Bryan Caplan, David Henderson, and Arnold Kling

Revealed Preference

A Category Archive (20 entries)

Andy Roddick's Economic Literacy

Revealed Preference
David Henderson
Economist blogger Craig Newmark has linked to a hilarious Andy Roddick press conference. Roddick is so refreshing, answering questions honestly rather than doing the evasion and bulls**t that so many people at press conferences do. There's something else to note... MORE

Dan Seligman, RIP

Revealed Preference
David Henderson
I know this is a little late, but I was just surfing the web and found out that my mentor at Fortune magazine, Dan Seligman, died in January. I'm usually better than this at keeping in touch with friends who... MORE

Lie to Me

Revealed Preference
David Henderson
Like my fellow blogger Bryan, I take particular pleasure in seeing people "tell it like it is." For that reason, I particularly like the new TV show, "Lie to Me." In it, some federal government employees (you can't have everything)... MORE

James Wolcott and Stereotypes

Revealed Preference
David Henderson
My co-blogger, Arnold Kling, posted today about a blogger named James Wolcott. Mr. Wolcott appears to be someone who is deeply troubled by those who would use stereotypes to make their case. But because I didn't know who Mr. Wolcott... MORE

The Must-Read Economics Book of 2008

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Bruno Frey writes, procedural utility has also been found to play a role in consumers' decisions. The first evidence of this was presented by Kahneman, et al., who investigated customers' reactions to a situation where the price of a good... MORE

Vermont and Secession

Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
Today's Washington Post contains an op-ed by Ian Baldwin and Frank Bryan on Vermonters' desire to secede from the union. We secessionists believe that the 350-year swing of history's pendulum toward large, centralized imperial states is once again reversing itself.... MORE

Revealed Preference vs. Happiness

Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson writes, The neuroscience shows that satisfaction of the highest ranked preference does not imply the greatest hedonic satisfaction. It does not imply any hedonic satisfaction. Take a look at this paper, “Parsing Reward,” [pdf] by Kent Berridge and... MORE

Parents Say the Darndest Things

Revealed Preference
Bryan Caplan
Steve Levitt often quips that "People lie, numbers don't." I say that both people and numbers lie some of the time. The tough question is figuring out how much trust you should give people or numbers in any particular case.... MORE

Immigration

Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Arnold Kling
I write, On the issue of poverty and immigration, which Robert J. Samuelson raised, I would ask, "Where would you prefer that people be poor?" That is, do we want to insist that poor Hispanics should remain in their native... MORE

An Envy Tax?

Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Catching up on a week's worth of blog reading, the best thing I missed appears to be this post by Will Wilkinson. Richard Layard points out that one's perceived position in the income distribution is a better predictor of self-reported... MORE

Happiness Research Still Makes Me Unhappy

Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen acknowledges, Unlike Arnold Kling, however, I do not reject the implications of happiness research altogether. The ever-excellent Michael of 2Blowhards.com has now come forward and offered a good summary of what happiness research implies... "Everyone seems to have... MORE

Mass Transit and Happiness

Public Goods
Arnold Kling
Peter Gordon reports on declining use of mass transit. As a group, the 20 largest U.S. metro areas declined in transit use (all trip purposes; thank you, Wendell Cox) in the 1990s. Not relative decline but absolute decline. As a... MORE

Money and Happiness

Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Robert H. Frank writes, Considerable evidence suggests that if we use an increase in our incomes, as many of us do, simply to buy bigger houses and more expensive cars, then we do not end up any happier than before.... MORE

European Scientists and America

Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
Do European elites hate America? Not if you judge on the basis of revealed preference. According to Time, No amount of funding can buy a culture of competitiveness. And if researchers don't see opportunities for reward, they'll take their talent... MORE

Surveys and Happiness

Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I have already given so-called "happiness research" a pretty hard bashing. But Tyler Cowen thinks that there is something to it. He links to a paper that says that people who work for nonprofits are happier than people who work... MORE

Comment of the Week, 2003-05-16

Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
On the topic of revealed preference, David Thomson writes, Human beings are neither existentially [n]or psychologically able to endure lives of everyday indolence and unrelenting pleasure seeking. That sounds like the introductory sentence for a thesis in behavioral economics. For... MORE

Surveys Vs. Revealed Preference, III

Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
I take a skeptical view of surveys in this essay. From the standpoint of revealed preference, the [survey evidence] that income over $20,000 does not raise happiness simply falls apart. Observing the fact that even people with very high incomes... MORE

Surveys Vs. Revealed Preference, II

Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
In a previous post, I mentioned Richard Layard's critique of economics, based on survey research. Now, I have written an extended response to Layard. An excerpt: [Layard] is saying that you cannot trust people's behavior as an indicator of their... MORE

Surveys Vs. Revealed Preference

Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
Richard Layard uses survey research and some fancy philosophical footwork to argue against conventional wisdom in economics and in favor of a nanny state. Some quotes from the series of three lectures: People in the West have got no happier... MORE

Income Vs. Happiness

Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
A short article by Don Peck and Ross Douthat in The Atlantic Monthly summarizes some research on the relationship between income and happiness by Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven. Peck and Douthat interpret the results as suggesting that Above about $20,000... MORE

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