This year’s Nobel-ish prize in economics goes to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley for research on “matching methods” and the resulting application to “market design.” Briefly, this work deals with allocating resources in the absence of money and prices. Shapley applied noncooperative game theory to study the properties of different matching rules, and Roth studied various allocation rules to encourage “efficient” matching of actors or traders without using prices.
More signs that the writings of Hayek, Mises, and modern Austrian economists are beginning to have some influence even in places where it might be least expected despite the efforts of Professors DeLong and Krugman to discredit thses ideas.
[Included in The Bastiat Collection (2011), this article appeared in Economic Sophisms (1845).]
A fallacy sometimes expands, and runs through the whole texture of a long and elaborate theory. More frequently, it shrinks and contracts, assumes the guise of a principle, and lurks in a word or a phrase.
My colleague at Metro State, Alex Padilla, provides solid commentary (on-line Denver Post) on a Colorado ballot issue, amendment 64, to decriminalize marijuana in Colorado.
