EconLib Newsletter
September 2020

“That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air … Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”

— Wallace Stegner ([link removed]) , Angle of Repose
For those of us who live by an academic calendar, September always feels like a new year. While this "new year" is certainly different from those past, we still feel the excitement and promise that the start of a new semester brings.

For readers in the classroom, we hope you've been able to use the resources to be found in our Guides section ([link removed]) , or our EconTalk Extras ([link removed]) . We also have a request. If you are using Econlib resources in your teaching, we would be grateful if you could send us your syllabi, reading lists, etc. During this year, we're building a new email list to share teaching ideas; stay tuned for more details. In the meantime, you might consider subscribing to our monthly QuickPicks list ([link removed]) , if you've not already done so. Finally, we'd love to hear any other ideas or suggestions for how we can best support your interests.

Until next month, we wish you well, and look forward to seeing you online. Please share your suggestions and comments with us at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) . We love to hear from you.

EconLib Feature Articles, September 2020
How the Collapse of Communism Has Undermined
Faith in American Capitalism
by Richard B. McKenzie

While acknowledging that economic history is the product of many interacting currents of events, I focus on a powerful but unheralded force shaping U.S. income and wealth patterns over the last five decades, the growth in global market competitiveness substantially boosted by the downfall of communist economies worldwide, but especially in China, since the late 1970s. Read More. ([link removed])

Love and Economics

By Liya Palagashvili

Chances are, either you or at someone you know met their significant other through an online dating platform. If you consider yourself a “picky person” who has trouble finding a potential partner, you likely benefit the most from the broader choice set provided by online dating sites. Read More. ([link removed])

[link removed]

What’s the Economist's
Point of View?
By Adam Martin

Kirzner’s book surveys definitions of economics. He organizes these definitions into families, but there is a roughly chronological progression in the starting points of the chapters. The book reads as a sort of dialectic, with each successive definition offering an escape from the ambiguities and problems of the previous one. Kirzner is not trying to settle all of the disputes that crop up along the way but to trace why those who proposed new definitions find the older ones unsatisfactory. Read More. ([link removed])

Liberty's Discontents
by Arnold Kling

Herman takes us on an extensive tour of pessimistic thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. He provides descriptions of Arthur de Gobineau (a mid-19th century French proponent of racial theories), Friedrich Nietzsche, W.E.B. Du Bois, Oswald Spengler, Sigmund Freud, Arnold Toynbee, and Herbert Marcuse, among many others. It struck me that because these disparate thinkers did not anticipate Herman’s distinction between historical and cultural pessimism, he sometimes has to strain to classify someone as falling on one side or the other. Read More. ([link removed])

Highlights from EconLog

Marginal Revolutionaries: Kirzner and the Modern Austrians

A three part review of Janek Wasserman's Marginal Revolutionaries. Through his career, and especially starting with Competition and Entrepreneurship ([link removed]) , Kirzner attempted to engage the questions that the mainstream of the discipline thought were important. Although his contributions to professional journals were limited, his students and their students in the GMU wing have published widely in professional journals. They have incorporated ideas from related areas in economics, such as public choice, ([link removed]) and the Bloomington school ([link removed]) of political science associated with Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, to create an interdisciplinary approach to political economy. Read More. ([link removed])

More Recent Posts
* Scott Sumner, Sweden and Taiwan revisited ([link removed])
* Sarah Skwire, Bad Blood ([link removed])
* Jayme Lemke, Stay Out of Holly Golightly’s Way ([link removed])
* Bryan Caplan, Escaping Paternalism Book Club: Rizzo and Whitman's Final Response ([link removed])
* Tarnell Brown, From Harrison to Volstead: How Prohibition Laid the Foundation for the War on Drugs ([link removed])
* G. Patrick Lynch, Brains and Bias, continued ([link removed])
* Arnold Kling, Five Books on Macroeconomics ([link removed])

Featured EconTalk Podcast

Michael Munger on the Futue of Higher Education ([link removed])
In this 750th (!) episode, Duke University's Michael Munger ([link removed]) talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts ([link removed]) about whether the pandemic might create an opportunity for colleges and universities to experiment and innovate, Listen Here. ([link removed])

And don't miss Is it Live or it it a Metonymy ([link removed]) , our podcast episode Extra to complement and continue the conversation.

More Recent Episodes:
* Matt Ridley on How Innovation Works ([link removed])
* Franklin Zimring on When Police Kill ([link removed])
* Ben Cohen on the Hot Hand ([link removed])
* John Kay and Mervyn King on Radical Uncertainty ([link removed])

Continue the Conversation with New EconTalk Extras:
* Don't Shoot ([link removed]) [link removed] (complement to Franklin Zimring episode)
* Groundhog Day is No Good ([link removed]) (complement to Mervyn and Kay episode)
* The Doyen of Economics Podcasting on Death, Lockdown, and the Art of Scoratic Dialogue ([link removed])
* Conversation and Society: The Seen and the Unseen ([link removed])

Planning for a new semester?

Don't miss the TEACH collection ([link removed]) at our sister site, AdamSmithWorks.

Find original lesson plans for middle school through college, reading guides, opportunties for reading groups, and more.

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