I attended a two-day conference at Wake Forest University on the Federal Reserve. The Fed is the U.S. central banking system and was founded in 1913 to replace the earlier National Banking System experiments that had been in place since the eighteenth century. I enjoyed a paper presented by George Selgin (University of Georgia) and […]
Has the Federal Reserve been a failure? Read More »
One measure of a nation’s success is its economic health: how free are a nation’s citizens to pursue their own economic goals, and how wealthy on average are its citizens? Almost always the wealthy countries are those that enjoy a significant degree of the economic freedom. (See the chart in the image; click to enlarge.)
Successful nations and the British empire Read More »
I’ll be giving a talk at the 2011 APEE conference in April. My title is “Cameron Hawley, Henry Kitchell Webster, and Populist Capitalism in Literature.” Here is the abstract: In the early and middle part of the twentieth-century, Hawley and Webster were strong-selling authors of novels that dramatized themes of business ethics and political economy.
Populist capitalism in literature Read More »
A pair of striking excerpts from a discussion at CNN Money between motivational speaker Ken Blanchard and Scott Shane, professor of entrepreneurship at Case Western. Here is Scott Shane on whether the government should encourage entrepreneurship or craft policies to divert resources to high-growth companies: “From a societal point of view, if you have a
Entrepreneurship, individualism, and collectivism Read More »
Should one be free to drive a taxi in Miami? Apparently not. The city government of Miami controls the number of taxi cabs and, as of 2002, had decided that only 1,856 taxi licenses shall exist. When a license becomes available, it is sold via lottery. But to participate in the lottery one must pay
Timothy Sandefur’s new book Read More »
This is a very good book: Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz’s From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and the Lasting Triumph over Scarcity. I found it an exciting read, in part because I teach business ethics and philosophy of economics and I’m used to being immersed in the mainstream perspective, much of which
From Poverty to Prosperity Read More »
For much of the twentieth century, poverty and stagnation characterized India’s economic life, yet India has transformed itself and prospects for its 1.1 billion people have improved dramatically. Economics professor Nimish Adhia recently spoke at Rockford College on how Bollywood films both signaled and contributed to the cultural shift necessary for India’s economic liberalization to
Interview with Nimish Adhia on Bollywood and the new India Read More »
This is an excellent overview of the politicized economics, by Peter Boettke and Steven Horwitz, along with an introduction by the excellent John Allison. The abstract: “The Great Recession (or the Great Hangover) that began in 2008 did not have to happen. Its causes and consequences are not mysterious. Indeed, this particular and very painful
The House that Uncle Sam Built Read More »