Author Archive | David Post

I happened to catch on one of my local NPR stations this afternoon a talk that Colin Powell gave at the Aspen Institute a few days ago, focusing on the Iraq war. Maybe it’s just me, but to my ears Powell is the only one out there who talks sense about the war — why […]

Orin has already blogged this, but it’s worth another look. The defendant, located in Colorado, issued an online prescription to a patient in California. He never actually communicated directly with the patient; the patient had filled out an online questionnaire distributed at a website physically located outside of the US; the website was owned and […]

According to an article in Australia’s ‘The Age,’ Hew Griffiths, a 44-year-old Australian, has been extradited to the U.S. to face criminal copyright charges. Griffiths was the leader of a group named “Drink Or Die,” which (again, according to the article) “cracked copy-protected software and media products and distributed them free of cost.” It is, […]

As I wind down my week of guest blogging, I want to thank Eugene for the invitation and the many readers who offered thoughtful commentary. Each day brought forceful reminders that not everyone sees the world as economists do. When I observed that a policy of federal disaster assistance tends to raise property values in […]

Economists have long observed that regulators at, say, the Food and Drug Adminstration face unbalanced incentives. When people die because an unsafe drug got FDA approval, everybody blames the commissioners. When people die because a potentially lifesaving drug never made it to the marketplace (or was never developed in the first place because of costly […]

The comments on yesterday’s post included a digression into the issue of Katrina relief, which one poster opposed for multiple good reasons. I want to add another. You might think that disaster relief transfers wealth to disaster victims. That’s not at all clear. Here’s why: There has long been an expectation that in Katrina-like circumstances, […]

The problem with democracy is not that politicians kowtow to financiers and lobbyists; it’s that politicians kowtow to their own consituents, spending other people’s money along the way. In other words, their incentives are all wrong. Effective reform should supply better incentives. So if I could make just one change in the American political system, […]

This morning’s post on patent reform inspired dozens of responses. Among those responses, a few points were raised often enough that I think I should clarify them. First, contrary to the assertions of several posters, we really do get a better social bargain when we fork over a million dollars in tax money instead of […]

The major theme of my new book is that we need better incentive schemes for every segment of society: congressmen and presidents, firefighters and police officers, judges and juries, prosecutors and defense attorneys, philanderers and promisekeepers. The book offers dozens of proposals for radical reform; this week I’ll blog about a few of my favorites. […]

There’s a fascinating post over at Terranova — a terrific blog on the legal, economic, and social environments in virtual worlds — on Elizabeth Townsend Gard’s experiment with her first year Property students, in which students make “expeditions” into Second Life to explore what the common law property concepts they’re learning about in class (the […]

The extraordinary story of pianist Joyce Hatto’s fake recordings (best recounted in this article from Gramophone, but also given heavy coverage in the NY Times and elsewhere) has an interesting angle that hasn’t gotten much play. The whole story (of how Hatto’s recordings were actually not hers at all, but had been recorded by other […]

. . . claiming that “a billion” people were going to be watching the Oscar telecast? It came up a number of times on Sunday night, and I’ve seen (offhand) references to it in a number of articles. My guess is, it’s not even close to that. The Nielsen numbers — grotesquely inaccurate, I suspect, […]

Does anyone know where I can find data on — or even a good discussion of — movements in real wages (preferably agricultural wages) in Western Europe (not England) in about 1100-1300, or at least 1200-1300? France, Germany, Flanders, northern Italy — I’ll take whatever I can get.

is the name of a late 12th-century treatise on English treasury procedures by Richard FitzNigel. The first book begins as follows: In the twenty-third year of the reign of King Henry II, while I was sitting at the window of a tower next to the River Thames, a man spoke to me impetuously, saying: “Master, […]

Here, according to an email I received from the NY Times, are the 10 “most read” articles in 2006: 1) What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage 2) The 10 Best Books of 2006 3) Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying 4) Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him […]