On Sunday, August 9th the people of Belarus will go to the polls for the 6th Presidential election since independence. The incumbent is widely expected to win, which he has done for the previous five. He probably already has. And yet according to Andrew Roth, writing for The Guardian, something…

“Progress is sustainable, indefinitely. But only by people who engage in a particular kind of thinking and behaviour — the problem-solving and problem-creating kind characteristic of the Enlightenment. And that requires the optimism of a dynamic society” (Deutsch, 2011, p.423) Management is the process by which people control resources, and…

Following Sam Bowman’s excellent list of “Things I recommend you buy and use” (which inspired Rob Wiblin’s edition), here is my own version. My focus is more on sharing instances of consumer surplus than providing a recommendation for purchases, but I also think it’s a great way to share advice…

Would you believe it? I’ve spent years producing original, expert commentary on the economy and financial markets (see Kaleidic Economics) and yet the time I make it onto something like The Chart Book (at 28:15) it’s for a tweet I posted while homeschooling. As a professional educator I’ve enjoyed…

In a 1964 article Nobel Laureate James Buchanan famously asked, “what should economists do?” He was concerned by a trend for economic analysis to focus too much on attempting to solve technical problems, and losing sight of the methodological underpinnings of the discipline. He encouraged economists to… concentrate their attention…

The Korean peninsula is the classic example of the importance of economic institutions. You can take an ethnically and culturally homogenous territory, mark out an arbitrary line, and thus create a natural experiment. Put a centrally planned economy in the North, and a (broadly) market economy in the South. Communism…

My mother spent her career in the Modern Languages department of a secondary school near Southampton, England. When people asked her what she did, she’d say, “I teach”. The typical follow up question is “what do you teach?” to which she’d reply “students”. At some fundamental level this captures the…

The debate about the key drivers of economic growth, and how it can be generated in different countries at different times, is complex. However economists have a fairly good understanding of what needs to be in place for growth to occur. Certain moments in history have generated natural experiments that…

This article simulates a faculty lounge conversation, inspired by Kitch, Edmund W., ed. 1983 “The Fire of Truth: A Remembrance of Law and Economics at Chicago, 1932–1970.” Journal of Law and Economics 26(1):163–234 How should students view themselves? Students are not customers and we are not hotels, desperate to please…