EconoSpeak

I may have scoffed in the past at the notion of "the marketplace of ideas" but I am coming around to think that maybe it's not such a bad metaphor. Back in the days of primitive economy, families, clans, tribes produced and consumed their own subsistence. If a surplus was produced beyond what was to be set aside for contingencies, it might be given as a gift to a neighboring group, setting up the obligation of a reciprocal gift.Eventually, gift exchange was supplemented and/or supplanted by...

 Something I have been dong for several years now is serving as Senior Coeditor of the Fourth Edition of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, with the original one published back in 1894 in London (my coeditors are Matias Vernengo and Esteban Perez). As part of this effort, a multi-year project, I have been reading cover-to-cover, the entire Third Edition, coedited by Steve Durlauf and Larry Blume, which came out several years ago.  It is 15 volumes, just shy of 15,000 pages, with about...

 Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union.  I previously posted here about this looming anniversary, arguing that the large troop buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border along with the many strong demands being made by V.V. Putin of various parties reflected his high awareness of this looking anniversary, which has been only barely mentioned or noticed in the western media.  As it is, the anniversary passed without an invasion. Not only that there are...

 Somewhere I never saw a full version of this classic, Its a Wonderful Life, but here it is on Christmas Eve, an official Christmas classic. I was always suspicious of it, from all I had heard, but it looks less worth than I had heard. I mean, really, local bank owner gets into real estate problems? And the well-intentioned owner is somehow some great hero? He is offered total control of local monopolies. Heck, today's WaPo noted that the real hero is the wife, played by Donna Reed, Indeed...

 I know, I know, my part of this blog is increasingly resembling an obituary column. But, heck, people I know who are conneted to econ keep dying, although this one was not as well known as others. Sharon Lyn O'Hare was a former student of mine 40 years ago at James Madison University, and while she never finished her PhD at Boston College, she was a decade later a colleague of mine in our department for five years. After then she left academia and ended up holding a high position in the...

In a 1967 festschrift for Maurice Dobb, Richard Goodwin published an influential paper, "A Growth Cycle" on the "class struggle" model of cycles in economic growth. I only became aware of this famous paper because it had occurred to me that the dynamics of relative surplus population, necessary labour time, and socially necessary labour time might resemble a Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model.Painting by Richard M. GoodwinGoodwin's model dealt ultimately with the relationship between wages...

 I am commenting on:https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/12/16/controversial-artwork-twice-stolen-catholic-university?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=3df3839bde-DNU_2021_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-3df3839bde-197481033&mc_cid=3df3839bde&mc_eid=502bbb1a16A painting at Catholic University depicting Mary holding Jesus, with the latter's face resembling that of George Floyd, has been stolen.  It aroused all kinds of controversy.  When I was...

 Sighhhh...The possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is now front page news, with little sign that Putin is going to move his massive military buildup by the border back anytime soon, even if he does not invade.  After the phone call this past week between him and Biden, supposedly lower level negotiations have started, but it is unlikely Putin is going to be given anything dramatic that he has been demanding, such as a written guarantee Ukraine will not join NATO, something that...

 The Environmental Protection Agency was founded during the presidency of Republican Richard Nixon, if perhaps with some lack of enthusiasm. The first national cap and trade (or "tradable emissions permits") system, for SO2, was instituted during the presidency of Republican George H.W. Bush. In 2008, Republican John McCain had an alternative plan to that proposed by Democrat Barack Obama for dealing with global warming, not all that different, mostly perhaps in scale.  Likewise even in...

Not only could disposable time be regarded as a common-pool resource similar to other common-pool resources, but it could stand as the single most far-reaching and democratically vital model of a common-pool resource. Donald Stabile alluded to something in this vein when he noted that, "Human labor is also the primary constituent of the society whose values must be part of any criterion of social evaluation. The appropriate starting point in any policy directed at social costs is with those...