Lynne Kiesling As if Mike and I haven’t given you enough nudges to go read Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity, here’s another one: Don Boudreaux has a lovely column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that introduces the work via the question of whether economic incentives are sufficient to understand and explain human behavior and economic growth. What …
Lynne Kiesling Last week, Chicago craft brewery Goose Island agreed to be acquired by Anheuser-Busch, which purchased a 58% equity stake in the brewery. Goose Island founder John Hall argues that the deal enables Goose Island to make investments to increase capacity, an investment necessary for continued profitability. He recognizes that some may be skeptical …
Goose Island: What if Acquiring Capital Cannibalizes Your Market? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In the Chicago Tribune, economist Allen Sanderson riffs on the same faulty “dependence” logic that I mentioned briefly last week: I speak, of course, of our complete dependence on coffee that we are importing mainly from Brazil and Colombia. It’s time to wean ourselves from this harmful addiction. My “Coffee Independence” proposal is …
Lynne Kiesling … but this is an econ post too. John Whitehead was kind to refer to our November lunch conversation in which we discovered a shared interest in cycling (to go along with our shared interests in economics, environmental economics, and beer). There are some ways that even individual recreational cycling reflects core economic …
Lynne Kiesling At Reason Brian Doherty reports on home gardeners in Oakland being fined for zoning violations when they sell produce, and their being required to spend a lot of money to acquire commercial permits. Bob Dylan, prophet for his generation: even your home garden absolutely is against the law–at least if you dare let …
Law Does Not Evolve Apace with Economic Dynamism Read More »
Michael Giberson Harvard economic systems designer Al Roth is profiled in the Boston Globe: Academically speaking, Roth is a pioneer of so-called market design: finding situations where a market is failing — often, a place that most people wouldn’t even recognize as a market — and making it work better. Roth has influenced a cadre …
Market Design Helps People Attain Goals Effectively Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Live! Here! Now! The annual Kauffman Foundation Econ Bloggers Forum is being webcast today, until 11:30 CDT and then again 1:00-4:00 CDT. A lineup of great speakers; I was unable to attend last year, but greatly enjoyed the event two years ago. I think Bryan Caplan is about to speak … I will …
Michael Giberson What is the deal with Yahoo Answers? Someone asks whether an onion is a fruit or vegetable, and the voted “best answer” says “An onion is a bulb.” What? Also, I’d be remiss in not sharing this: Continued Existence Of Edible Arrangements Disproves Central Tenets Of Capitalism WALLINGFORD, CT—Upending more than two centuries …
Lynne Kiesling I am intrigued by the conversation in which John Whitehead is participating that takes on the question in the title to this post (and I’m very grateful for his saying that I’m one of his favorite bloggers, thank you!!!). Background: Matthew Kahn looks at REPEC data to see that in economists ranked in …
Lynne Kiesling Increasingly I agree with Deirdre McCloskey that over the past 120 or so years economics has moved further away from incorporation of the importance of the Bourgeois Virtues into our analyses of economic decision-making and economic growth. Indeed, I claim that ignoring the effects of virtue on individual decision-making is one of the …
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