Horizontal Diversity, Vertical Diversity, and a Sense of Place

I had Skyline Chili for dinner this evening for the first time in years. My co-author Robert Lawson–our paper “Human Rights and Economic Liberalization” is here–had sent me a couple of cans of Skyline chili, spaghetti, and red beans as one fo the conditions of a bet we had made: his Cincinnati Reds won the NL Central, but my St. Louis Cardinals won the season series, and it was also a gesture of magnanimity on his part.

How Useful Is the NBER’s Dating of Business Cycles?

On September 20, 2010, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the institution that dates the peaks and troughs of business cycles, pronounced that the US recession ended on June 2009. This conclusion is based on scrutiny of key economic-activity data such as real gross domestic product (GDP) and real gross domestic income (GDI), which appear to have hit a trough in the second quarter of last year (see chart).

Benjamin Constant: French Liberal Extraordinaire

“He loved liberty as other men love power,” was the judgment passed on Benjamin Constant by a contemporary. His lifelong concern, both as a writer and politician, was the attainment in France and in other nations of a free society; and at the time when classical liberalism was the specter haunting Europe — in the second and third decades of the last century — he shared with Jeremy Bentham the honor of being the chief intellectual protagonist for the new ideology.

The Mentality of Transportation/Planning Bureaucrats

There is no more statist rag in the world than the New York Times, and the entire worship of the government and its regulatory apparatus was on display in an op-ed on transportation written by two college professors. Now, the op-ed must be read to fully comprehend the utter economic ignorance, the uncluttered belief in untrammeled state power, and just the snobbery and arrogance that seems to define the worst of New York City’s Official Religion: Worship of the State.

Put On a Happy Face?

Some people are saying that all we need is optimism, as if our attitudes alone cause and fix the business cycle, and as if the real world doesn’t matter at all. Actually, the “bad attitudes” of consumers and producers are the real fix: they lead to deleveraging and saving.
Subscribe to