July 19, 2019

Review: A Brief History of Doom by Richard Vague

A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises is the most important economics publication to come along in years. The author, Richard Vague, a retired banker, documents how a necessary and sufficient explanation for a boom and bust cycle is an episode over several years of excessive

Behavioral economics, Financial crisis, Real estate bubble

August 8, 2017

Beauty and Profit: The Evolution of Beauty (2017) by Richard O. Prum

In 1860 Charles Darwin wrote to a colleague: "The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail...makes me sick!" What was Darwin's problem? He had just published On the Origin of Species, laying out his theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet he worried about seemingly maladaptive features of living

Behavioral economics, Darwin, Microeconomics, Monopoly

July 22, 2013

The Economics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Microeconomics, by Rod Hill and Tony Myatt

It was the perfect “natural experiment:” in April 1992, New Jersey’s minimum-wage was scheduled to rise from $4.25 an hour to $5.05, while neighboring Pennsylvania’s minimum wage remained unchanged. Princeton economists David Card and Alan Krueger surveyed over 400 fast food outlets in both states, before and after the increase,

Behavioral economics, Microeconomics, Minimum wage, Monopoly, Trade policy

November 18, 2012

Pity the Poor Child Molester

Imagine that you woke up one day and found, not that you had turned into a giant cockroach, but that you felt unacceptable sexual urges towards little girls or boys. What might you do?

Behavioral economics, Health policy

June 16, 2010

Animal Spirits, by Akerlof and Shiller

Yale Prof. Robert Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance (2000; 2005), predicted the 2008 financial collapse years before it happened. Last year, Shiller partnered with UC Berkeley Prof. George Akerlof to produce Animal Spirits--elaborating on the psychology that inspires “irrational exuberance” and other mass human behavior that affects the economy.