Who is worth more: a person alive 100 years ago, a person alive today, a person alive 100 years from now, or a person who is never born, or a person who has always existed?
Often times arguments about sustainability imply that there is some objective standard by which having fewer people today, and fewer people [...]
My arguments for open immigration have solid economic support. Lant Pritchett, a Harvard Economist, has a book out entitled Let Their People Come (download it for free here), which makes a similar argument.
But for a brief introduction check out this Reason interview with him.
In response to many who doubt the political feasability of more open [...]
Introduction
In this essay I open a passage of scripture which has much to say to the marketplace community, and then offer a few words informed by the economic discipline. Finally, I offer some specific action points to the marketplace community, several of which I expect to be controversial, though I believe well founded. [...]
country for immigrants.
I have the pdf of a book by Lant Pritchett sitting on my desktop somewhere. He talks about global poverty and migration from what I take to be the most ethical angle available to us. Reason does a bang up interview with him here on his new book, and I just [...]
Dani Rodrik challenges the dominant paradigm and says that:
We can get a lot of economic growth in a very poor institutional environment: formal institutions of property rights and contract enforcement are not always a binding constraint (just as lack of traffic lights does not prevent traffic from flowing smoothly in Vietnam)
This grates on the Austrian’s [...]
Dani Rodrick is my hero. (Some Austrians faint.) He links to a lovely graph which shows new products (innovation) account for the majority of differences among exports. It’s more complicated than that, and I’m a novice, but I’m going to keep my eye on what’s going on with this line of research.
The first [...]
Russ Roberts has been digging through American Housing Survey data from old censuses.
He reports:
1. In 1970, 36% of the 67 million households in America had air conditioning, 11% had central air.
2. In 2005, 82% of the 15 million households with income below the poverty line had air conditioning, 52% had central air.
Whining is [...]
The Economist reports Michael Clemens sharing my idea,
Our real moral concern should not be the Central African Republic, but its unfortunate denizens. The best thing for their prospects may simply be to get out–to leave for a place where growth has already commenced.
And there’s a book by Lant Pritchett which we can download and read [...]
Boetke goes to a RATIO conference and learns something. Wish I could have been there!
I am currently enrolled in both a Principle – Agent Problem course, and an Economic Development Course. How can Chicago meet Havard? Perhaps at GMU, but only if LvMI stays in Auburn. Romer’s work is relevant, and tries very hard not [...]