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Economic History
A Category Archive (257 entries)
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February 5, 2012
Economic History
Arnold Kling
John Cochrane writes, I ran across a fascinating article, "A Post-Mortem on Transition Predictions of National Product," in the 1946 Journal of Political Economy, by Lawrence Klein. Klein, who would go on to create the main macroeconomic forecasting models and... MORE
January 11, 2012
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
On July 15, 1915, the New York Times ran an interview with legendary economist Irving Fisher. His response to the Great War was staunchly pacifist:After this war is over, of course, Europe will find herself prostrated economically, by the destruction... MORE
December 26, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Here's the most fascinating exhibit from the Holocaust Museum's "State of Deception" exhibit:(full-size version) The top and bottom read: "Hate and annihilation to our enemies. Freedom, justice, and bread to our people." But it's the four heads of the dragon... MORE
December 12, 2011
Economics of Education
Bryan Caplan
Further critique of Goldin-Katz in David Labaree's Someone Has to Fail:Early in the book, the authors [Goldin and Katz] identify what they consider to be the primary "virtues" of the American education system... "public provision by small, fiscally independent districts;... MORE
December 8, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
On June 6, 1915, the New York Times ran a fascinating story on the socialist response to World War I. A few highlights:Karl Kautsky, editor of Die Neue Zeit, and probably the most influential Socialist in Germany today, attempts to... MORE
October 20, 2011
Economic Methods
Bryan Caplan
When I received Kahneman's Thinking: Fast and Slow, I opened to a random page, and found a big error:The idea that large historical events are determined by luck is profoundly shocking, although it is demonstrably true. It is hard to... MORE
October 9, 2011
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Worth a listen. In fact, he almost endorses my most wrong view!! He says that currency and markets emerged from plunder. However, he does say that there were early trading nations that were not plundering empires. He also has provocative... MORE
October 5, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Milton Friedman's Free to Choose t.v. series is now 30 years old. To celebrate, PBS is re-running highlights, followed by new panel discussions. I was just on one of these panels: me, Austan Goolsbee, Amity Shlaes, and Clarence Page. (Pre-recorded;... MORE
Economic History
David Henderson
I woke up in Turkey at 4:00 a.m. Thursday, went to my computer, and found out that Steve Jobs had died. I titled this post as I did because "insanely great" was the term Jobs loved to use to discuss... MORE
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
He writes, First, America and the world were victims of their own success. Rapid productivity increases in manufacturing had outpaced growth in demand, which meant that manufacturing employment decreased. Labor had to shift to services. The problem is analogous to... MORE
October 3, 2011
David Graeber writes, Anthropology is full of examples of societies without markets or money, but with elaborate systems of penalties for various forms of injuries or slights. And it is when someone has killed your brother, or severed your finger,... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Ayn Rand raised me to despise Progressive education. Now that I'm reading Diane Ravitch's Left Back, though, I'm learning that "Progressive education," like Walt Whitman, contained multitudes. Ravitch identifies four distinct - and often conflicting - trends:First was the idea... MORE
October 2, 2011
Economic History
Arnold Kling
1. Stephen Williamson gives a platform to Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian to defend a recent controversial op-ed. most of the increase in per-capita output that occurred after 1933 was due to higher productivity - not higher labor input. The... MORE
September 23, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
A great debating point by Don Boudreaux:[Pat Buchanan] frequently asserts that 19th-century America's policy of relatively high tariffs, along with its impressive economic growth, proves that protectionism promotes prosperity. End of story; full stop; no further analysis is necessary. Fact... MORE
September 17, 2011
Economic History
David Henderson
In his letter, he described Keynes as "the one really great man I ever knew, and for whom I had unbounded admiration. The world will be a very much poorer place without him." This is quoted in a book that... MORE
September 11, 2011
Economic History
Arnold Kling
1. Doug Irwin offers a monetarist explanation of the 1937 recession, based on gold sterilization. Scott Sumner is no doubt pumping his fist in the air. 2. Daniel Little on the Great Factor-Price Equalization. 3. Here is a thought I... MORE
September 7, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The noble Michael Clemens is taking the efficient, egalitarian, libertarian, utilitarian way to double world GDP to the masses. But one passage made me furrow my brow:All the economic and social arguments against immigrant entry to the workforce could be... MORE
July 24, 2011
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I've finished Manias, Panics, and Crashes, 5th edition. Some thoughts in addition to my previous ones (here and here). p. 55: The Kipper- und Wipperzeit [according to Wikipedia, translates to tipper and see-saw time] of 1619-1623...got its name from the... MORE
July 21, 2011
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
About the time the first edition came out, in 1978, I read it and also took a course from Charles Kindleberger. At the time, he was in his late 60s, and with his quavering voiced seemed even older. I wanted... MORE
July 20, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
In Why Not?, Nalebuff and Ayres draw our attention to inventions that took forever to arrive but seem obvious in retrospect:Think about the innovation of one-way tolls or rolling luggage. Prewashed lettuce, the ultimate low-tech invention, has become a multibillion-dollar... MORE
July 15, 2011
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
I've set up the resource page for my recent "Liberty and Foreign Policy" debate with Ilya Somin, including the complete audio (now in mp3), my Powerpoint slides, and Somin's outline. Enjoy.P.S. Special thanks to Chris Baylor for organizing and handling... MORE
July 13, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
People frequently try to refute my pacifism by merely saying "Hitler." "If only Britain and France had declared war and unseated Hitler when he occupied the Rheinland in 1936!" they say. My quick reply is, "Yes, but I've got a... MORE
July 2, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
More interesting stuff from Melvin Konner's The Evolution of Childhood:In the Six Cultures Study child rearing and behavior were measured among five farming and herding societies (in Kenya, the Phillipines, Japan, India, and Mexico) and a New England town... There... MORE
June 21, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
One of Tacitus' most famous lines is "They make a desert and call it peace." What I didn't realize until I read The Agricola is that Tacitus is quoting (or paraphrasing) Calgacus, an enemy of Rome. The full speech (chaps... MORE
June 3, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
[Warning: Spoilers for a 2004 movie].At the end of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, we discover a bizarre conspiracy: In the 1970s, a group of people whose loved ones were murdered move to the middle of nowhere in order to... MORE
June 1, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The Junkers didn't just make a noble attempt at tyrannicide in 1944; according to Exceptional People, Imperial Germany's landed nobility were also good on immigration:Faced by labor shortages because of Germany's economic boom, Prussian landlords recruited Poles and Ukrainians to... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
More from Exceptional People:On average, 5 percent of the populations of Britain, Ireland, and Norway emigrated every decade between 1850 and 1910, which increased to 14 percent of the Irish population emigrating between 1890 and 1910. By the turn of... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Cambridge University reports on research by economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie. In some communities in Germany, people recorded their possessions at the time of marriage. This can allow Ogilvie to reconstruct the development of the German economy from 1600 to 1900... MORE
May 31, 2011
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
The Gilded Age was no libertarian paradise, and it certainly had far lower per-capita GDP than the modern world. Nevertheless, the Gilded Age was awesome in many important ways. Above all, as Goldin, Cameron, and Balarajan explain in Exceptional People:... MORE
May 16, 2011
Economic History
David Henderson
Don Boudreaux reminds us to read, or reread, Thomas Babington Macaulay's classic, "Southey's Colloquies on Society." In it, Macaulay skewers Southey's reasoning or, more typically, lack of reasoning, about modern society. This is the first time I've read it all... MORE
May 8, 2011
Economic History
David Henderson
One thing I hadn't known is the anti-war, pro-peace aspect of Mothers' Day. An early proponent of Mothers' Day was Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the (pro-war) lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Maybe she had second thoughts.... MORE
May 7, 2011
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
As promised, here is my review essay on Alexander Field's A Great Leap Forward. I think the highlight of the essay is the table that lays out the six eras discussed in the book. How much does the current period... MORE
May 2, 2011
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
That is, from Alexander J. Field's A Great Leap Forward. I rate the book as must-read. It is about the behavior of productivity in various eras of the twentieth century. He rates the 1930's the highest (!) and the 1973-1989... MORE
April 15, 2011
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
I teach an AP economics course, that covers both micro and macro. I do not much care for the AP curriculum, so I try to do things differently. Here are some thoughts, below the fold, on material that I plan... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I'm looking for the best pieces written about the effect of labor-saving devices (dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, disposable diapers, microwaves, etc.) on female labor force participation and gender roles. Economic historians, labor economists, sociologists, autodidacts - what can you tell me?... MORE
April 14, 2011
Economic Education
Arnold Kling
Suppose that you were going to teach an economic history course to high school students. The goal is to offer a better perspective on economic growth and macroeconomic issues than one gets from the usual ahistorical approach. What eras/episodes would... MORE
April 13, 2011
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
David Leonhardt quotes economic historian Alexander Field: In 1941, the U.S. economy produced almost 40 percent more output than it had in 1929, with virtually no increase in labor hours or private-sector capital input Sounds like a jobless recovery. The... MORE
March 14, 2011
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Over the weekend, I was at a seminar that I organized on the historical narrative of the Great Depression. Below the fold, I will summarize some things that came out of it. For me, the most interesting insights concern how... MORE
March 6, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
A forthright admission from Andre Schiffrin's pro-Roosevelt Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War:...Roosevelt took it upon himself to negotiate privately with the Vichy governor of Morocco, Auguste Nogues, and then with General Giraud. FDR, who spoke fluent French, suggested... MORE
February 23, 2011
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
A striking observation from my childhood friend Ghassan Bridi:Had we never invaded Iraq, we may have seen the people of Iraq today take to the streets and topple a despotic dictator in the second most populous Arab country on this... MORE
February 14, 2011
Cross-country Comparisons
Bryan Caplan
Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine firmly supports a simple but shocking theory of Communism: It was the largest cargo cult the world has ever seen. Communist revolutionaries were great at seizing power, but if power were their sole aim, the... MORE
February 13, 2011
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression, Douglas A. Irwin writes on p. 99-100: In terms of political strategy, the Smoot-Hawley tariff represented a huge miscalculation by progressive Republican insurgents...to address the farm situation through a tariff revision. The... MORE
February 12, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
In Mao's Great Famine, Frank Dikötter joins the elite club of historians who live up to their duty to impose "the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong." On purely literary terms I still prefer Jasper... MORE
February 11, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Suppose you grant every nostalgic memory about the wonder of the Fifties. Stipulate that America was packed with happy prosperous one-earner families, cozily protected by their unions and patriotic employers. There's still one wee problem to worry about: nuclear war... MORE
January 27, 2011
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Razib Khan writes, Walter Russell Mead has a fascinating blog post up, The Birth of the Blues. In it, he traces the roots of modern American "Blue-state" liberalism back to the Puritans, the Yankees of New England. This is a... MORE
January 24, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Sumner:My research on the Great Depression convinced me that it was two depressions, occurring one right after the other. A demand-side recession that began around September 1929, and a supply-side depression that began in July 21, 1933 (with another demand... MORE
January 22, 2011
Economics and Culture
Arnold Kling
Bryan is not the first one to worry about schools. In 1962, John Holland Snow accused the educational establishment of subversion. I believe that an educational movement or philosophy which minimizes or denies the possibility of our people and institutions... MORE
January 17, 2011
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
He writes, The reason why it was so easy to sell securities rated triple-A -- like the higher tranches of the now notorious collateralized debt obligations -- was not that every potential buyer was a true believer in the theory... MORE
January 2, 2011
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Again from the Claremont Review of Books, again gated. One enormous divide--far wider than it is today--was between North and South. Between 1865 and 1940, when more than 30 million foreign immigrants moved to the North, only about one million... MORE
December 31, 2010
Economic History
David Henderson
On both of Arnold's points (see "Where I Differ with Some Libertarians,") I agree somewhat with Arnold and disagree somewhat. In this post, I focus on his point #1 about libertarians and foreign policy. Like Arnold and unlike Bryan, I... MORE
December 29, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Again, from Piers Brendon's The Dark Valley. Half a million Americans moved from city to country in search of subsistence... In Montana thousands of acres of wheat went uncut because they would not pay for the price of harvesting--sixteen bushels... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
I am reading The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s, by Piers Brendon. Much of it annoys me. For example, he writes, Nor did he [President Hoover] attempt to reduce financial inequalities, perhaps the most fundamental cause of the... MORE
December 22, 2010
Economic History
David Henderson
The two economists [Krugman and Simon] appeared in different ways. Krugman wrote a deeply, though unintentionally, ironic article titled "Why most economists' predictions are wrong," filled with predictions that were... mostly wrong. Simon, sadly, had just passed away and so... MORE
December 20, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Ralph Raico's new book also powerfully argues that compared to Woodrow Wilson, Joseph McCarthy was a tolerant and fair-minded man. Once the U.S. entered World War I:Wilson sounded the keynote for the ruthless suppression of anyone who interfered with his... MORE
December 19, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Jon Stewart milked much hilarity after Bush publicly anointed himself "the Decider." While reading Ralph Raico's new book, I discovered that compared to Woodrow Wilson, Bush was a modest man:When foreign affairs play a prominent part in the politics and... MORE
December 13, 2010
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
I offer a new insight into the Recalculation Story. It is inspired by this quote from p.66 of Leuchtenberg's The FDR Years, the essay on the way that many policy makers and pundits were calling on the government to mobilize... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I have been reading William E. Leuchtenburg's The FDR Years, a collection of essays by the author. Jonah Goldberg had recommended one of the essays, called "The New Deal and the Analogue of War," written in 1964. I should hasten... MORE
December 12, 2010
Economic Methods
Arnold Kling
From the Recommendations for Further Reading column by Timothy Taylor in the Journal of Economic Perspectives fall issue. I eagerly look forward to this regular feature, which was started by the late Bernie Saffran, the beloved Swarthmore economics professor. My... MORE
December 5, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Michael Strong points out this forty-year-old essay by Roy Childs. What Kolko and his fellow revisionist James Weinstein (The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918) maintain is that business and financial leaders did not merely react to these situations... MORE
November 11, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
George Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence H. White have a long paper comparing economic performance before and after the Fed was created. They make a strong case that performance has not improved. I think this history is well worth... MORE
November 10, 2010
Cross-country Comparisons
Bryan Caplan
I do not reply to email from Nazi or Communist apologists. I don't even write back to say, "I refuse to dignify your email with a response," because that would be a response. I regard the defenders of totalitarianism as... MORE
November 6, 2010
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Bloodlands documents the most horrifying single example of group-serving bias I've ever read. Fair warning: This is not for the faint of heart.In October 1941, Mahileu became the first substantial city in occupied Soviet Belarus where almost all Jews were... MORE
November 4, 2010
Cross-country Comparisons
Bryan Caplan
Warren Nutter (1923-1979) was a prescient detractor of the Soviet economy. Only today, though, did I learn (through my colleague David Levy) that Nutter actually toured the USSR in 1956 - and shared his observations in U.S. News and World... MORE
November 1, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I'm finding Invictus surprisingly watchable despite its over-the-top depiction of Nelson Mandela as a living saint. Given my contrarian ways, the movie inspired to search out the inevitably more sordid truth. The most damning fact on Mandela's public record, in... MORE
October 30, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
The request is for my reaction to the way that economies in the Great Depression seemed to do better after going off the gold standard. Does this provide evidence that monetary easing would help today? In general, macroeconomic data are... MORE
October 29, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Bloodlands' take on Hitler's war aims fits neatly with my earlier exegesis of Mein Kampf:...Stalin had an economic revolution to defend, whereas Hitler needed a war for his economic transformation. Whereas Stalin had his "socialism in one country," Hitler had... MORE
October 28, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands is the best history I've read in five years: important, careful, beautifully written, and morally wise. Many excellent books explore the parallels between Nazism and Communism, between Hitler and Stalin. But Snyder almost makes you feel like... MORE
October 22, 2010
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
I haven't finished the first chapter of Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, but I'm ready to highly recommend the book. Just one great passage:As Stalin interpreted the disaster of collectivization in the last weeks of 1932, he... MORE
October 12, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I was too sick yesterday to invoke my annual curse on Columbus. But in my fever, I still wondered: How did this awful conqueror and slaver ever become an icon of "Western civilization"? Every society has such men to offer. ... MORE
October 5, 2010
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
James M. McPherson writes, This pre-industrial world could not survive the transportation revolution, which made possible a division of labor and specialization of production for ever larger and more distant markets. The transportation revolution includes canals, steamboats, and railroads. It... MORE
September 24, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Karl Smith writes, Its as close to a test of modern macro theory as we have. We thought if we shrank the growth rate of the money supply we would get a recession but we also lower the rate of... MORE
September 20, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
What are the ten most important episodes of economic contraction to study? Some obvious ones: 1. The Great Depression in the U.S. 2. The Great Depression in Europe 3. The Japanese slump of the 1990's and beyond 4. The oil... MORE
September 16, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Suppose the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests ended not in a bloodbath, but in the collapse of Chinese Communism and the establishment of multi-party democracy. What would have happened to the Chinese economy between 1989 and today? Would it have done... MORE
September 8, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
As a rule, I find Rothbard's take on the history of Marxism-Leninism to be misguided, if not absurd. But these paragraphs from Rothbard's 102-page critique of a now-forgotten American history textbook are excellent:This is all he says of the nature... MORE
August 17, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
In this podcast, where the topic is the history of the Depression. Kennedy's book, Freedom From Fear, is one that I read recently and enjoyed. I find it quite interesting that the standard narrative is that Hoover was non-interventionist and... MORE
August 16, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Murray Rothbard - as well as many of the New Left Cold War revisionists who inspired him - heavily ridiculed the view that the Communist movement was "monolithic." Like other movements, they point out, Communists quarelled, formed factions, ignore chains... MORE
August 9, 2010
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
From David Halberstam's The Fifties, p. 174: Everyone in this country, he thought, had a car and a family, and sooner or later everyone had to go somewhere. Dorothy Wilson listened to him with growing trepidation--when Kemmons Wilson said he... MORE
August 4, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
I dug up two interesting articles. In case I am more interested in this than you are, I will put this post below the fold.... MORE
July 22, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
I want to return to the Vedder-Galloway paper, that I mentioned here. I want to make it clear that I have a lot of problems with that paper, and I will not be basing my own views on it. More... MORE
July 21, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
In 1991, Richard K. Vedder and Lowell Gallaway wrote, The smooth transition to peace was accomplished despite the existence of a fiscal policy that was the very antithesis of Keynesian economic prescriptions to deal with falling aggregate demand. The most... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Official data are somewhat sparse. I would appreciate pointers to any better data or additional information. I am also curious about what newspapers and magazines were reporting at the time about postwar conversion--how well it was going, what was working,... MORE
July 17, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
In my youth, I was a huge fan of Paul Johnson's Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Eighties. His revised edition pleased me less, but I still loved the book. But whenever I mentioned Modern Times to... MORE
July 3, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
According to Reuters, it's the Second Congo War (1999-2003) aka Africa's World War and the Great War of Africa: (Reuters) - War, disease and malnutrition are killing 45,000 Congolese every month in a conflict-driven humanitarian crisis that has claimed 5.4... MORE
June 21, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
The regular issues of the American Economic Review rarely interest me, but the papers and proceedings issue is often better. This year, covering the meetings held in January and arranged by Robert Hall, is particularly good. It seems as though... MORE
June 9, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The Richter reissue is also available as a free pdf. From my intro: From the outset, many questioned the practicality of the socialists' solution. After you equalize incomes, who will take out the garbage? Yet almost no one questioned the... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The latest from Robin Hanson's odyssey through anthropology:Most confusion comes from seeking a one-way trend, as in "is there more or less war than in ancient times?" Problem is: overall, warfare increased, then decreased. [...] Yes, most of the "tribal"... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Bryan Caplan
After learning the basics of Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws, I turned to Vernon Lidtke's The Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in Germany, 1878-1890, published in 1966. Despite Lidtke's obvious sympathy for this proto-totalitarian movement, I really enjoyed it. I take inordinate pleasure... MORE
May 20, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
From The Rational Optimist, p. 182: Empires, indeed governments generally, tend to be good things at first and bad things the longer they last. First they improve society's ability to flourish by providing central services and removing impediments to trade... MORE
May 19, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Thinking about this Friday's Cato Intern Alumni Reunion is making me nostalgic. I worked in the legendary think tank's old building (yes, the old building!) in the summer of 1991. It was an amazing experience. The highlights of my youthful... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
I picked up a copy at the airport yesterday, and I am about half-way through. It is called The Rational Optimist, and John Tierney has a brief summary. My guess is that a lot of people will want to talk... MORE
May 10, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Razib writes, I think it is critical to emphasize why ancient barbarian elites were so keen on conquering civilized states, and why there seems to have been less mass migration of the peasantry. In the modern world when we think... MORE
May 5, 2010
Economic History
David Henderson
The Symmetry of Counterfactuals Last week, Bryan Caplan raised the issue of what would have happened to the world had Lenin died five years earlier. One of the commenters criticized the idea of considering counterfactuals and, in response, I defended... MORE
May 1, 2010
Economic History
David Henderson
In response to Bryan Caplan's excellent post, "What If Lenin's Stroke Came [sic] Five Years Sooner," historian Susan, in the comments section writes: I'm setting aside the major problem of engaging in historical counterfactuals, which as a historian I find... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
It's once again May Day, and therefore once again time for grateful bloggers to dance on the grave of Marxism. As usual, Jonathan Wilde of Distributed Republic has volunteered to be lead choreographer of this annual May Day Remembrance. My... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
In November, 1917, Lenin overthrew the first democratically elected government in Russian history. In May, 1922, Lenin suffered the first of three strokes, finally dying in January, 1924. What would have happened if Lenin had a fatal stroke in mid-1917?It's... MORE
April 22, 2010
Economic History
David Henderson
Bryan's question is tough to answer. In the culture and in the media, things are so much better now, in the sense that the mainstream media feel the need to contend with libertarian and free-market ideas. They didn't feel that... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, I'm too young to remember much about the politics and economics of the Seventies. From books, though, I get the impression that American political economy was in complete disarray The first thing that I would say is that... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I'm too young to remember much about the politics and economics of the Seventies. From books, though, I get the impression that American political economy was in complete disarray: high inflation, high unemployment, crazy price controls, regulatory explosion, crushing taxes,... MORE
April 13, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Most discussions of coverture that I read mentioned that the doctrine was gradually watered down throughout the 19th-century. Since I couldn't easily find legal details, I decided to take the harder road and offer a qualified libertaran defense of coverture. ... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Since there's much misunderstanding of my argument about women's liberty during the Gilded Age (here, here, and here), I thought I'd write a postcard version. The key premises are just that in the Gilded Age:1. Taxes were much lower and... MORE
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
SydB asks a fair question: I'm confused. The conclusion that "women had more libertarian freedom in 1880 than they do today" is argued by only looking the law or situation in the 1880s. Huh? That's like saying "man A is... MORE
Economic Philosophy
Bryan Caplan
There's been a lot of pushback against my claim that women were freer during the Gilded Age than they are today. I'm standing my ground. Replies to leading criticisms:1. I'm ignoring marital rape. To be blunt, this issue is almost... MORE
April 12, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Burt Folsom, Jr. and Anita Folsom write, [President Roosevelt's] key advisers were frantic at the possibility of the Great Depression's return when the war ended and the soldiers came home. I mentioned this in my post on Roger Farmer's book.... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I largely agree with David Boaz's recent attack on libertarian nostaglia. While many Americans were freer in the Gilded Age than they are today, plenty were not. But precisely who belongs on the list of people who have more libertarian... MORE
April 8, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Lately I've been reading a lot about the politics of the German Empire (1870-1918). I was already vaguely familiar with Otto von Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws, but I was surprised by the details. The first of these laws passed in 1878;... MORE
April 7, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
David Boaz has a very nice attack on libertarian nostalgia in Reason:The Cato Institute's boilerplate description of itself used to include the line, "Since [the American] revolution, civil and economic liberties have been eroded." Until Clarence Thomas, then chairman of... MORE
March 10, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
He writes, The greatest achievement of early modern economic growth was not the Industrial Revolution itself, but the way in which the leading Western economies began to move away from highly parochial, narrow networks of personal exchange and came to... MORE
March 5, 2010
Economic History
Arnold Kling
I am interviewed on Australian radio. Also, Don Boudreaux recommends this talk by Stephen Davies. I assume that the "surprising prediction" to which Don refers is that young people today will live hundreds of years. I have been making that... MORE
March 4, 2010
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Those of us who know him are familiar with his outlook for a sudden transition to what would seem to us like hyper-growth. The rest of you will find this talk new and mind-blowing.... MORE
March 2, 2010
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Africa: A Biography of the Continent, by John Reader. An excerpt (p. 306): Six terms referring to horn shape, and "not fewer" than seventeen cattle colour terms were coined between AD 800 and 1450 in...[southern Africa]...So much linguistic innovation over... MORE
Economic History
David Henderson
Nathan Smith, a commenter on Arnold's recent post, stated: Cato libertarians are ferociously ignorant about all things foreign-policy-related, ignorant not in the sense of being unaware of facts but of refusing to be influenced by them, and their views are... MORE
February 3, 2010
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
I am still slogging through the new book edited by Landes, Mokyr, and Baumol. Again, self-recommending if From Poverty to Prosperity left you hungry for more in-depth reading. In chapter 1, Michael Hudson discusses my Most Wrong Belief, which is... MORE
January 14, 2010
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Arnold says that the Soviet Union fell due to the "moral rot" of corruption. As long as we define "corruption" broadly, as Arnold seems to do, I think he's dead wrong. Soviet moral rot was worst in the Thirties, when... MORE
December 5, 2009
Economic History
David Henderson
Co-blogger Bryan asked for candidates for ridiculous sentences on economic policy. I have one candidate and another possible. The first is the old socialist saw: Production for use and not for profit. The second, which I can't find quickly, is... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
A single sentence in the Durants' The Age of Napoleon makes me wonder whether I can trust a word they write on economic policy:In the laissez-faire economy, producers, distributors, and consumers labored to mulct one another, or to evade the... MORE
December 1, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
My colleague John Nye specializes in French economic history. Other than his job market talk, though, I can't say that he's done much to bring me up to speed in this field. Since I have much to learn, I'm taking... MORE
November 27, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Last week, I received a Polish translation of a long essay I wrote over a decade ago on Spanish anarchism. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), an avowedly anarcho-socialist movement called the CNT won control over large parts of Spain. ... MORE
November 24, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
In order of satisfaction: 1. Empire of Liberty,by Gordon Wood 2. The Great Transformation, by Karl Polanyi 3. Masters and Commanders, by Andrew Roberts 4. Startup Nation, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer Wood is giving us the history of... MORE
November 23, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Jeff Hummel sent me a gentlemanly response to my critique of his WWII revisionism lecture: While I usually appreciate attention, I wasn't expecting it in this case. I posted those two talks on an obviously nascent webpage to make them available... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I recently listened to an old lecture (c.1979) that economist and historian Jeff Hummel put on his webpage. It's a one-hour intro to World War II revisionism. While I'm sympathetic to the conclusion that U.S. participation in WWII actually made... MORE
November 20, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson writes, Ygesias says, "I believe that absent the [TARP] bailout, we'd be looking at even higher unemployment today." I think this is a plausible claim. But I don't know of a satisfactory way to evaluate it. It's plausible... MORE
November 12, 2009
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Piergiorgio Alessandri and Andrew G. Haldane write, Historically, the link between the state and the banking system has been umbilical. Starting with the first Italian banking houses in the 13th century, banks were financiers of the sovereign. Sovereign need was... MORE
November 11, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
John Quiggin writes, The names of Asquith, Bethmann-Hollweg, Berchtold and Poincare are barely remembered, yet on any reasonable accounting they belong among the great criminals of history. Not only did they create the conditions for war, and rush (eagerly in... MORE
November 9, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I've been thinking all day about what to write for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here goes.The conventional interpretation of the Wall: Socialism, a movement that began with wide-eyed idealism, was gradually corrupted. The first... MORE
November 6, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
George Selgin writes, Economists generally take for granted, if only tacitly, a teleological view of money's historical development, according to which it first takes the "primitive" form of mundane commodities such as cowrie shells and cacao seeds, and then advances... MORE
October 30, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
The financial crisis creates significant opportunity for long-term pessimists. Again, I recommend the podcast featuring Ken Rogoff and Niall Ferguson. Rogoff has been a gloomy person (in a fun way) for as long as I have known him, which is... 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 23, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe is - and will probably remain - the most glorious political event of my life. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I missed the 20th anniversaries of the end of Communist rule... 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 13, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I wish Julian Simon were around to read this passage from "The Low-Fertility Trap Hypothesis: Forces that May Lead to Further Postponement and Fewer Births in Europe":In the past decades, population projections were based on the expectation that after the... MORE
September 15, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Lee Ohanian's paper on "What - or Who - Started the Great Depression?" didn't get a lot of love in the comments. I'm not going to reply to all the criticisms, but there are a few I'd like to... MORE
September 11, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Like almost everyone else, libertarians typically argue that Herbert Hoover's policies exacerbated the Great Depression. But there's a key difference: Normal people blame Hoover's commitment to laissez-faire, but libertarians blame Hoover's proto-New Deal policies. Libertarian economists are particularly likely to... MORE
September 7, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Doug Rushkoff says that our capitalist society is neither spontaneous nor an order. He thinks it came about because of some decisions made by monarchs in the 13th century. The first innovation was to centralize currency. What better way for... MORE
August 31, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Profit from bank bailouts--so far. The profits come from banks that have paid back the government, and recall that some banks were forced to take bailout funds in the first place. We will see what happens to the full sample.... MORE
June 26, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
In his latest one-two punch, Scott Sumner...1. ...explains why Woodrow Wilson was the worst president in U.S. history:...Wilson's economic policies were perhaps the worst in American history. He presided over the creation of the Fed and the income tax, which... MORE
May 21, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
David Frum writes, [Peter] Heather takes a less benign view of Rome. Here, he says, is a society of savage aggressiveness, that grew not through productivity improvement but by waging war on its neighbors to enslave their populations. Pointer from... MORE
May 16, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
According to official numbers, unemployment stayed extremely high through the New Deal. But some of Roosevelt's defenders say the numbers are misleading. Bob Murphy, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, explains their... MORE
April 6, 2009
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Steven Gjerstad and Vernon Smith on the housing bubble. How can one crash that wipes out $10 trillion in assets cause no damage to the financial system and another that causes $3 trillion in losses devastate the financial system? The... MORE
March 24, 2009
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Tonight I'm going to see Mikhail Gorbachev, last dictator of the Soviet Union. I've heard he's really boring. I plan to leave early. Even so, I'm happy to pay $20 to see the most influential man of the second half... MORE
March 11, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Matt Yglesias joins the attack squad on Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man, a history of the Great Depression and the New Deal. For me, the main take-aways from the book are: 1. Franklin Roosevelt had no coherent economic... MORE
February 28, 2009
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Jeff Cornwall summarizes the panel on the outlook for the economy and entrepreneurs at the Kauffman Foundation forum this past weekend in Kansas City. In a later post, I will discuss the interesting ideas that were brought up at that... MORE
February 27, 2009
Central Planning vs. Local Knowledge
David Henderson
Lew Rockwell has an interesting article today on Adolf Hitler's economic policies. His bottom line: Adolf Hitler was a Keynesian. Two highlights: What were those economic policies? He suspended the gold standard, embarked on huge public works programs like Autobahns,... MORE
February 21, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Christopher I. Beckwith writes, Viewed from the perspective of Eurasian history over the last four millennia, there does not seem to me to be any significant difference between the default underlying human socio-political structure during this time period--that is, down... MORE
February 18, 2009
Economic History
David Henderson
I saw a masterful performance yesterday at San Jose State University: a talk by historian Burton Folsom on his new book, New Deal, Raw Deal. Folsom has a lot of energy and humor. The way he told the story of... MORE
February 13, 2009
Economic History
David Henderson
Yesterday, blogger Megan McArdle had an interesting post on Canada. She wrote: Canada is now being held up as a regulatory example to us, but Canada has always been an odd duck--it was also the only major economy in the... MORE
February 12, 2009
Economic History
David Henderson
My occasional co-author, Jeff Hummel, has scored a real coup: getting a balanced assessment of Abraham Lincoln published in Illinois. And not just in Illinois but also in the most important Illinois newsaper, the Chicago Tribune. And not just in... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I enthusiastically recommend Brink Lindsey's "Nostalgianomics." It's just plain interesting, well-written, and edifying. In a just world, it would have appeared in The New Yorker. The springboard of the piece is Krugman's recent love letters to the 1950s. Brink grants... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports on how economists are still debating the 1930's. We are, but I bet I could get a pretty broad swath of economists, left and right, to agree to the following: 1. The steps that Roosevelt took... MORE
February 11, 2009
Fiscal Policy
David Henderson
During President Obama's press conference on Monday, the first question was: Can you talk about what you know or what you're hearing that would lead you to say that our recession might be permanent when others in our history have... MORE
February 8, 2009
Economic History
David Henderson
Yes, you read that correctly. Frank Rich, the partisan New York Times columnist, has a good column today. In it, he delves into what he calls "[T]he tsunami of populist rage coursing through America." Here's one of the best sections:... MORE
January 23, 2009
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Razib Khan writes, up until the year 1900 the world's cities were massive genetic blackholes. Cities only kept their population up through migration, which explains how Rome shrunk to 30,000 inhabitants by the 7th century. Today,. we think of cities... MORE
December 31, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
If your holiday season was anything like mine, you've heard some elderly relatives denounce the "kids these days." "They don't read the newspaper!" "They don't know when World War II ended!" "How can democracy survive with this level of ignorance?!"... MORE
December 26, 2008
Economic History
David Henderson
In his column in today's New York Times, Paul Krugman claims that Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was "clean" and avoided corruption. So clean was FDR's Works Progress Administration, writes Krugman, that "when a Congressional subcommittee investigated the W.P.A., it... MORE
December 16, 2008
Economic History
David Henderson
I heartily second Bryan Caplan's endorsement of the Canadian TV show on the New Deal. Bryan focused on the economic content and I want to add my own thoughts to that, but beyond that is the amazing tone of the... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I enthusiastically recommend this panel discussion on the New Deal, featuring Russ Roberts, Lee Ohanian, David Kennedy, Eric Lascelles, and Joe Martin. Random observations:1. Kennedy and Lascelles, the most pro-Roosevelt guys on the panel, strangely torpedo their own cases by... MORE
December 5, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Stiglitz is bragging about his amazing foresight:Rereading some of my papers in preparing for the publication of the second volume of my Selected Works (to be published by Oxford University Press), I came across a paper, written almost two decades... MORE
November 22, 2008
Economic History
David Henderson
I work as little as possible on my birthday (November 21), which is why I didn't post yesterday. Tyler Cowen's column in yesterday's New York Times is excellent and I want to note some highlights, with my additional thoughts, and... MORE
November 21, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
In contrast to my militaristic account, we have Nick Szabo: Local but extremely valuable trade was, this essay argues, made possible among many cultures by the advent of collectibles, by the time of the Upper Paleolithic. Collectibles substituted for otherwise... MORE
November 12, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
You've heard what Hoover said in his own defense on November 5, 1932. What did he say about his opponents? His lead-in:I would again call your attention to the fact that with the Democratic victory in congressional elections of 1930,... MORE
November 11, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Murray Rothbard opened my eyes to the real story about Herbert Hoover, but his quotation splicing makes me wince. In my next two posts, I'm going to dissect one of Hoover's last major speeches before the 1932 election - his... MORE
November 5, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
These days a lot of economists blame the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act for worsening the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover considered this hypothesis back in 1932 - and angrily rejected it.Note: When Hoover says "our opponents set up the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill,"... MORE
November 3, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I recently relayed one of Murray Rothbard's great Herbert Hoover quotes. When I was tracking the quote down, though, I noticed something weird in Rothbard's work. The online 5th edition of Rothbard's America's Great Depression (p.187) states: "To portray the... MORE
October 26, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
No joke - The Onion really did run this story for Bush's first inauguration:Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address... MORE
October 23, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of... MORE
September 23, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Many of us are grasping at historical analogies to the current financial crisis, and the 1930's keep coming up. One of the lessons of the 1930's is that in times of crisis people want strong leadership. In the 1930's, that... MORE
September 14, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Gavin Kennedy and Mark Koyama are still beating me to a pulp. Koyama writes, Polanyi and the historians and sociologists who have been inspired by Polanyi mainly claim that markets didn't exist before 1800 or 1750 because they don't know... MORE
September 11, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Putin's backing new textbooks for social studies and modern Russian history, and they sound awful. The Times says that the social studies book:...presents as fact Mr Putin’s view that the Soviet collapse was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th... MORE
September 8, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Wolfgang Kasper weaves them together in an interesting essay. Anyone who has spent only a few days working in different cultures will realise how influential and pervasive these differing attitudes are. During three days’ work, say, in Shanghai, you will... MORE
August 20, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
At Gene Expression, the bloggers closely follow what might be called the Pomerantz controversy, after the writer of The Great Divergence, where it is argued that Asia and the West were at similar points of development just prior to the... MORE
August 3, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's passing reminds me of my favorite passage from his writings:But let us be generous. We will not shoot them. We will not pour salt water into them, nor bury them in bedbugs, nor bridle them up into a... MORE
July 2, 2008
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Maarten Bosker, Eltjo Buringh, and Jan Luiten van Zanden write, The sociologist Max Weber introduced a distinction between ‘consumer cities’ and ‘producer cities’... The classical consumer city is a centre of government and military protection or occupation, which supplies services... MORE
July 1, 2008
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Brad DeLong writes, The true history of the U.S. since 1980, IMHO at least, is not Sean Wilentz's "Age of Reagan" but is instead composed of a half dozen or so deeper and broader tides, like: 1. The end of... MORE
June 20, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
All the hype about the Romanian movie 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is true. It's an amazing period piece about the last years of its Communist dictatorship. It's a vivid illustration of the effects of prohibition on quality. And... MORE
June 18, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
A hard-working volunteer has translated my long-standing Holocausts of Communism Test into Spanish. While the Spanish-speaking world was not the worst victim of Communism, it was a victim: Not just Cuba, but also Spain (during its Civil War), Nicaragua, El... MORE
April 30, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Admittedly I'm a sucker for a period piece, but World War I dogfight drama Flyboys has the most exciting aerial combat scenes I have ever seen. See it - it's way better that you'd expect. P.S. Get ready for the... MORE
April 14, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
West Virginia's got the lowest level of economic freedom in the U.S. What's the reason? Newly-minted WVU Ph.D. Claudia Williamson traces it to West Virginians' serious historical misconceptions in her chapter in Russ Sobel's edited volume, Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity... MORE
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 6, 2008
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Remember last year's blogosphere debate on whether FDR was an "American Mugabe"? I just came across a 1997 piece by Robert Higgs that I should have been quoting in my defense. But late is better than never. His thesis:In retrospect... MORE
April 2, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Troy Camplin writes, In the "Acharnians," Dicaeopolis is in Athens and complaining about the war and how he is "longing hopelessly for peace, loathing town and homesick for my village . . . where you don't hear cried of "Buy... MORE
April 1, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, the absence of a developed economics until the mid-18th century remains a startling anomaly in the history of ideas. Why was that? I would note that the theory of probability also was developed surprisingly late. I think... MORE
March 26, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
From Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, p. 221: The expansion and maintenance of the trading routes did not derive from an ideological commitment of the Mongols to commerce and communication in general. Rather, it... MORE
February 21, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
George Grantham writes it appears likely that at its peak the classical economy was almost as large as that of Western Europe on the eve of the Industrial Revolution...in the more fertile districts of southern Britain and northern Gaul rural... MORE
February 20, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Mark Koyama has two more follow-ups, here and here. In the first, he writes Roman transport links were as good as any that existed in Europe until the late 18th or even the 19th centuries. This may address a point... 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
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Mark Koyama writes, in the great agrarian empires such as Rome, there was a large volume of trade in ordinary goods. Grain, wine, olive oil, ceramics, were traded on a tremenous scale. They were not plundered and then redistributed as... MORE
February 6, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
James McCormick reviews Bryan Ward-Perkins on the fall of the Roman Empire. the era between Pompeii’s suppression of the pirates in the mid-first century BCE and the fall of Carthage to the Vandals in 439CE is the longest period of... MORE
January 9, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Paul Walker writes, Arnold Kling isn't buying into this. He writes,"I just don't believe that over a thousand years ago human beings had the trustworthiness, discipline, numeracy, and institutional base to engage in what we would today recognize as free... MORE
January 8, 2008
Economic History
Arnold Kling
The New York Times reports, The findings, archaeologists say, are some of the first strong evidence that the ancient Maya civilization, at least in places and at certain times, had a market economy similar in some respects to societies today.... 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
November 27, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I think it's obvious that the Soviet Union was a vastly greater threat to the U.S. than Islamic terrorism will ever be. But some readers don't agree; in their view, the practice of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) meant that, in... MORE
October 30, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Michael H. Hart's book, Understanding Human History, probably first came to my attention via Tyler Cowen. In his conclusion, Hart writes (p. 416), The central hypothesis of this book is that genetic differences between human groups (in particular, differences in... MORE
October 16, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Gregory Clark goes medieval on Avner Greif. In chapter 2, Greif lays out a formal definition of an institution. This is, “An institution is a system of rules, beliefs, norms and organizations that together generate a regularity of (social) behavior”... MORE
October 7, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The Malthusian model is not as crazy as Greg Clark's interpretation of it in A Farewell to Alms (here's Clark's reply; here's my rebuttal, with a second reply from Clark in the comments). But even correctly interpreted, the Malthusian model... MORE
September 30, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Kennedy writes, In the extreme, I have suggested that economic history of the last 10,000 years (and for long enough before that) the history of the poor is not the decisive factor in economic development: it is the history of... MORE
September 28, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
When I teach undergraduate labor, I lecture on "Why the Standard Story of Labor Is Wrong." Here's the standard story, according to me:1. In the days before the minimum wage, unions, etc., life was terrible for workers because employers paid... MORE
September 26, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Clark and I are moving toward agreement on the implications of the Malthusian model, but I'm still not satisfied. He writes:Caplan replaces my figure 2.1 with one where disease and harvest failures cause the technology schedule to move down but... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Gregory Clark emailed me the following reply to my criticism and asked me to post it to the blog. I'm happy to oblige. Everything that follows is Clark, not me. Clark right on Malthus! Bryan Caplan raises some interesting points... MORE
September 25, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I think Arnold is mis-stating not only Malthus, but even Clark. Maybe it's just semantic, but I don't think so. Here's Arnold:A bad year for grass (the bad harvest scenario) starves a lot of the herd, which is bad. But... MORE
September 24, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
In the Malthusian economy before 1800 economic policy was turned on its head: vice now was virtue then, and virtue vice. Those scourges of failed modern states - war, violence, disorder, harvest failures, collapsed public infrastructures, bad sanitation - were... MORE
September 22, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I've finally finished Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms. Like everyone else, I agree that it's well-written and addresses important topics. And I think lunch with Clark would be fun. But frankly, I can't find much else good to say... 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
August 30, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
I cannot figure out the status of Brad DeLong's The Economic History of the Twentieth Century: Slouching Towards Utopia?. When I go here, it looks like an abandoned project. But just yesterday, Brad wrote, In some ways the world economy... MORE
August 29, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
He says The book challenges the modern orthodoxy of economics - that people are essentially the same everywhere, and with the right set of institutions, growth is inevitable - in three ways. First by showing that there were societies like... MORE
August 21, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, Why should we aggregate income comparisons by country (or the whole world) rather than by city? World history looks very different if we do the latter. Aren't most countries relatively recent inventions anyway? More generally, I would... MORE
August 7, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade writes, Historians used to accept changes in people’s behavior as an explanation for economic events, like Max Weber’s thesis linking the rise of capitalism with Protestantism. But most have now swung to the... MORE
July 7, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Here's a puzzling reaction to my doubts about the wonders of American independence:The chief goal of libertarianism is not low taxes or any specific public policy outcome but rather liberty.Actually, the libertarian view is that liberty consists in specific public... MORE
July 6, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Gregory Clark writes, Millenia of living in stable societies, under tight Malthusian pressures that rewarded effort, accumulation, and fertility limitation, encouraged the development of cultural forms--in terms of work inputs, time preference, and family formation--which facilitated modern economic growth. This... MORE
July 5, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
In response to yesterday's doubts about the benefits of American independence, many commenters emphasized the importance of taxes - and pointed me to the Declaration of Independence. But this doesn't really answer my question: Did the Revolution actually lead to... MORE
July 4, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Can anyone tell me why American independence was worth fighting for? Most libertarians interpret the Revolutionary War as a libertarian crusade. But when you ask about specific libertarian policy changes that came about because of the Revolution, it's hard to... MORE
June 21, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
One of my pet ideas is the Jock/Nerd Theory of History. If you're reading this, you probably got a taste of it during your K-12 education, when your high grades and book smarts somehow failed to put you at the... MORE
June 11, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The Victims of Communism Memorial will be dedicated tomorrow in Washington, D.C. This is a great chance to set the record straight, and remember the greatest totalitarian disaster of human history. I wish they had worthier headline speakers than a... MORE
June 5, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
My latest essay says, most of the ignorance that plagued policymakers during the 1930's was conceptual. They did not understand the difference between lost resources and under-utilized resources. They did not understand the relationship between financial markets and markets for... MORE
June 4, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Russ Roberts interviews Amity Shlaes. From the notes: NRA even ruled out a consumer's picking out best chickens from a batch—just had to take first ones that came to hand. But consumer and business choice are very important. Concept was... 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
June 1, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
From my latest essay. I would have thought that 1929 should have looked pretty good to people living in the depths of the Depression. But one of the many interesting lessons of Amity Shlaes' new history of the Great Depression... MORE
May 3, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I rarely care about symbolic issues, but for the Estonian statue controversy, I'll make an exception: Young Russians staged raucous protests in Moscow on Wednesday to denounce neighboring Estonia for removing a Soviet war memorial from its capital, and the... MORE
May 1, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Once again, the folks at Catallarchy (now The Distributed Republic) offer an eloquent May Day Tribute to the victims of Communism, past and present. Check it out.... MORE
April 10, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Amity Shlaes spoke last evening at the American Enterprise Institute. Her topic, which is also the topic of her forthcoming book, was Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In her talk, the New Deal comes across less as an economic revolution and... MORE
March 15, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
While watching 300 for the second time today, I kept remembering David Stannard's description of America's Founding Fathers as "slaveholding philosophers of freedom." There's a lot of high-minded talk in 300 about free Greeks standing against Persian tyranny (not to... MORE
March 13, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
An enthusiast on the Pulp Hero discussion board provides some authentic flavor of the Prohibition Era: An official Medicinal Liquor prescription form. It's funny to think that alcohol was once treated like medical marijuana.... MORE
February 6, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I'm frankly puzzled by Arnold's latest take on the New Deal. (That quote is from him, not DeLong as I initially guessed!) I think the New Deal was moderately fascist (i.e., Mussolini light, not Hitler light), but let's leave that... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
The online Wall Street Journal arranged a celebrity death match between Brad DeLong and yours truly on the topic of the New Deal. What would have happened in the U.S. without the New Deal? My father answers with one word:... MORE
January 18, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Historians have a standard story about the partition of Poland in the 18th century: Poland was unable to defend itself effectively because it had a crazy unanimity rule that gave every nobleman a veto over everything. Seems plausible. But yesterday... MORE
January 14, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Daniel Gross says Roosevelt was better than Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. I agree. This does raise the interesting point that given world conditions for investors, the U.S. should have been able to do really well without really trying. Instead it... MORE
January 11, 2007
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Brad thinks it's a little crazy for me to compare Roosevelt to Mugabe: To get to somebody willing to argue that the entire New Deal taken as a whole made things worse, you have to go to somebody like Arnold's... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Brad DeLong's of course right that I'm not normal. At the same time, he's backed off enough that I wonder if he'd put himself in the same boat as two normal guys with negative things to say about the New... MORE
January 10, 2007
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Reading Brad DeLong's latest word on the subject, I find that we seem to agree on the economics, but perhaps not on the history. We both like Roosevelt's policies of going off the gold standard and providing deposit insurance. Where... MORE
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Hamilton and Arnold are making a lot of sense. On the negatives of the New Deal, though, it's also worth pointing out how scary Roosevelt's policies and populist rhetoric were to business. If I were a potential investor in 1933,... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
James Hamilton writes, The notion that if we can just create more monopoly power for every single sector of the economy, encouraging every sector to produce less so they can raise their wages and prices, that we will then somehow... MORE
December 13, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I was curious to read more about Jefferson's position on the Indians. Here's a nice set of quotations. It's full of high-minded rhetoric, like: Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment... MORE
December 12, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The most straightforward - if not the best - way to interpret the end of Apocalypto is that Christian Europeans finally arrived in the New World to put an end to monstrous pagan barbarism. Whether or not that was Gibson's... MORE
October 22, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
A leading criticism of Ayn Rand's novels is that her villains are unbelievable. No one runs around proclaiming their devotion to the opposite of what John Galt believes. People who say this should read more about the '30's and '40's.... MORE
October 9, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
By the time Christopher Columbus appeared in Lisbon in 1477 an Old World slave trade was thriving in the eastern Atlantic between West Africa, the Atlantic islands, and Europe. In his famous letter on his first voyage he informed Ferdinand... MORE
October 2, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
My online Museum of Communism has a new exhibit: The memoirs of Romuald Lipinsky. Lipinsky was deported from Poland to Siberia by the Soviets when he was 15 years old. Last year, he told me his tale of woe and... MORE
August 30, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Not long after Abbie Hoffman praised "revolution for the hell of it," David Friedman memorably retorted "revolution is the hell of it." While reading literary historian Gleb Struve's edifying Russian Literature under Lenin and Stalin, I came across an eloquent... MORE
July 19, 2006
Economic History
Eric Crampton
While I was at GMU, Gordon Tullock was working on a book he intended to call "Open Secrets" -- things that most people don't know but ought to. Levy and Peart's re-discovery of the origins of the term Dismal Science... MORE
July 12, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Toward the end of the fifth century c.e., another religious reform movement was launched by Mazdak. It came in 497... Mazdak asked King Kobad (488-531) the question, "How do you judge a man who has the antidote but does not... MORE
July 4, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Time has put Teddy Roosevelt on the cover of its 5th Annual Special Issue, and the coverage stretches the limits of sycophancy. It reminds me of my high school history textbook, which praised any President who backed new regulations or... MORE
May 7, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
I just found out that Milton Friedman's great-grandson Tovar Miles Friedman was born pre-maturely last year, but is now doing well. His story brought me from pity to joy in minutes. Now that you know that things work out, you... MORE
May 1, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
This May Day, the able bloggers of Catallarchy have once again assembled a great line-up of short essays on the dark history of Communism. Highlights include a moving vignette by Polish deportee Romuald Lipinsky on his time in Siberia; Clara... MORE
March 28, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Vladimir Putin's supposed to be an economist. Kind of embarassing. But it turns out that he plagiarized his dissertation, so we can justly banish him from the club: According to the Kremlin’s official biography, Putin, 53, obtained a PhD in... MORE
March 22, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Even many people with little sympathy for the Soviet Union admire its "heroic" role in World War II. What all too few people realize is that for the first twenty-two months of World War II, the Nazis and the Soviets... MORE
February 26, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Robert Higgs is famous for his analysis of the "ratchet effect." As Higgs explained in his Crisis and Leviathan, governments expand during crises, then conveniently fail to return to their initial size after the crisis ends. Of course, it's possible... MORE
February 24, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
You probably can, but mostly because Lenin is such a terrible writer: Goebbels: Bourgeois social theory is primarily concerned with the individual. It is thus essentially determined by pity, or compassion, or the Christian love of one's neighbor or similar... MORE
February 9, 2006
Economic History
Arnold Kling
From my latest essay, The death of the entrepreneur was greatly exaggerated. Over the past two decades, the strength of entrepreneurialism has been unmistakable. The economy has been much more dynamic than Galbraith would have predicted. Many of the industrial... MORE
January 19, 2006
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Due to mild fear of a strip search at the airport, I decided not to fly with Daniel Brown's A New Introduction to Islam. But it was worth the wait. In another fascinating section, Brown explains how the early holy... 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
November 28, 2005
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Robert J. Gordon writes, The evolution of the economy after 2000 was, of course, entirely different than after 1929, and we have previously attributed this to the aggressive easing of monetary policy that sustained a major boom in residential construction... MORE
October 25, 2005
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Did central planners under socialism focus on economics or politics? Lazarev and Gregory present an interesting test in their article "The Wheels of a Command Economy." (Published in the 2002 Economic History Review, and popularized in Gregory and Harrison's piece... MORE
October 21, 2005
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Nick Bostrom and Milan Ćirković asked me to write a chapter for their edited volume on Global Catastrophic Risks. Most of the other contributors are natural scientists who consider the risks of things like asteroids, nanotech, and nuclear war. But... MORE
October 19, 2005
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Here are some surprisingly modern observations on the Great Depression from the year 1931: We live in a society organized in such a way that the activity of production depends on the individual business man hoping for a reasonable profit,... MORE
October 13, 2005
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Brad DeLong recently described Chiang Kaishek as a "twentieth-century Chinese nationalist, socialist, general, and dictator." By itself, this description is rather surprising. The legendary Chinese anti-Communist was actually a socialist? But not only is Brad right about this; you could... 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 7, 2005
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
According to my paper on the idea trap, economic downturns reduce economic literacy. Just when people need their economic common sense the most, they open their hearts to the crackpots. Perhaps the best example is the Great Depression, when every... MORE
May 1, 2005
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
Jonathan Wilde at Catallarchy has orchestrated a moving and edifying May Day blog extravangaza on the dark history of communism. Catallarchy has gone the extra mile here, offering twelve fine short essays, and leading off with R.J. Rummel, Nicholas Weininger,... MORE
April 7, 2005
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
The term "blog" was coined in 1999, and it now gets 105,000,000 google hits. Compare that to "democracy," which only gets 43,800,000. Wikipedia provides a fascinating and thorough discussion.... MORE
December 3, 2004
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Brad DeLong posts the syllabus for his economic history course. Included is this paper by Peter Temin. He claims that in the Roman Empire, the prices represent extensive market exchanges typical of a market economy, not reciprocal exchanges typical of... MORE
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