Here’s an interesting excerpt from an interview with David Card by the Minneapolis Fed’s Region (December 2006). Is Card making the Austrian point that the perfectly competitive model (a.k.a. the simple supply and demand model) does not explain what actually goes on in labor markets? Has the infamous Card and Krueger really been misinterpreted?
This excerpt from an article on Americans abandoning U.S. automakers provides an idea of just how ignorant one would have to be to believe that “buying American” makes any sense: Justin Watson, a 25-year old laborer and student from Beaumont, Texas, says he is fiercely loyal to American cars. “My great-grandfather, grandfather and father fought
When it comes to matters such as the theory of evolution and stem-cell research, so-called liberals—i.e., socialists who have stolen the name that once meant an advocate of individual freedom—ridicule religious conservatives for their desire to replace science with the dictates of an alleged divine power. Yet when it comes to matters of economic
Statism resounds in the last two paragraphs of this article (NO subscription required) in this week’s Economist . The interesting story is a particularly stark example of how the use of cell phones can and does promote economic wellbeing, this in the Indian state of Kerala. But at the end of the short article, the writer (and/or the author of the
[Cross posted at Organizations and Markets ] Most of my academic colleagues are anti-American food snobs. Why, those poor Yanks, they think Parmesan cheese is a white, powdery stuff in plastic cylinders rather than an expensive, thick, wedge with its maker’s mark on the skin. (Note the section “Other cheeses erroneously named Parmesan” in the
Living near the home of a major state university, national collegiate rankings are a real source of pride. There are the typical sports rankings that make the headlines; those for football and basketball in particular. But lately, The Columbus Dispatch has reported and editorialized on a new ranking; research and development expenditures at U.S.
In the last edition of The Freeman , David Levin and Michele Boldrin argue that “innovation could thrive” without an IP regime. And they propose that an “ open-source “ model can accomplish this feat. Two heads are better than one... F or those unfamiliar with the open-source paradigm, in a nutshell, its proponents suggest that in terms of
What a wacky world we live in. An issue called the minimum wage fascinates the Pols even more than the price of meatloaf and 3 in the Senate cafeteria. Newspaper headlines hammer home this crisis in remuneration — I mean the minimum wage, not the price of meatloaf. Forget that only 3% of hourly workers make less than the current $5.25. Only 13%
Here is an interesting paper by Christopher Coyne and Steve Davies. It counters the argument that empire produces public goods by pointing to the many public bads of empire.
Life without international trade: using local labor and materials only, a suit takes 500 man-hours to produce. And it’s not exactly high-quality. But what a great teaching project by Kelly Cobb of Drexel University. Here’s the story from Wired
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.