|
Institutional Economics
A Category Archive (133 entries)
|
|
May 23, 2013
Microeconomics
Art Carden
I agree with co-blogger Bryan that most voters are rationally irrational. My sense is that there are also a lot of voters and people in positions of influence who know just enough economics to be dangerous. As Steve Horwitz and... MORE
July 29, 2012
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
William Galston discusses institutional reforms to make government work more effectively. the time is ripe to push for new fiscal institutions to engage in a long-overdue rethinking of the rules shaping fiscal decisionmaking, to consolidate certain related government functions within... MORE
June 23, 2012
Business Economics
Arnold Kling
In an essay, I write, An independent auditor has some obvious potential problems. On the one hand, it could be ineffectual if it turns out to be weak relative to the independent agencies, or captured by them. On the other... MORE
June 2, 2012
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
He writes, Legalistic constitutionalism refers to formulas and rules. It makes one think immediately of lawyers and judges spinning elaborate constitutional doctrines and devising multi-pronged "tests." Like ancient Egyptian priests, these legal experts speak an occult jargon that few citizens... MORE
April 6, 2012
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
David Henderson
President Obama recently called a House Republican budget plan "thinly veiled social Darwinism." This, incidentally, from a man whose own budget plan was voted down last week in the House by a vote of 0-414. (The vote was on a... MORE
March 31, 2012
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
He writes, They are making almost the identical point to the one made in the 2009 book Violence and Social Orders by Douglass North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast (NWW), who argue that most underdeveloped societies are what they term... MORE
March 11, 2012
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
I can use Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers as the basis for another take. A basic question in the book is how human society is able to scale above the level where we can all recognize one another. For example,... MORE
March 5, 2012
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
It's Liars and Outliers, and I would rate it the best economics book of the year thus far. He writes about his book here and here. Schneier views our lives from the perspective of game theory. Every day, we must... MORE
February 8, 2012
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Below is an excerpt from a video conference with Michael Greve, Reihan Salam, and me on the problems with fiscal federalism in practice. The full half-hour video is here. And, yes, I also created a podcast. It is a good... MORE
January 19, 2012
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Frances Beinecke writes, Over the past several weeks, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been in the news for its stance on antibiotic use in farm animals. Yet instead of making good on its 1977 promise to limit these... MORE
January 11, 2012
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
John Kay writes, The critical resources of today's company are not its buildings and machines but its competitive advantages - its systems of organisation, its reputation with suppliers and customers, its capacity for innovation. These attributes are not, in any... MORE
January 6, 2012
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
He writes, anyone who has spent time in government realizes that the real questions that preoccupy officials have to do with implementation, or rather, the impossibility of implementing many desirable policies because of the huge number of constraints under which... MORE
October 6, 2011
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
What should be in it? I think of it as something less than an abstract principle ("everyone has the right to undertake any transaction that does not involve fraud") and something more than a policy proposal. My thinking is that... MORE
September 12, 2011
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok reports, Private cities are happening now for a reason. Africa, India, and China are urbanizing more rapidly than has ever occurred in human history. In Africa, the number of urban dwellers is projected to increase by nearly 400... MORE
September 5, 2011
Institutional Economics
David Henderson
Although the KGB was abolished in 1991 after its chairman, Vladimir Kryuchhov, participated in the failed coup d'etat against USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev, the KGB mentality still thrives. Russian is run by former KGB officials and Kremlin-friendly oligarchs. They control... MORE
August 3, 2011
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
The talk is here. He says things to offend many people, libertarians in particular. For example, he talks about problems that we would call public-choice issues, with for-profit education and health care. That is, he argues that when government is... MORE
January 22, 2011
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
I would like to try to answer the question that I ducked at the Disputation on Friday evening. That question was whether corporations should have the same rights as people. One panelist, Lisa Graves, answered "no" emphatically (to loud applause,... MORE
January 16, 2011
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Scott Sumner writes, Denmark is much more decentralized. The same sort of policies adopted in Denmark would work less well in the US, because we are much more centralized, and hence far less democratic (if you define democracy properly, where... MORE
January 14, 2011
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
1. Some folks on the right are bothered by the term "sustainable" in patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. They seem to be afraid that I am some sort of tree-hugging wuss. Or that I think patterns of trade need... MORE
January 12, 2011
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Megan McArdle asks, why aren't libertarians proposing solutions for the foreclosure crisis? Actually, I have written, What has emerged in recent weeks as "the foreclosure scandal" represents the collision of this 21st-century computerized, global financial system with an 18th-century legal... MORE
November 15, 2010
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
That is the title of Kevin Kelly's new book. I am only about one-fifth into the book, but I wanted to share an excerpt on the topic of slums. San Francisco was built by squatters. As Rob Neuwirth recounts in... MORE
August 23, 2010
Alternative Economics
Arnold Kling
Mike Gibson points to a sequence of posts by D.S. Wilson. They start here (with some broken links in the first paragaph--I needed to use Google to follow up on one of them), and proceeds rather slowly for my taste.... MORE
June 23, 2010
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In a comment on my eariler post, Paul Seabright writes, Unlike Arnold I'm very interested in the bottom right quadrant, inter alia because historically the boundaries between government and criminal groups have often been very fuzzy. He is referring to... MORE
April 26, 2010
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Excellent discussion between Romer and Russ Roberts. Romer is quite aware that informal norms matter. In terms of my earlier discussion of law and order, he understands that order and law are different things. The question I would like to... MORE
April 21, 2010
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, It's clear that many existing laws have little or no effect on behavior. An even larger class of laws have little or no effect on most people's behavior. What are the main mechanisms of legal irrelevance? In this... MORE
April 8, 2010
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Clay Shirky writes, Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn't these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is... MORE
January 20, 2010
We write, The security process needs several things it is lacking. It needs continuous adaptation, with a strong focus on satisfying customers and improving results. It needs to find new and better methods of meeting the demands of customers who... MORE
January 8, 2010
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Tim Kane listens to a talk by Paul Romer, and muses, Romer forces us to accept that rules are very difficult to change. Nations in particular, even when its leaders recognize the need for rules to change, have difficulty making... MORE
January 2, 2010
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In my follow-up to James Manzi's manifesto, I brought up a notion that I call soft rule-utilitarianism. In the comments, Manzi interpreted this as being close to what I would call hard rule-utilitarianism.... MORE
December 14, 2009
Business Economics
Arnold Kling
In a comment from a troll Bryan Caplan entry, I find, I've long since lost all patience with Hayek. His original, true ideas could have been five good blog posts Personally, I think that the concept of spontaneous order takes... MORE
December 7, 2009
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Paul Gregory writes, China and russia in the 1980s offer a unique case study in why some reforms work and others do not. The contrast refutes the notion that a strong, perhaps totalitarian state, is required for successful reform. In... MORE
December 6, 2009
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Self-recommending, but here is an excerpt: In a complex world where nobody really knows what will succeed until it is tried, competition that pits people's ideas against each other is the only way to test these ideas. Competition among capitalists... MORE
December 1, 2009
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Bill Easterly is not of fan of military nation-building in Afghanistan. He writes, critics of top-down state plans for economic development are also not fans of top-down state plans for military development. If the Left likes the first, and the... MORE
November 18, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Daron Acemoglu writes, People need incentives to invest and prosper; they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep that money. And the key to ensuring those incentives is sound institutions -- the... MORE
October 12, 2009
Institutional Economics
David Henderson
That was the title I gave my Wall Street Journal article on the Nobel prize that appears on line now and will appear in print tomorrow. Of course, as people who write for newspapers and magazines know, the odds that... MORE
Business Economics
Arnold Kling
I think Alex Tabarrok is the most helpful of the bloggers thus far. Lynne Kiesling is helpful on Williamson as well as on Elinor Ostrom, the other new Nobel Laureate. I think of Oliver Williamson in terms of the 1980's... MORE
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
When I was in Bloomington, Indiana last week, Justin Ross and I talked about the "Bloomington school of public choice," meaning Elinor Ostrom. (see Aligica and Boettke.) Little did I know that she was about to be awarded a Nobel... MORE
October 5, 2009
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Bill Easterly interviews Paul Romer. Romer says, To understand how to alleviate poverty, we must understand growth and progress. Progress comes from new and better ideas. Ideas come in two flavors, technologies and rules. To foster growth and development, the... MORE
September 9, 2009
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Free to Choose Media asks, What institutions can enable the world's poor to realize their power and achieve prosperity? The best blog answer can win $250. The forthcoming book, From Poverty to Prosperity, by yours truly and Nick Schulz, would... MORE
August 9, 2009
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In 1961, Leoni wrote, In reality, the law is something which is not pre-fabricated in some specially-designated place, by some specially-designated producer and with some pre-established technique. In much the same way, no followers of the artificial languages such as... MORE
May 20, 2009
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Antonio Fatas and Ilian Mihov write, China has sustained high growth rates in recent years despite its poor institutions because institutional quality is relatively less important in developing economies. However, we find that as their incomes increase, such countries need... MORE
March 20, 2009
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
David Henderson
Stanford University economists Peter Blair Henry and Conrad Miller recently published an interesting NBER Working Paper in which they compare economic policy and economic performance between Jamaica and Barbados. Henry and Miller point out that in Jamaica, the People's National... MORE
December 23, 2008
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
A reader points me to this letter from Milford Bateman about the impact of microfinance. first, a serious shortage of funds for small and medium-sized enterprises, which is deeply damaging because SMEs have by far the most sustainable growth and... MORE
August 28, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, In my view we do have duties to behave more responsibly at the dinner table but the simple admonition "eat less meat" will do. In this context, "behave more responsibly" means "waste fewer resources and leave more... MORE
August 9, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
I sent a post of my own to Creative Capitalism. If a government were truly trying to maximize profits, then it would be managing a country in such a way as to increase its wealth. ...A poorly-run country, such as... MORE
June 3, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
John Fonte writes, For some (clearly not all) libertarians opposition to the “state,” even the constitutional democratic nation-state leads to an affinity to transnational (as opposed to international) politics. Indeed, on Cato’s website, adjunct scholar Arnold Kling...“proposes” an “alternative ideology”... MORE
June 2, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports [New Jersey Governor John] Corzine, who presided over mergers and acquisitions as chairman of Goldman Sachs, is telling hundreds of New Jersey's smallest towns and boroughs that they are too small to exist. Multiple layers of... MORE
May 28, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
William Easterly writes, The end of the “development expert” paradigm does not mean the end of hope for development. Development is already gradually ending poverty (global poverty rates have fallen by more than half in the past three decades) –... MORE
April 25, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Some major league teachers. Nobel Laureate Douglass North writes, Our political history emphasizes modifications to natural state institutions in the 18th century that led to concern within the elite that political competition would inevitably lead to consolidated political control by... MORE
March 14, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Denis Dutton writes, Human beings are naturally hierarchical and they like arranging themselves into hierarchies of skill, age, wealth, competence, experience, whatever. David Brooks writes, they go into one of those fields like law, medicine or politics, where a person's... MORE
February 14, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
A proposed initiative in Arizona reads, No law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type. No law shall interfere with a person's or entity's right to... MORE
January 31, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
He writes, unlike one of my esteemed colleagues, I believe that we should revere democracy as one of the modern world's greatest achievements... Democracy is pretty good at pushing scoundrels out of office, or checking them once they are in... MORE
January 24, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok writes, The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. The political system is simple, it operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor... MORE
January 2, 2008
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Karol Boudreaux and Paul Dragos Aligica write, The legislative path is considered a rapid course to the creation of property rights...In some cases, when the economic mechanisms have been destroyed or have never existed in a functional form, the top-down... 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 9, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Eugene Steuerle writes, in a few decades we'll find that most people will produce services and products that could be produced as easily in the nonprofit sector as in the profit-making one. Some cities like the District are harbingers of... MORE
October 1, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In the latest econtalk, Russ Roberts interviews his co-blogger Don Boudreaux. This is a good opportunity for people to catch the distinctive flavor of GMU economics. I like to put it his way: at Chicago, they say "Markets work well.... MORE
September 28, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Werner Troesken writes, Why are occasional regime changes desirable for public utility markets? The answer builds on three observations. First, corruption was endemic to public utility industries; corruption existed, in some form, across all regulatory and ownership regimes. Second, regime... MORE
September 26, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Sukkoo Kim writes While factors associated with slavery, capital, labor and resource endowments may have contributed to the growth of U.S. regional spatial inequality, the divergence in regional political and legal institutions was also a major contributing factor. In the... MORE
September 21, 2007
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
Olivier Blanchard and Jordi Gali write, Since the 1970s, and at least until recently, macroeconomists have viewed changes in the price of oil as as an important source of economic fluctuations, as well as a paradigm of a global shock,... MORE
September 15, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
My latest essay: the spontaneous order of the market can adapt to a tax relatively easily. However, when government tries to control supply, disorder emerges. Profit opportunities are created in crime and corruption. Compare the crime and mayhem in the... MORE
September 12, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Haidt writes Virtues are socially constructed and socially learned, but these processes are highly prepared and constrained by the evolved mind. We call these three additional foundations the binding foundations, because the virtues, practices, and institutions they generate function... 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 19, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
I've written much on the work of Barry Weingast and Douglass North. Last week's podcast features Russ Roberts interviewing Weingast. You get a good introduction to the North-Weingast view. On a related note, last week I read The Bottom Billion... MORE
August 7, 2007
Economics of Education
Arnold Kling
Our Library of Economics and Liberty has a lot of interesting new stuff this week. 1. On Econtalk, Eric Hanushek argues that: --human capital is measured more accurately by performance on standardized tests than by years of schooling --better teachers... MORE
August 6, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
On the topic of anarchy, Peter T. Leeson writes, Pirates created one of the earliest forms of written constitutions they called their “articles, which codified many of the rules that governed their ships, as well as punishments for rule breakers.... MORE
August 1, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Iain Murray writes Speaker Pelosi has released the text of the New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security, Really Good Eggs and Consumer Protection Act (I snuck something else in there - can you tell?). It weighs in at a... MORE
July 18, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Tolstoy had a very different theory of history. Tolstoy believed great leaders are puffed-up popinjays. They think their public decisions shape history, but really it is the everyday experiences of millions of people which organically and chaotically shape the... MORE
July 5, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
I give my answer. If you can trust the processes of government, then that is a good thing. Good trust in government is based on processes that provide for accountability, checks and balances, equal protection, and punishment of official corruption.... MORE
June 19, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
My second essay on Douglass North is now up. To most economists, the agricultural revolution and the late Industrial Revolution are technological events. That is, the technology "arrived" and spread, leading to social change. Douglass North instead suggests that these... MORE
June 13, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
From my latest essay. In textbook economics, the only external environmental factors that affect the individual are technology and prices. Social norms, habits, and rules play no role. North shows that institutions are fundamental determinants of poverty and prosperity. This... MORE
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports, The practice of estimating the costs and benefits of U.S. government regulations is "frequently done poorly," with scant evidence that it makes a difference on policymaking. That's the dismal finding of a recent report concluding that... MORE
June 1, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Bryan asks, Ayn Rand famously summarized her philosophy while standing on one foot. Arnold, would you be willing to summarize North's "well-developed and persuasive answer" under the same constraint? Anyone else? Before doing that, I want to mention that the... MORE
May 22, 2007
Institutional Economics
Bryan Caplan
My co-author Ed Stringham has a nice op-ed on prosecutorial abuse and private law in today's Washington Times. Check it out.... MORE
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
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
April 15, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Gerard Alexander writes, The Independent Sector, which is basically the industry group for nonprofits, reports that the combined annual expenditures of all the not-for-profit organizations required to file Form 990 with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service had grown to nearly... MORE
April 1, 2007
Economics of Education
Arnold Kling
Iqbal Quadir: The UN should empower the people, not empower their governments. And if they cannot empower the people they can just shut it off. My point is that helping the wrong side is harmful. So if they cannot help... MORE
March 29, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, Once private corporations had the organizational wherewithal to get large in the late 19th century, governments got big too. There is an important lesson there. Technology, and to a lesser extent slavery, are why earlier American governments... MORE
February 1, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Clay Shirky writes, Open systems are a profound threat not only because they outsucceed commercial firms but also because they outfail them. They grow not in spite of failure but because of it. In traditional business, trying anything is expensive,... MORE
January 21, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
The New York Times reports on Colombia, The government of President Álvaro Uribe, the largest recipient of American aid outside the Middle East, has found itself ensnared in a widening scandal as revelations surface of a secret alliance between some... MORE
January 15, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Following some recent essays of mine, readers Michael Lotus and James Bennett recommend this chapter by Alan MacFarlane. Human life can for convenience be divided into four major spheres, the pursuit of power (politics), the pursuit of wealth (economics), the... MORE
January 9, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Will Hutton writes, My hypothesis when I began was that China was so different that it could carry on adapting its model, living without democracy or European enlightenment values. I have changed my mind and now see more clearly than... MORE
January 8, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I elaborate on the new paper by North, Wallis, and Weingast that I first posted on last week. In the essay, I write, I would say that there is no chance that the United States will succeed... MORE
January 3, 2007
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast have a new paper, immodestly titled, "A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History." I will excerpt from it in the extended entry. An earlier paper (from 2005) may be... MORE
December 27, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
David Brin writes, the quasi-Confucian social pattern that is being pursued by the formerly Communist rulers of China seems to be an assertive, bold and innovative approach to updating authoritarian rule, incorporating many of the efficiencies of both capitalism and... MORE
December 26, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
People have often been willing to give up personal identity and join into a collective. Historically, that propensity has usually been very bad news. Collectives tend to be mean, to designate official enemies, to be violent, and to discourage... MORE
December 11, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Robin Hanson writes, law is there to make disputants shut up... If we expected jurors (or judges) to try their best to achieve social justice or economic efficiency, without substantial bias, we would have law, but not laws. That is,... MORE
December 10, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Pete Boettke chimes in, However advantageous a culture may be, it cannot overcome bad institutions. And however disadvantageous a culture may be, it will improve when people get to live under institutions of political and economic freedom. Culture can act... MORE
November 23, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Someone at The Economist blog Free Exchange writes, Everyone now agrees that "institutions matter", but this is partly because "institutions" is a catchall word that can include almost anything anyone cares about, if one squints hard enough and tilts one's... MORE
November 8, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen quotes Barry Eichengreen. Thus Europe, which had relied on extensive growth in the 1950s and 1960s, had no choice but to switch to intensive growth from the 1970s on. The problem was that institutions tailored to the needs... MORE
November 6, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Gary Becker, a Nobel Laureate in part for his work on the economics of crime, discusses Latin America's problem. I would recommend that they use both the "stick" and the "carrot" to fight crime. The "stick" included apprehending more criminals,... MORE
November 1, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Peter Schaefer writes, all societies have rules otherwise they would descend into anarchy. And the basis of all consensual laws (as opposed to imposed) is the customary or informal rule-sets that have been evolving with the society. These rule-sets must... MORE
September 18, 2006
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Arnold Kling
Sebastian Mallaby writes, In Let Their People Come, a new book published by the Center for Global Development, Lant Pritchett reports that if rich countries permitted extra immigration equivalent to 3 percent of their labor force, the citizens of poor... MORE
August 16, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
This paper by Edward L. Glaeser, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer is a couple of years old, but it speaks to issues that come up here frequently. we find that, in a variety of specifications, initial levels... MORE
July 24, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Robert Reich writes The gap between China’s rich and poor is turning into a chasm. China’s innovators, investors, and captains of industry are richly rewarded. They live in luxury housing developments whose streets are lined with McMansions. The feed in... MORE
July 20, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In a timely article, Austan Goolsbee writes The good news is that history suggests that the destruction of war has no lasting impact on economic prospects. The bad news is that most of these countries, especially Iraq, are filled with... MORE
July 17, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Strategy Page writes The corruption is so bad that American officials find their Iraqi counterparts more concerned with stealing than governing. The theft is so pervasive that an honest official (who doesn't steal) is at a political disadvantage. During Saddam's... MORE
June 23, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Gurchuran Das writes, the old centralized bureaucratic Indian state is in steady decline. Where it is desperately needed -- in providing basic education, health care, and drinking water -- it has performed appallingly. Where it is not needed, it has... MORE
June 1, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Max Borders makes a case that nation-building can work. What's more, while institutions can and usually do develop or evolve over time -- much in the same way that DNA evolved from auto-catalytic processes and from simpler amino acids, and... MORE
May 16, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I discuss a book by Jennifer Roback Morse. Single moms and the welfare state go together. Strong families and free markets go together. Morse argues that a combination of weak families and free markets is much... MORE
May 9, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Max Borders rightly criticizes a proposal for an international agency to effect nation-building. A disconnect between the donors and the recipients means that information feedback loops get lost. The structure of the behemoth makes it virtually impossible for that agent... MORE
April 19, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Cato Unbound looks at foreign aid. First, William Easterly writes, The two key elements necessary to make aid work, and the absence of which has been fatal to aid’s effectiveness in the past, are FEEDBACK and ACCOUNTABILITY. The needs of... MORE
January 30, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
William Easterly writes, historically poverty has never been ended by central planners. It is only ended by "searchers", both economic and political, who explore solutions by trial and error, have a way to get feedback on the ones that work,... MORE
January 19, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I meditate on the topic. Regardless of the state of scholarly belief about Keynes, folk Keynesianism is dominant. For example, most people believe that we should worry about whether "the consumer" will spend freely. Everyone fears... MORE
January 5, 2006
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I write Over the past 50 years, economists have become less materialistic. No, we have not become hippies, rejected consumerism, and discovered spirituality. As social scientists, however, we have noticed that a large share of wealth... MORE
December 21, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Now Bryan writes, statements like "To break a warlord equilibrium, you need government" only confuse us. I agree. I cannot think of any examples of societies that were stuck in a warlord equilibrium and then suddenly said, "Let's sit down... MORE
December 19, 2005
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
In a new book, a team of World Bank economists writes, most of a country's wealth is captured by what we term intangible capital...Intangible assets include the skills and know-how embodied in the labor force. The category also includes social... MORE
December 18, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
In the latest issue of The Independent Review, Robert Higgs writes, in the late nineteenth century the so-called welfare state began to take shape. From that time forward, people were told that the government can and should protect them from... MORE
December 17, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Now Bryan writes, For example, the Soviet Union from 1956 on was clearly an institutional arrangement, run by many individuals with competing interests, which were resolved using rules that were viewed as more important than any one individual. Khrushchev was... MORE
December 16, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, I fail to see how getting a [government] counts as "breaking" a warlord equilibrium. Why shouldn't it simply be described as "accepting" a warlord equilibrium - you quit resisting the rule of the most powerful warlord, and let... MORE
December 13, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, As economic growth progressed, of course, the market for defense services got bigger, making room for more and more firms. The problem, however, is that if you've got government in an area, it has the power and the... MORE
August 2, 2005
Regulation and Subsidies
Arnold Kling
David R. Henderson writes, The best statement of the philosophical case against antitrust is in philosopher Harry Binswanger's essay, "Antitrust: 'Free Competition' at Gunpoint." Binswanger draws a fundamental distinction between economic power and political power. Economic power, he notes, is... MORE
June 27, 2005
Regulation and Subsidies
Arnold Kling
Both Gary Becker and Richard Posner weigh in. Becker writes, Is eminent domain a desirable principle in the 21st century? In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, governments did rather little, so there was not much to fear from... MORE
June 19, 2005
Institutional Economics
Bryan Caplan
In case you haven't guessed, I'm not a practical person. I'm more interested in Why than How. I lack what Robin Hanson calls the "engineer's mentality" - the urge to construct a concrete product of use to other people. Once... MORE
June 6, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Anthony de Jasay argues that French and German welfare state policies are based on a belief that the distribution of the national income is the government's business as well as its natural prerogative, and that whatever it happens to be,... MORE
May 24, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Daniel Klein writes, When people think of society at large as the group to which they belong--when they think of having “citizenship,” whether it be in a town, a county, or a country--the logic of coordination leads directly to government... MORE
May 19, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Don Boudreaux and David Barron in a WSJ Celebrity Death Match. Boudreaux says, eminent domain is unnecessary. The fact that housing developers routinely acquire large contiguous plots of land without eminent domain -- that is, by buying individual plots from... MORE
April 29, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Daron Acemoglu, the latest winner of the Clark Medal, is one more data point in the trend line away from mathematical viruosity and toward the The New Economic Paradigm. Consider, for example, his Lionel Robbins lectures on Understanding Institutions. Institutions,... MORE
March 14, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Hernando De Soto offers his views in this interview it takes you 549 days to get a license to operate a bakery in Egypt and that is with a lawyer. Without a lawyer, it takes about 650 days. In Honduras,... MORE
March 4, 2005
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Alex Simonelis writes, Certain protocols, and the parameters required for their usage, are essential in order to operate on the Internet. A number of bodies have become responsible for those protocol standards and parameters. It can be fairly said that... MORE
February 7, 2005
Economic Philosophy
Arnold Kling
Russ Roberts writes Over the next five or ten years, hundreds of millions of Chinese are expected to leave the Chinese countryside and move to the city. This extraordinary migration will require millions of adjustments to take place to make... MORE
February 2, 2005
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
Peter Gordon points to an interesting article by Meir Kohn in the Cato Journal The exchange paradigm has a very different theory of growth. Growth does not mean movement along an equilibrium path but rather the unfolding of a complex... MORE
December 16, 2004
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Peter Gordon writes, Just surfing the U.S. Statistical Abstracts, which are now available through www.census.gov for many years back, reveals the dimensions of the most auspicious government consolidation project in U.S. history: the consolidation of school districts. Sixty years ago,... MORE
May 17, 2004
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
I just breezed through Michael Barone's Hard America, Soft America. Reviewers tend to quote the following passage (p. 12). UPDATE: see also this article by Barone which leads with the sentence I quote. For many years I have thought it... MORE
March 31, 2004
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Our parent site, Econlib, now has a sister site, The Online Library of Liberty, a library of classic works. You can browse Books and Essays. Among the writers whose work is presented and discussed is Thomas Hobbes, who offered a... MORE
November 6, 2003
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
A just-concluded conference in honor of Milton and Rose Friedman produced some interesting papers. For example, James D. Gwartney and Robert A. Lawson find that an index of economic freedom helps to account for the failure of the standard of... MORE
September 25, 2003
Energy, Environment, Resources
Arnold Kling
As a dean at Berkeley, Hal Varian has a personal interest in California. In his column today, he offers some plain-spoken economics lessons. Most California voters think the electricity crisis contributed to the state budget deficit. If only things were... MORE
September 18, 2003
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Marc Brazeau asks (see Steve Antler's site), Two common arguments against raising the minimum wage are possible inflationary effects and job loss. Why aren't these issues raised in relation to executive compensation? I think that the conventional wisdom is that... MORE
September 11, 2003
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Given the situation in Iraq, an economic analysis of the problem of developing political institutions would seem timely. Tyler Cowen and Christopher J. Coyne have drafted a paper on the topic. They write, Our core thesis is the following: reconstructions... MORE
July 1, 2003
Monetary Policy
Arnold Kling
Graham Turner claims to offer magical monetary manipulations. A year and a half after the Japanese government introduced its first fiscal stimulus, the yield curve (10-year Japanese government bond yields minus the discount rate) had steepened by nearly 2 percentage... MORE
May 20, 2003
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Henry Farrell argues against the view that institutions must reduce transactions costs in order to survive. there are an awful lot of institutional arrangements out there that demonstrably have very little to do with efficiency or transaction cost reduction, and... MORE
Return to top
|
SHARE