Economics – Page 26 – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Subprime mortgage crisis — history flowchart

10 Comments / Architecture, Business Ethics, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Film, History of Philosophy, Literature, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Here is a simplified flowchart, developed for my business ethics courses, reflecting my understanding of subprime mortgages’ contribution to the crisis. Let me emphasize that this is only about the subprime contribution of the overall crisis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enabled much spillover into non-subprime mortgage sectors, government-set capital requirements and other regulations enabled […]

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Deregulation? The Federal Register’s size

2 Comments / Economics, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Following up on my post entitled “When was the financial sector deregulated?” Another crude measure of regulation or deregulation is to count the number of pages in the U.S. Federal Register. The Federal Register is the government’s daily publication of new and proposed rules. Some of the rules are trivial and some have large impact;

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More: Do conservatives really value economic liberty?

1 Comment / Economics, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Some do, sort of. But most of its major representatives do not. Another example is GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich. In his 1984 book, Window of Opportunity, Gingrich attacks laissez-faire and proposes what he calls “opportunity society conservatism”: “The opportunity society calls not for a laissez-faire society in which the economic world is a neutral jungle

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When was the financial sector deregulated?

24 Comments / Economics, Politics / Stephen Hicks

One popular meme is that the financial crisis was caused by deregulation in the banking and financial sectors. Accordingly, suggest the memists, free markets should take the blame and more government regulation is the solution. When did this deregulation take place? One measure of the degree of regulation is how much the federal government spends

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Thankful: wealth and life expectancy

2 Comments / Economics, Fruits of the Enlightenment / Stephen Hicks

Something to be thankful for: All those productive people who created the wealth that has enable so many of us to live longer and more fully. I love this data map from Gapminder correlating life expectancy with wealth (click for full size): And encouraging numbers over at Forbes (via R.M.): Avik Roy looks at cancer

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My upcoming lectures at Universidad Francisco Marroquín

Leave a Comment / Economics, Philosophy, Politics / Stephen Hicks

From November 3 to 6, I will be giving an invited series of lectures and seminars (nine hours worth of them!) at the Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala. My general themes will be entrepreneurship, ethics, philosophy, and political economy. The times titles of my various talks are as follows. Open Lecture (Thursday, November 3): “Entrepreneurs

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Fernández and Sarano to speak at Rockford College

Leave a Comment / Economics, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Federico Fernández and Martin Sarano will speak on “Doing Business in Argentina: The current business climate and the ethical dilemmas it presents to entrepreneurs and corporations” to my Business and Economic Ethics class on Thursday, October 13. Early in the twentieth century, Argentina’s economy was one of the top ten in the world, but it

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Elizabeth Warren and the doulos

19 Comments / Economics, Entrepreneurship, History of Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Elizabeth Warren’s recent remarks offer a striking glimpse into one prominent strain of American political thought.

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