January 19, 2011

It’s Lysander Spooner’s Birthday Too!

Lynne Kiesling Another important birthday today, Lysander Spooner! “… An American individualist anarchist, libertarian, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century.” He famously founded a mail delivery company to compete with the monopoly U.S. Postal Service, and government legal challenges to his company drove it …

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Is Rationalizing Regulation Even Possible Through Political Processes?

Lynne Kiesling Like other economists, I was intrigued by President Obama’s op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal about streamlining federal regulation. Like Matthew Kahn, I see the influence of Austan Goolsbee here, as well as Cass Sunstein; like Tim Haab, I think this is a salutary call for more, and more consistent, application of cost-benefit …

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