Pete Boettke, Chris Coyne and Peter T. Leeson have a new blog: The Austrian Economists. The great name is inspired by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s 1891 essay of that title for the American Academy of Political and Social Science summarizing the significance of Austrian economics. What the world needs now... Is more Austrian economists blogging!
As a quick sample, here is an extract from “Who Enforces International Trade?“ by Peter T. Leeson:
...UC-Berkeley economist Andrew Rose published an excellent paper on this issue last year in the American Economic Review (”Do We Really Know that the WTO Increases Trade?”). In this piece, Rose finds that there is startlingly little evidence that the WTO has done anything to enhance trade.
...Many economists I’ve discussed this with are surprised that state enforcement is so unimportant for trade. But for those familiar with the Menger-Mises-Hayek line of reasoning, there is nothing particularly unusual about this finding at all. In fact, for some, like Murray Rothbard, who emphasized the superiority of private enforcement to public enforcement, this is precisely what we should expect.
