New issue of Econ Journal Watch is out!

10/01/2016 Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links Charlotta Stern, confirmation bias, Econ Journal Watch, gender, Gordon Tullock, South Korea, Warren Gibson

For those of you who don’t already know, Warren is the math reader for EJW and one of NOL‘s co-founders, Fred Foldvary, is an editor for the journal, so this is very much a family affair. Here are some of the articles that caught my eye:

You get what you measure: Daniel Schwekendiek explains how South Korea followed a proven template of incentivizing exports to boost Web of Science publications and raise the rankings of its academic institutions.

Now entering a Republican-free zone: Mitchell Langbert, Anthony J. Quain, and Daniel Klein report on the voter registration of faculty at 40 leading U.S. universities in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology.

Whither science in gender sociology? Charlotta Stern investigates whether gender sociologists blinker themselves from scientific findings about sex differences.

How to Do Well by Doing Good! In this 1984 essay, Gordon Tullock counsels young economists that doing well and doing good go together.

You can download and read the whole thing here (pdf).

New issues of Econ Journal Watch, Reason Papers out

02/02/2016 Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links Benny Carlson, Econ Journal Watch, Eli Heckscher, Fred Foldvary, Irfan Khawaja, liberalism, Mexico, Pavel Kuchař, Policy of Truth, Reason Papers, South Korea, Warren Gibson, Yong Yoon, Young Back Choi

Many of you already know that two of NOL‘s Senior Editors are associated with Econ Journal Watch, thus making its publication a family affair. Fred is on the editorial board and Warren is its math reader. Here are some of the highlights I found worth noting in the latest issue:

Eli Heckscher’s Ideological Migration Toward Market Liberalism: Benny Carlson explores the intellectual evolution of a great Swedish economist.

Symposium:
Classical Liberalism in Econ, by Country: Authors from around the world tell us about their country’s culture of political economy, in particular the vitality of liberalism in the original political sense, historically and currently, with special attention to professional economics as practiced in academia, think tanks, and intellectual networks.

New contributions:

Young Back Choi and Yong Yoon: Liberalism in Korea

Pavel Kuchař: Liberalism in Mexican Economic Thought, Past and Present

(All of the papers from this symposium, which has carried across multiple issues of EJW, are collected at this page.)

You can download the whole issue here (pdf).

Dr Khawaja, an Editor-at-Large for Reason Papers, reports (2/2/16) on the latest issue over at Policy of Truth:

The latest issue of Reason Papers, vol. 37, number 2 is now out; officially, it’s the Fall 2015 issue, but we only just managed to put it up on the website last night. This link will take you to a monster-size PDF to the whole issue (almost 250 pages). This link will take you to the journal’s Archive page, where you can access individual articles for this or any past issue (you have to scroll down a bit). Finally, this link will take you to three (time sensitive) Calls for Papers issued by the journal’s editors: one on “the philosophy of play” (March 1, 2016); one a fifteen-year retrospective on 9/11 (July 1, 2016); and one an Authors-Meet-Critics symposium on Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen’s forthcoming book The Perfectionist Turn: From Meta-Norms to Meta-Ethics (February 1, 2017).

My own small contribution to Reason Papers can be found here (pdf).

New issue of Econ Journal Watch is out

06/06/201506/06/2015 Brandon Christensen Links Econ Journal Watch, economics, Fred Foldvary, internationalism, liberalism, Patrick Mardini, Warren Gibson

For those of you just tuning in to NOL, Fred is an editor for the journal, and Warren is its math reader.

Evolution, moral sentiments, and the welfare state: Many now maintain that multilevel selection created a sympathetic species with yearnings for social solidarity. Several evolutionary authors on the political left suggest that collectivist politics is an appropriate way to meet that yearning. Harrison Searles agrees on evolution and human nature, but faults them for neglecting Hayek’s charge of atavism: The modern polity and the ancestral band are worlds apart, rendering collectivist politics inappropriate and misguided. David Sloan Wilson, Robert Kadar, and Steve Roth respond, suggesting that new evolutionary paradigms promise to transcend old ideological categories.

Evidence of no problem, or a problem of no evidence? In 2009, Laura Langbein and Mark Yost published an empirical study of the relationship between same-sex marriage and social outcomes. Here Douglas Allen and Joseph Price replicate their investigation, insisting that conceptual problems and a lack of empirical power undermine any claim of evidence on outcomes. Langbein and Yost reply.

The progress of replication in economics: Maren Duvendack, Richard W. Palmer-Jones, and W. Robert Reed investigate all Web of Science-indexed economics journals with regard to matters concerning replication of research, including provision of the data and code necessary to make articles replicable and editorial openness to publishing replication studies. They explain the value of replication as well as the challenges, describe its history in economics, and report the results of their investigation, which included corresponding with journal editors.

A Beginner’s Guide to Esoteric Reading: Arthur Melzer describes techniques and devices used in esoteric writing.

Symposium:
Classical Liberalism in Econ, by Country (Part I): Authors from around the world tell us about their country’s culture of political economy, in particular the vitality of liberalism in the original political sense, historically and currently, with special attention to professional economics as practiced in academia, think tanks, and intellectual networks.

Chris Berg: Classical Liberalism in Australian Economics

Fernando Hernández Fradejas: Liberal Economics in Spain

Mateusz Machaj: Liberal Economics in Poland

Patrick Mardini: The Endangered Classical Liberal Tradition in Lebanon: A General Description and Survey Results

Miroslav Prokopijević and Slaviša Tasić: Classical Liberal Economics in the Ex-Yugoslav Nations

Josef Šíma and Tomáš Nikodým: Classical Liberalism in the Czech Republic

All the links are pdfs. The website is here.

New Issue of Econ Journal Watch: Economists on the Welfare State and the Regulatory State: Why Don’t Any Argue in Favor of One and Against the Other?

02/07/201502/06/2015 Brandon Christensen Economics, Politics Arnold Kling, Cass Sunstein, Econ Journal Watch, Fred Foldvary, Jonathan Haidt, regulation, Robert Higgs, Scott Sumner, Warren Gibson, welfare state

For those of you who don’t know Fred is an Editor for the Journal and Warren is its math reader, so this occasion is very much a family affair. Here is the low-down:

Economists on the Welfare State and the Regulatory State: Why Don’t Any Argue in Favor of One and Against the Other?

The symposium Prologue suggests that among economists in the United States, on matters of the welfare state and the regulatory state, virtually none favors one while opposing the other. Such pattern is a common and intuitive impression, and is supported by scatterplots of survey data. But what explains the pattern? Why don’t some economists favor one and oppose the other?

Contributors address those questions:

Dean Baker: Do Welfare State Liberals Also Love Regulation?

Andreas Bergh: Yes, There Are Hayekian Welfare States (At Least in Theory)

Marjorie Griffin Cohen: The Strange Career of Regulation in the Welfare State

Robert Higgs: Two Ideological Ships Passing in the Night

Arnold Kling: Differences in Opinion Among Economists About Government and Market Efficiency

Anthony Randazzo and Jonathan Haidt: The Moral Narratives of Economists

Scott Sumner: Moral Differences in Economics: Why Is the Left-Right Divide Widening?

Cass Sunstein: Unhelpful Abstractions and the Standard View

There is a lot more here. You can find Econ Journal Watch‘s home page here, on our ‘Recommendations’ page.

New Issue of Econ Journal Watch: Does Economics Need an Infusion of Religious or Quasi-Religious Formulations?

06/23/201406/23/2014 Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, History, Links, Religion Acton Institute, atheism, Christianity, Econ Journal Watch, Islam, Judaism, Robin Klay, theology

The new issue of Econ Journal Watch is out and EJW has teamed up with the Acton Institute to feature ‘religion and economics’ as the topic for a symposium.

As some of you may know, my fellow Editor-in-Chief Fred Foldvary is an editor for the journal, and Warren is the math reader, so this project holds a special place here at NOL. I just wish they’d be a little less humble about their endeavors elsewhere and share this type of stuff themselves (this humility is a recurring problem in the libertarian quadrant of the blogopshere)!

At any rate, here is the lineup:

The Prologue to the symposium suggests that mainstream economics has unduly flattened economic issues down to certain modes of thought (such as ‘Max U’); it suggests that economics needs enrichment by formulations that have religious or quasi-religious overtones.

Robin Klay helps to set the stage with her exploration“Where Do Economists of Faith Hang Out? Their Journals and Associations, plus Luminaries Among Them.”

Seventeen response essays are contributed by authors representing a broad range of religious traditions and ideological outlooks:

Pavel Chalupníček:
From an Individual to a Person: What Economics Can Learn from Theology About Human Beings

Victor V. Claar:
Joyful Economics

Charles M. A. Clark:
Where There Is No Vision, Economists Will Perish

Ross B. Emmett:
Economics Is Not All of Life

Daniel K. Finn:
Philosophy, Not Theology, Is the Key for Economics: A Catholic Perspective

David George:
Moving from the Empirically Testable to the Merely Plausible: How Religion and Moral Philosophy Can Broaden Economics

Jayati Ghosh:
Notes of an Atheist on Economics and Religion

M. Kabir Hassan and William J. Hippler, III:
Entrepreneurship and Islam: An Overview

Mary Hirschfeld:
On the Relationship Between Finite and Infinite Goods, Or: How to Avoid Flattening

Abbas Mirakhor:
The Starry Heavens Above and the Moral Law Within: On the Flatness of Economics

Andrew P. Morriss:
On the Usefulness of a Flat Economics to the World of Faith

Edd Noell:
What Has Jerusalem to Do with Chicago (or Cambridge)? Why Economics Needs an Infusion of Religious Formulations

Eric B. Rasmusen:
Maximization Is Fine—But Based on What Assumptions?

Rupert Read and Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
Religion, Heuristics, and Intergenerational Risk Management

Russell Roberts:
Sympathy for Homo Religiosus

A. M. C. Waterman:
Can ‘Religion’ Enrich ‘Economics’?

Andrew M. Yuengert:
Sin, and the Economics of ‘Sin’

Not too shabby, eh? I’ll admit upfront I haven’t been able to read any of the articles yet, but once I find some work out here in Austin I’ll be able to patch together a schedule that’ll allow for a little leisure. You can always download the entire issue, too (pdf). Econ Journal Watch is an important project that is dedicated to exploring and criticizing the underlying assumptions of the discipline of economics, but it is done in a way that is classy, professional, and informative.

New issue of Econ Journal Watch is out

01/31/2014 Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, Links Econ Journal Watch, Fred Foldvary, Warren Gibson

You can find it here, and here is the summary:

One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Summer: In a 2014 AER article, Zacharias Maniadis, Fabio Tufano, and John List grapple with the problem of the credibility of empirical results by presenting a framework for statistical inference. Here Mitesh Kataria discusses some of the assumptions and restrictions of their framework and simulation, suggesting that their results do not, in fact, allow for general recommendations about which inference approach is most appropriate. Maniadis, Tufano, and List reply to Kataria.

Should the modernization hypothesis survive the research of Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James Robinson, and Pierre Yared? New evidence and analysis is provided by Hugo Faria, Hugo Montesinos-Yufa, and Daniel Morales, supporting the hypothesis that there is a long-run positive relation between socio-economic development and political democracy.

Ill-Conceived, Even If Competently Administered: In a 2013 JEP article, Stuart Graham and Saurabh Vishnubhakat argue that the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is doing a good job of interpreting patent law, and suggest that the “smart phone wars” and related disputes are not evidence that the patent system is broken. Here Shawn Miller and Alexander Tabarrok argue that the main problem is not with the PTO but with patent law as it has been applied, particularly to software, resulting in patents that are overly broad and ambiguous, and hence vexing and stifling.

Ragnar Frisch and Norway: Arild Sæther and Ib Eriksen contend that for several decades bad policy derived in part from the climate of opinion among the country’s eminent economists.

The ideological evolution of Milton Friedman: Lanny Ebenstein explores developments in Friedman’s thinking, particularly after the mid-1950s.

EJW Audio: Lanny Ebenstein on Milton Friedman’s Ideological Evolution

I might add that notewriter Fred Foldvary is an Editor for the journal, and notewriter Warren Gibson is its math reader, so give the newest issue some family love!

New Issue of Econ Journal Watch is Out

09/25/201202/06/2015 Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, Links David Cushman, Econ Journal Watch, Fred Foldvary, Free Earth Party, James Tooley, Marc Joffe, Marc Law, Mindy Marks, occupational licensing, Warren Gibson

For those of you who don’t know, co-editor Fred Foldvary is an editor for the Journal, and Warren Gibson is the math reader. From the website:

James Tooley on Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics: Banerjee and Duflo propose to bypass the “big questions” of economic development and focus instead on “small steps” to improvement. But, says Tooley, they proceed to make big judgments about education in developing countries, judgments not supported by their own evidence.

Why the Denial? Pauline Dixon asks why writers at UNESCO, Oxfam, and elsewhere have denied or discounted the success and potentiality of private schooling in developing countries.

Neither necessary nor sufficient, but… Thomas Mayer critically appraises Stephen Ziliak and Deirdre McCloskey’s influential writings, particularly The Cult of Statistical Significance. McCloskey and Ziliak reply.

Was Occupational Licensing Good for Minorities? Daniel Klein, Benjamin Powell, and Evgeny Vorotnikov take issue with a JLE article by Marc Law and Mindy Marks. Law and Marks reply.

Mankiw vs. DeLong and Krugman on the CEA’s Real GDP Forecasts in Early 2009: David Cushman shows how a careful econometrician might have adjudicated the debate among these leading economists over the likelihood of a macroeconomic rebound.

Rating Government Bonds: Can We Raise Our Grade? Marc Joffe, a former Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics, discusses limitations of the methods employed at the credit rating agencies and problems in trying to infer default risks from market prices, suggesting another approach.

Also, if you’re unsatisfied with the status quo in terms of political parties, including the Libertarian party, Dr. Foldvary has established the Free Earth Party for you to look at. Be sure to check it out!

Some Possible Consequences of a U.S. Government Default

01/27/201201/20/2015 Jeffrey Rogers Hummel Economics, History, Politics Econ Journal Watch, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, US default

My Econ Journal Watch article on Treasury default is now available online. It appears in a special issue that is devoted to various articles with differing perspectives on the probability and consequences of a U.S. government default.