EconLib Newsletter

November 2019
 
 
'Tis the Season for Nobel Laureates

Hello, friends! Thank you for continuing to join us as we continue our journey of exploration of our world through the lens of economics.

This past month, our world gained three new Nobel laureates. Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer shared the 2019 award “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”

At Econlib, we're fortunate to house a great deal of information on the list of laureates, often through direct interaction with them. Banerjee, for example, is a past guest on EconTalk.

Other Nobel laureates who have appeared on EconTalk include Paul Romer, Richard Thaler, Angus Deaton, Eugene Fama, Alvin Roth, Edmund Phelps, and Vernon Smith. And these aren't the only laureates to have appeared, but we think you get the picture.

To learn about some other laureates, you might also check out some of our Econlib videos. Here you can find video interviews with Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Gary Becker, among others. Here you can find complementary questions for discussion, as well as links to many related resources.

We have so many resources on the laureate tradition, by this time next month we'll have an all-new Econlib Guide to showcase them. We hope you'll check back then. Until then, thanks for reading, and fee free to drop us a line with your feedback anytime at [email protected]. We love to hear from you.
 
EconLib Feature Articles, November 2019

How We Failed Our Economics Students and Caused Low Government Approval Ratings

by Russell S. Sobel
 
Quite simply, the public is, and has generally always been disappointed in government action and performance (at least when we are not at war).

It should be no wonder the average U.S. college-educated citizen feels this way... What a disservice we as economists have done to our students! For those readers who have had this type of education in your principles of economics curriculum, I apologize. We, as a profession, have misled you. And for any economics instructors reading, let me tell you how you can do a better job for your students.
 
Inside Leviathan: Lessons from Gordon Tullock’s Bureaucracy

By Stefanie Haeffele and Anne Hobson
 
Bureaucracy has a reputation of being a ‘necessary evil’ in modern western society.

While bureaucracy is at the core of many of our complaints, it is also the hierarchical administrative structure that makes sure large companies and governmental agencies can grow in scale and scope, efficiently pay all of their employees, and comply with proper accounting practices. Understanding the capabilities and limitations of bureaucracy is, therefore, key to understanding the opportunities and challenges that organizations face.

Romance and Reality: A review of Romance of the Rails by Randal O’Toole

by David R. Henderson
 

O’Toole, a long-time fan of railroads, puts his fandom aside and shows what a disaster government subsidies to, and regulations of, rail transportation have been. 

His bottom line is that in case after case, governments have turned the clock back on transportation, resisting and trying to reverse its progress.

How Democratic Capitalism Works

by Arnold Kling
 
Defenders of the liberal order fear authoritarian populism on the right as well as an illiberal left that, in the name of justice, is willing to suppress speech and turn to socialism.

Iversen and Soskice offer a much more optimistic outlook. They see democratic capitalism as a self-healing system that has survived more than a century of wars and crises.
FEATURED ECONLOG POSTS
Featured Post: Pierre Lemieux, American Sanctions: Why Foreigners Obey

Why are international sanctions decreed by the US government obeyed by the targeted “sanctioned persons,” who are foreign nationals generally out of reach of penalties from American authorities? The answer is simple but apparently unknown to many people. The sanctioned persons are not expected to do anything to obey. What the sanctions do is to prohibit Americans (as well as nationals of third countries) from dealing with the foreign sanctioned persons (which include individuals and entities), and the criminal penalties target Americans.


More Recent Posts
FEATURED ECONTALK EPISODES
Ryan Holiday on Stillness is the Key
Ryan Holiday talks about his latest book, Stillness Is the Key, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Holiday explores how stillness--the cultivation of serenity and focus--can affect how we live and how we perceive life. Topics discussed include the performance artist Marina Abramovic, Winnie the Pooh, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame induction speech. Holiday also explains how he keeps track of information and how his system makes it easier for him to write his books.

How can you prepare yourself for stillness???Don't miss our EconTalk Extra on Holiday's episode, Cultivating Stillness, also at Econlib. 

And if you're interested in the sort of books Holiday reads, join us at #EconlibReads this month as we explore Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture, which Holiday has mentioned in each of his interviews.

More Recent Episodes:
FEATURED CEE ENTRIES
Featured Entry: Friedrich August Hayek biography

If any twentieth-century economist was a Renaissance man, it was Friedrich Hayek. He made fundamental contributions in political theory, psychology, and economics. In a field in which the relevance of ideas often is eclipsed by expansions on an initial theory, many of his contributions are so remarkable that people still read them more than fifty years after they were written. 

Hayek was the best-known advocate of what is now called Austrian economics. He was, in fact, the only major recent member of the Austrian school who was actually born and raised in Austria.
"Man is an animal that bargains," said Smith. Our commercial interactions help us further our individual interests and civilize us at the same time. How is the free market necessary for Smith's "system of natural liberty?"

Watch An Animal That Trades at AdamSmithWorks.org.
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