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Bryan Caplan: March 2008
An Author Archive by Month (38 entries)
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March 31, 2008
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
If you think that James Hamilton is just a brilliant quant, think again: He's also a sensitive humanist. Here's a moving tale of his father-in-law's last year:Jack's last year was not an easy one. Everything was becoming increasingly difficult, and... MORE
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
A lot of folks are outraged that Jamie-Lynn Spears is pregnant. I fail to see the problem. Jamie-Lynn is clearly not going on welfare; her single motherhood will not financially burden any of the people who are complaining. And at... MORE
March 30, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
A while back on blogged on the fascinating fact that the religious gender gap is bigger in more advanced societies. In societies where men and women are "socialized" to be the same, they are actually more religiously different. (In case... MORE
Microeconomics
Bryan Caplan
Remember Joel Waldfogel's The Tyranny of the Market? Waldfogel's thesis, as he explains in Slate: "For small groups with preferences outside the norm, the market often fails to deliver." That sounds like bad news for me, because I'm a member... MORE
March 28, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
When I was reading some famous quotes about newspapers, I came across Jefferson's famous line that, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
More educated people almost always have more sensible beliefs than less educated people. I've said it many times. But this Wednesday at lunch, Erik Snowberg from Stanford pointed out an interesting counter-example: Less educated people have less biased beliefs about... MORE
March 27, 2008
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Bryan Caplan
After I do my taxes, I often start thinking about retirement planning. Here's an old NYT column where Austen Goolsbee gives some sage advice:You probably have not given much thought to political tax risk, however, or perhaps have even heard... MORE
Politics and Economics
Bryan Caplan
You all know what Brad DeLong thinks about George Bush. Well, that's what I think about politicians in general. Even so, politicians almost never make me angry. I expect them to be atrocious, and I'm rarely disappointed. When I hear... MORE
Political Economy
Bryan Caplan
Suppose someone said: "People drive 5-15 miles over the speed limit. It's obvious, then, that speed limits have no effect on how people drive." It's a pretty silly argument, isn't it? People drive 5-15 miles over the speed limit in... MORE
March 26, 2008
Economics of Education
Bryan Caplan
I'm frankly puzzled by Tyler's latest attack on the signaling model of education. Not only does he merely repeat an argument that I previously answered; but he fails to tell readers about a new and improved version of his argument... MORE
March 25, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Sunday's Simpsons re-run was new to me, and I laughed so hard my I couldn't get out the words to explain the joke to my sons:Homer [mockingly]: Ooh, the PATRIOT Act is so terrible! The government might find out what... MORE
Economics of Education
Bryan Caplan
Here's Richard Posner being unusually blunt and insightful even for him:From the standpoint of most teachers, right up to and including the level of teachers of college undergraduates, the ideal student is well behaved, unaggressive, docile, patient, meticulous, and empathetic... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
One of Robin Hanson's greatest unpublishable papers has finally been published. "Showing That You Care: The Evolution of Health Altruism" appears in the latest issue of Medical Hypotheses. Here's Robin summarizing the paper and his decade-plus struggle to publish it.... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Yesterday I did a 10-minute interview in my office with self-experimentalist and diet guru Seth Roberts. Today he blogged it:My self-experimentation inspired Bryan Caplan to do his own self-experiment: Could he lose weight by eating less without discomfort? He did... MORE
March 24, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
I often go to movies alone. Tyler convinced me to try, and I haven't looked back. So naturally I'm delighted to hear that S.C Noah Uhrig has found that "Cinema Is Good for You":Using data from wave 12 of the... MORE
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
Over at the Freakonomics blog, Ian Ayres lists Emerson as a famous opponent of tipping, and offers this quote as evidence:I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, yet it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have... MORE
March 22, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
Reading Tim Harford's "Is Divorce Underrated?" in The Logic of Life got me wondering about the root causes of divorce. I want to create a list of "main" root causes, not partition logical space; at the same time, I want... MORE
March 19, 2008
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Bryan Caplan
Yes or no: Is financial "contagion" the result of statistical discrimination? I.e., is it just a case where all financial institutions of a given type get judged by the average quality of their type?... MORE
March 18, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
In The Logic of Life, Tim Harford repeats an argument about divorce that I've often heard economists make. One of the challenges that Gary Becker tackled, he explains, is the sharp increase in divorce. Tim goes on:Some commentators have blamed... MORE
March 17, 2008
Economic Methods
Bryan Caplan
In most twin studies, the twins themselves (or their parents) report "twin type" - i.e., whether the twins are identical (monozygotic/MZ) or fraternal (dizygotic/DZ). This is reasonably accurate, but falls far short of DNA testing. Most behavioral genetic studies rely... MORE
March 14, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
Last time I checked, there weren't any ads for popular DVDs in the American Economic Review. But after watching the first few discs of plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck, I feel inspired to write a pulpy pitch for economists. Here goes:Watch...... MORE
March 12, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
All the parents of multiple children I know admit that they stress less about - and do less for - the later arrivals: "We went crazy baby-proofing when we had our first baby; but by the time his sister came... MORE
Politics and Economics
Bryan Caplan
Here's a neat piece on the peculiar status of John McCain in Poole and Rosenthal's ambitious empirical analysis of Congress:Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, the two authors of the most widely used estimates of the ideal points of members of... MORE
Economic Methods
Bryan Caplan
The true author of each of these sentences is a noted Nobel prize-winner. Still, if a grad student wrote any of them, he should be embarrassed. I italicize the words that make each sentence blush-worthy, and follow each with a... MORE
Economic Methods
Bryan Caplan
Dan Phiffer, a blogger I met at SXSW, has set up a little "wisdom of crowds" experiment on his blog. Check it out, and see if you can make the crowd a little wiser. :-)... MORE
March 10, 2008
Economic Methods
Bryan Caplan
Murray Rothbard seems to misunderstand some elementary lessons about monetary economics. He was a brilliant polymath, so it's hard to believe that this was simple ignorance. Perhaps he got locked into these errors early in his career, and never broke... MORE
Monetary Policy
Bryan Caplan
I just read Murray Rothbard's The Case Against the Fed, and it brought back to mind my youthful exposure to his whole approach to monetary economics. (See here, here, and here for more). My mature view is that there are... MORE
March 9, 2008
Labor Market
Bryan Caplan
I had a shockingly large turnout for my talk at SXSW Interactive in Austin. But the real surprise came during the book signing. I was seated next to Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, and got a glimpse of... MORE
March 6, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I just finished re-reading The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris. It holds up like few other books do. But perhaps the weakest part is her discussion of counter-examples - Traits where parenting does seem to make a big difference. The... MORE
March 5, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons and the father of the thousands of role-playing games it spawned, has died. And while I think he made a bundle off of his ideas, he only got a small fraction of the... MORE
March 4, 2008
Political Economy
Bryan Caplan
Thursday through Sunday, I'll be at the 2008 Public Choice meetings for the first time since I became a dad. Reviewing the schedule, here's what stands out to me:Mitchell, Matt — Justices, Presidents and Nominations: A Public Choice Model of... MORE
Politics and Economics
Bryan Caplan
Bhagwati says Hillary's worse than Obama:[W]hereas Mr Obama’s economist is Austan Goolsbee, a brilliant Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD at Chicago Business School and a valuable source of free-trade advice over almost a decade, Mrs Clinton’s campaign boasts of no... MORE
Macroeconomics
Bryan Caplan
James Hamilton is one of the few macroeconomists whose short-run forecasts never sound like quackery. His latest analysis is full of insight:Some analysts are saying that Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is walking a tightrope-- if he does not drop interest... MORE
Political Economy
Bryan Caplan
Selwyn Duke says it short and sweet in "Why Most Voters Shouldn't Vote":Most of us agree that having an educated populace is a prerequisite for a sound democratic republic. We also know that not everyone is well-educated. Thus, it cannot... MORE
March 3, 2008
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
It's "kidult":While many people in their forties have families and responsibilities, an increasing minority still resemble teenagers. Scary, wrinkled, grey-haired teenagers, with some kind of terrifying premature ageing disease, but teenagers nonetheless. It’s enough of a phenomenon to have been... MORE
March 1, 2008
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Bryan Caplan
The world's gone topsy-turvy: Last night my wife read me this graphic novel. It's funny, informative, honest, and rated R. Enjoy.... MORE
Economics and Culture
Bryan Caplan
Patri son of David son of Milton begins by approvingly quoting Stu:When I have a problem that concerns one of my kids... I could visualize my child standing on the other side of a line, next to "The Problem", with... MORE
Politics and Economics
Bryan Caplan
Jeremy Horpedahl argues that you can make most public support for bigger government vanish simply by mentioning that more spending means higher taxes. I'd like him to be right. But I'm not convinced. First, overall government spending passes Jeremy's Mueller... MORE
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