The January 2006 issue of EconJournalWatch is now available at econjournalwatch.org . Contents include Ronald Michener and Robert Wright on the colonial American money supply, Per Hortlund on the Real Bills Doctrine, Adrian Moore and Ted Balaker on taxis (the yellow kind, not Hayek’s taxis ), William Baumol on entrepreneurship and economics
So those scurvy bums at Wal-Mart are finally getting what is coming to them! The state of Maryland will force all companies with more then 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health insurance. Lots of companies have that many employees, but only one falls under the 8 percent threshold, which is you know who. It is only
[Cross posted at Organizations and Markets ] Joel Klein does not have a well-developed sense of irony. As Clinton Administration antitrust czar, he became a household name with his relentless pursuit of Microsoft, a $40 billion company with 70,000 employees in 100 countries. Today Klein heads the New York City public school system, a
Organizations and Markets is running a couple of threads dealing with journal editors, reviewers, and the “market test” for academic quality (see here and here , and also this thread at orgtheory.net). I directed readers to the exchange between Yeager and Laband and Tollison ( 1 , 2 , 3 ). A commentator recommends these papers, which I hadn’t seen
New EH.Net book review by Bob Higgs: Vernon W. Ruttan, Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? Military Procurement and Technology Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xi + 219 pp. $45 (cloth), ISBN: 0-19-518804-7. Reviewed for EH.NET by Robert Higgs, The Independent Institute. Vernon W. Ruttan, Regents Professor Emeritus in the
My article on government and the internet provoked a firestorm of controversy on “net neutrality,” which many libertarian commentators seem to favor. Those new to the debate may wish to consult this short article in The Economist’s Voice by Robert Hahn and Scott Wallsten, which provides a useful overview. Hahn and Wallsten argue that net
My Organizations and Markets post on “puzzles” versus “problems,” in philosophy and economics, is generating some interesting discussion. Mainstream economists, I suggest, are increasingly avoiding the “big questions,” focusing instead on finding and solving cute, clever, but ultimately ephemeral, puzzles. Call it the “Freakonomics Approach.” (Or,
In a recent article I argued that the federal government’s involvement with the nascent internet caused some serious problems down the road. Not everyone was convinced, though I personally thought the article, and my follow-up comments, were absolutely brilliant. Anyway, one of my points was even when the government creates something lots of
Harvard’s Jeff Miron is a traditionally trained, neoclassical economist with surprisingly strong libertarian views. Here is his utilitarian case against antitrust enforcement . (He is best known among libertarians for his opposition to drug prohibition .) Miron was mentioned previously on this blog for offering an undergraduate economics course on
[Cross posted at Organizations and Markets ] On the triumph of formalism in economics (addressed here and here ) — not to mention academic insults — I give you this passage in Fred Kaplan’s The Wizards of Armageddon, a history of the RAND Corporation. The subject is RAND mathematician Albert Wohlstetter , the chief theoretician behind the
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.