Blogs

Fat Tails Part Deux: cost-benefit analysis and climate change; Weitzman replies to Nordhaus

[Note: Although the giant snakes I mentioned in my preceding post may have fat tails, I didn't want my description of the discussion between Harvard`s Martin Weitzman and Yale`s William Nordhaus of the limits of cost-benefit analysis to be overlooked...

Posted to TT's Lost in Tokyo by TokyoTom on Fri, Feb 13 2009

Filed under: carbon pricing, climate change, Nordhaus, Bob Murphy, Weizman, fat tails

War crimes and economic policies

The following is essentially the text of an email that I recently sent to a friend who'd asked me if I thought that senior members of the former Bush regime should be prosecuted for war crimes because of the use of torture as an instrument of national...

Posted to Ron Morley's Freedom Blog by Ronald D. Morley on Thu, Feb 12 2009

Filed under: economics, freedom, war crimes

Thomas Jefferson, the nature of the State, and President Obama

I got an email today from an old friend asking whether the signature line of an email which I'd sent him was really something that which Thomas Jefferson had written. What follows is more-or-less my response to him (slightly edited to leave out personal...

Posted to Ron Morley's Freedom Blog by Ronald D. Morley on Thu, Feb 12 2009

Filed under: economics, freedom, State power

Let`s recreate the Paleocene! Giant snakes, "fat tails", cost-benefit analysis and climate change; Weitzman replies to Nordhaus

Giant snakes? What could a few colossal bones found in Colombia have to do with us now? 1. A recent paper in Nature about the discovery of several specimens of a giant snake ("Titanoboa") that lived in Latin America 60 million years ago captured...

Posted to TT's Lost in Tokyo by TokyoTom on Wed, Feb 11 2009

Filed under: carbon pricing, Weitzman, Nordhaus, Bob Murphy, cost-benefit, climate change

A critique of defeatism

Today the Mises blog had the occasion of an incredibly pessimistic post by Mr Oliva. I don't agree with its tone, and I think it's counterproductive. As Barack Obama continues to cry and stomp his feet over his inability to spend trillions of...

Posted to Veritas Veritatum. by Jon Irenicus on Tue, Feb 10 2009

Would a Ban on New Gold Coins Work?

Assume a gold coin money standard. Some believe that new gold coins should not be allowed to add to the money supply. The basis for this belief is that once a commodity is established as money, society will derive no additional benefit from either more...

Posted to Austrian Analysis by Anecdote by Don Lloyd on Tue, Feb 10 2009

Salary Freeze = Longer Recession

Reading through the CNN.com homepage, a logical person can not help but be appalled. Among articles of some substance about real issues affecting Americans today, one will find articles speaking of the recessions' affect on Hip Hop stars spending...

Posted to A Discourse on Current Events by duffmann808 on Mon, Feb 9 2009

To be, or not to be... In Touch With Reality

One of the selling points of Mr. Obama as leader of the ‘free’ world was that he was/is in touch with reality. By this, of course, it is meant that his struggles have been similar to ours so he shares our values, ideals, and sensibilities...

Posted to Not-a-Lemming by FutbolGuru on Mon, Feb 9 2009

Filed under: Bail out, Bailout, socialism, banks, capitalism, feudalism, greed, bonuses, reality check, executives, masses

Prices and Production: Hayek's Assumption

Hayek realized that many of the difficulties involved with the first edition of Prices and Production could not be clarified without rewriting the entire book. Indeed, those obstacles were inherent in the mode of expression that he decided to utilize...

Posted to The Critiques: An Analysis by laminustacitus on Mon, Feb 9 2009

Filed under: F.A. Hayek, Prices and Production, Hayek, economics, theory of capital, monetary theory, assumptions

Links

You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. How much stimulus will go to the police state? Read More...

Posted to Austrian Addiction by Austrian Addiction on Mon, Feb 9 2009

Filed under: crime, stimulus, sentencing, police

Public spending gave Japan its "Lost Decade" and largest public debt in the developed world; Geithner wants to do it bigger

What did Japan get from sustained and massive public works spending by the LDP after a real estate bubble burst in the late 1980s? According to a recent article in the IHT , one thing is clear: taxpayers ended up being saddled with the largest public...

Posted to TT's Lost in Tokyo by TokyoTom on Mon, Feb 9 2009

Prices and Production: A Few Historical Notes

Prices and Production arose, not as a book in and of itself, but out of a series of four lectures that Hayek gave during the 1930-1931 session of the LSE about Hayek’s recent contributions to, in his own words, “theoretical economics”...

Posted to The Critiques: An Analysis by laminustacitus on Mon, Feb 9 2009

Filed under: LSE, F.A. Hayek, Prices and Production, Hayek, economics

"Biography of F.A. Hayek (1899-1992)" by Peter G. Klein

Before one begins to read the live-blogging of my study of Hayek's Prices and Production , I highly suggest that Peter G. Klein's splendid little biography of him becomes prioritized for reading.

Posted to The Critiques: An Analysis by laminustacitus on Sun, Feb 8 2009

Filed under: F.A. Hayek

Paul Joskow: What electric power regulatory reforms are need? A Federal Power Act of 2009

Further to my previous posts , excerpted below are the recommendations that Paul Joskow (energy expert, MIT economist and current president of the Alfred P Sloan Foundationn) recently made in a speech at the National Press Club : What is to be done? We...

Posted to TT's Lost in Tokyo by TokyoTom on Sun, Feb 8 2009

Filed under: climate change, power, deregulation, Kiesling, Joskow

MIT economist Paul Joskow describes our current electricity regulatory framework

I believe that a key problem - and thus a key opportunity - that our country faces is over-regulation and misregulation of the electric power sector. Regulatory reform in this area is a middle ground, both for enviros and those whose principle concerns...