of grad students has produced videos of nine really bad interviews to illustrate... MORE
November 4, 2005
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I'm joining the chorus of fans of Tim Harford's new book, The Undercover Economist. There's something good on practically every page, and though I furrowed my brow in skepticism every few pages, too, that's a pretty good batting average. As... MORE
October 18, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
I discuss the economics of accelerating growth in my latest essay. If output per person in 2025 is more than 5 times what it is today, then the economy will have won the race. That means that all of the... MORE
October 7, 2005
Labor Market
Bryan Caplan
Andrew Gelman links to a tantalizing summary of Warren Farrell's Why Men Earn More. As best as I can tell, Farrell's got 25 new control variables to add to the standard wage regressions. He... claims to have identified twenty-five tradeoffs... MORE
September 16, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
People occasionally ask me what Thomas Szasz's best works are. The optimal introduction is The Untamed Tongue. It's a book of aphorisms that cuts to the heart of his philosophy of mind. If it doesn't make you worry that there's... MORE
September 3, 2005
Growth: Causal Factors
Bryan Caplan
At the semester's first Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Workshop, Tyler Cowen talked about the political economy of the Mexican village of Oapan. (For all the details, by his Markets and Cultural Voices). According to Tyler, being the political leader of... MORE
September 2, 2005
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Jeff Hummel, one of the most knowledgeable historians I personally know, has an interesting review online of Thomas Woods' Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. I haven't read the book, but the review is a fun read. I particularly liked... MORE
August 6, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
The other day I was reading Martha Stout's The Sociopath Next Door. Although it's engaging, it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. But it did remind me of a question I've wondered about before: Is homo economicus a... MORE
August 2, 2005
Cross-country Comparisons
Bryan Caplan
Alex Tabarrok's llama statue reminds me of an argument by Jared Diamond that no longer convinces me. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond forcefully argues that an important reason Eurasia was more economically successful than the rest of the world... MORE
July 25, 2005
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I continue to praise Perry Mehling's biography of Fischer Black. Thanks to an outstanding new intellectual biography by Perry Mehrling, I have been reminded of Fischer Black's distinctive perspective on finance and economics. I want to use... MORE
July 20, 2005
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
A while back, Tyler Cowen recommended Perry Mehrling's book on finance theorist Fischer Black. I read it while on vacation this past week. I strongly endorse Tyler's recommendation. Black co-developed a formula for option pricing which garnered a Nobel Prize,... MORE
July 17, 2005
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I'm in the last stages of my book on voter irrationality. Last week, I reached the part in my plan when I search for recent, relevant articles that I've missed. My plan: Scan all the articles published from 1999 to... MORE
July 5, 2005
Economic Philosophy
Arnold Kling
James Q. Wilson and I offer similar criticisms of the economics book that became a best-seller. Wilson writes, My advice is this: if you find something that intrigues you in Freakonomics, do not rely on the book to give you... MORE
June 28, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Today I had a debate (well, more of an amiable public dialogue) with Alex Tabarrok at the Wall Street Journal's Econoblog. The topic: Non-Levitt freakonomics. Check it out here.... MORE
June 13, 2005
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
Nobody has tagged me (this reminds me of high school dances, somehow), but I'll have a go at it anyway: First, restricting to economic topics. Number of books I own: I would guess around two hundred. Last book I bought:... MORE
June 1, 2005
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, I will be teaching Ph.d. macro this fall. Here is a draft of my reading list. Comments are open and further suggestions are welcome I think that macro tends to get too buried in theory. I like... MORE
May 19, 2005
Labor Market
Bryan Caplan
David Card has a new study arguing that immigration has basically no effect on the wages of domestic low-skilled workers. This confirms his earlier results on the famed Mariel boatlift, when Castro freed 125,000 Cubans to flee to Miami. Is... MORE
May 3, 2005
Economic Philosophy
Arnold Kling
Andrew Samwick writes, Economics consists of exactly two ideas: optimization and equilibrium. Optimization is the process by which all economic agents--households, workers, firms, governments--achieve their objectives subject to constraints on their resources. It leads to the familiar condition that an... MORE
April 27, 2005
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
I just finished reading The Economy of Cities, a book written in 1969 by Jane Jacobs. An excerpt from her conclusion: The primary economic conflict, I think, is between people whose interests are with already well-established economic activities, and those... MORE
March 28, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I can't believe I took so long to discover Thomas Gilovich's excellent How We Know What Isn't So. I've read almost all of the semi-popular books in cognitive psychology, and this turns out to be one of the best. All... MORE
March 23, 2005
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
The bubble in economics blogs continues to inflate. One of the newer entrants is Freakonomics, from Steve Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I am becoming more and more dependent on William Parke's Economics Roundtable. At some point, the number of... MORE
February 27, 2005
Energy, Environment, Resources
Bryan Caplan
There's a reason why Bjorn Lomborg has been rewarded for writing The Skeptical Environmentalist with a pie in the face. The book's good, very good - and that's bound to anger the touchy, gloomy Greens he's debunking. The book has... MORE
February 25, 2005
Politics and Economics
Bryan Caplan
To finish off my celebration of Ayn Rand's 100th birthday (see also here and here) now let me turn to her contribution to social science. I remember that a critic of Murray Rothbard's work in economics, history, and philosophy quipped... MORE
February 6, 2005
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
Ayn Rand has some lame philosophical arguments, including a tortured "proof" that "life is the standard of value" and an odd effort to base individual rights on ethical egoism. So how can I maintain that Rand the philosopher is worth... MORE
February 3, 2005
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
Ayn Rand's novels blend two distinct genres. She fits squarely into the tradition of the Russian philosophical novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. But she is also a plot-rich Romantic in the tradition of Victor Hugo. Some standard features of the... MORE
February 2, 2005
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
Today is Ayn Rand's one hundredth birthday, and I want to party down. I probably wouldn't be a professor if it weren't for her, and even if I were, I doubt I would be having a fraction of the fun.... MORE
January 23, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
The master of horror is of course not Stephen King, but H.P. Lovecraft. (My personal favorite is "The Dunwich Horror"). Lovecraft lived a life of aristocratic penury, and he wasn't too happy about it: "He who strives to produce salable... MORE
January 19, 2005
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Steve Landsburg has some powerful moral arguments for having another kid. (See the chapter "People Wanted" in Fair Play). Contrary to organizations like Zero Population Growth, the externalities of another productive human being are positive, not negative. But like most... MORE
January 14, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
While I'm in the middle of reading about "network commonwealths" in James C. Bennett's The Anglosphere Challenge, the National Intelligence Council, a CIA affiliate, has just released Mapping the Global Future. Most forecasts indicate that by 2020 China’s gross national... MORE
November 24, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Following Marginal Revolution's recommendation, I bought Ian J. Deary's Intelligence, which is a summary of research on IQ testing. For me, the most interesting chapter was on the Flynn effect (see also this post), which is that IQ scores have... MORE
September 22, 2004
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
My TechCentralStation friends let me write a pitch for my book. I believe that economists have a right to feel that we have superior knowledge on issues of public policy. However, the implication of this is not that we should... MORE
September 14, 2004
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
Finally, Learning Economics is available for purchase. You may order it here. Some endorsements may be found here. The book starts out, Each year, thousands of people study economics, but not many learn it. Most of them leave their economics... MORE
July 6, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Reading Robert Fogel's latest book, I noticed that he provided some simple but paternalistic proposals for health care. Robert Fogel says that we should stop thinking of the problem of poverty and health care as one of insurance and instead... MORE
January 17, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
David Friedman uses evolutionary psychology to solve some puzzles in economics. Human beings have a functional module in their minds that deals with exchanges with other human beings. One feature of that module, hard-wired in by evolution, is that human... MORE
January 15, 2004
Economic Philosophy
Arnold Kling
Jerry Muller, author of The Mind and the Market, gives a brief synopsis of his book. In previous societies, one's status as a peasant, artisan or merchant often defined one totally. Being a member of a guild, for example, encompassed... MORE
December 31, 2003
Economic Methods
Arnold Kling
A while back, we discussed whether math is necessary for economic education. Thomas Sowell gives his view. Introductory economics is too often taught as if the students in it were all potential economists who had to be introduced to the... MORE
February 12, 2003
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
In reading The Next Fifty Years, a collection of essays edited by John Brockman of Edge.org, I was struck by the following quote from Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence laboratory. Our thirty-year goal is to have such exquisite... MORE
January 26, 2003
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
When asked by edge.org's John Brockman what he would do if he were science advisor to the President, Steven Pinker's reply included: Observers from our best science writers to Jay Leno are frequently appalled by the innumeracy, factual ignorance, and... MORE
Return to top
|
