Category Archives: Economics

Deck the Halls with Macro Follies

Posted on December 10, 2012 | Comments Off on Deck the Halls with Macro Follies

I’m not much on holiday cheer, but this musical parody from Econ Stories is simply delightful. Click here if the embed below doesn’t work.

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Posted in Economics

CEI Podcast for November 16, 2012: I, Pencil: The Movie

Posted on November 16, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for November 16, 2012: I, Pencil: The Movie


Have a listen here.

Nick Tucker, producer and director of the new CEI short film “I, Pencil,” discusses the importance of Leonard Read’s classic essay, how the project got started, and how ideas like spontaneous order and connectivity are genuinely inspiring.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, The Market Process, Trade

Quote of the Day: Knowing One’s Limits

Posted on November 15, 2012 | 1 comment


Many economists and regulators suffer from a kind of physics envy. The hard sciences can quantify precisely and predict accurately via the experimental method. But even after Vernon Smith‘s innovations in experimental economics, the discipline still lacks the scientific precision that, say, an engineer enjoys.

Models, even complicated ones, are necessarily simplifications of unfathomably complicated economic phenomena. Models are also largely unable to account for fickle human elements. This structural limitation has foiled the plans and predictions of many economist-regulators.

Page 247 of the late Thomas McCraw’s superb Prophets of Regulation contains a gem of a quote from Alfred Kahn, the Cornell economist who understood this. It comes from his days advising New York State’s Public Service Commission, which set electricity rates:

[Kahn’s] candor seemed appealing yet, given their training, the engineers naturally preferred precise solutions over rough approximations. To meet their objections, Kahn again and again asked them, “Do you want to be precisely wrong or approximately right?” Ultimately he won them over.

Kahn also played a major role in airline deregulation during the Carter years, though with typical Kahn wit, he immediately demanded a paternity test when someone once referred to him as the father of deregulation. Still, Kahn’s intellectual humility provides a positive example for regulators and economists of all stripes.

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Posted in Economics, regulation

CEI Podcast for November 13, 2012: The Fiscal Cliff at Home and Abroad

Posted on November 13, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for November 13, 2012: The Fiscal Cliff at Home and Abroad


Have a listen here.

Phrases like “austerity” and “the fiscal cliff” are dominating news coverage not just here in the U.S., but in Europe as well. Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow Matthew Melchiorre explains what both sides of the Atlantic need to do to avoid fiscal catastrophe.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, International, Spending

Quote of the Day

Posted on November 9, 2012 | Comments Off on Quote of the Day

From p. 57 of George Stigler’s witty and often humorous essay collection, The Intellectual and the Marketplace:

Economics is sometimes called the dismal science. I resent the phrase, for only young children should get angry at a corpus of knowledge that prevents hopeless and costly endeavors.

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Posted in Economics, Pith

CEI Podcast for November 1, 2012: Is Google’s Search Dominance Permanent?

Posted on November 1, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for November 1, 2012: Is Google’s Search Dominance Permanent?


Have a listen here.

Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia argues that Google’s current dominance as an Internet search engine service is a fragile thing. Creative destruction is everywhere, and its onset cannot be predicted. As soon as something better comes out, consumers will flock to it in droves. Calls for antitrust enforcement should not be answered.

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Posted in Antitrust, CEI Podcast, Competition, Technology

CEI Podcast for October 18, 2012: The Limits of Free Speech

Posted on October 18, 2012 | 1 comment


Have a listen here.

Free speech is a core value in any free society. But what are its limits? Senior Attorney Hans Bader discusses a UN resolution to ban anti-religious speech and a court case involving a professor who sent anti-immigration emails. The best remedy for hateful speech, he argues, is not to silence it with laws and courts. It is to rebut it with speech of one’s own.

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Posted in Economics, Free Speech

In Related News, Water Is Wet

Posted on October 10, 2012 | Comments Off on In Related News, Water Is Wet

Politico: Pentagon contractors defend their own interests

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Posted in Political Animals, Public Choice

Undergraduates: Enter the Douglas B. Rogers Memorial Essay Contest

Posted on October 2, 2012 | Comments Off on Undergraduates: Enter the Douglas B. Rogers Memorial Essay Contest

Doug Rogers was a great guy. We went to graduate school together in George Mason University’s economics department. He quickly became an accomplished scholar, publishing in academic journals and contributing to multiple books while still a student. Sadly, Doug died in a car accident last year shortly before completing his dissertation. He was far enough along that he was awarded his Ph.D posthumously. He even won GMU’s Israel Kirzner Award for Outstanding Dissertation.

Usually, nothing good comes from such tragedies. A family lost its son. The world of ideas lost a great mind. And I, along with many others, lost a friend. In this case, Doug’s family has found some small positive. In collaboration with St. Vincent College in Doug’s hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, they have established an essay contest in Doug’s memory. It is open to all full-time undergraduates in the U.S. and Canada. If you’re a college student, I hope you will consider entering.

Doug was a principled libertarian and had a deep understanding of free markets; he would have fit right in here at CEI. That’s why the inaugural Douglas B. Rogers Conditions of a Free Society Essay Competition is such a great way to honor his memory. This year’s topic is Frederic Bastiat’s famous quote, “The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.”

It’s a fertile topic that scholars from the high school level all the way to tenured professors have wrestled with. There are implications for policy issues ranging from the welfare state and poor fiscal health here and abroad, to rent-seeking by businesses, to explaining how politicians troll for votes. If you have something to say on the subject, you have until January 10, 2013 to enter the contest and potentially win $2,000 and an invitation to a prize dinner.

More information on the essay contest is here. Doug’s bio is here. His life may have been short in duration, but it was long in accomplishment. How fitting then, that Doug’s family is honoring his memory by giving young scholars an opportunity to make some accomplishments of their own.

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Posted in Economics

CEI Podcast for September 20, 2012: The Economic Development Administration

Posted on September 20, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for September 20, 2012: The Economic Development Administration

Have a listen here.

CEI Policy Analyst David Bier is author of the new study “The Case for Abolishing the Economic Development Administration.” The agency’s impact goes well beyond its modest $286 million budget. On average, the EDA only pays for about one seventh of its projects. The rest of the burden falls on state and local governments and the private sector. Those projects include $2 million for a wine-tasting room, $35 million for a convention center that is projected to lose money, and other boondoggles.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, Spending, Stimulus