Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

Adam Fleisher says it was the impact of the reserve clause, which ties young players to their teams at below-market salary structures. More at the Sports Economist. I think that Fleisher’s argument can, to some extent, be reconciled within Moneyball itself. As I read it, he seems to suggest that the marginal value of moneyball […]

Peter Robinson’s Forbes.com column today features my analysis of the mortgage and foreclosure crisis, “The Housing Crisis Isn’t A Crisis.”

This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education has several interesting articles all that focus on the influence of Wall Street on higher education. Consider this entry by Arjun Appadurai, who speaks to “Higher Education’s Coming Leadership Crisis“: Governance. Most college and university boards are composed largely of wealthy people, usually from the worlds of finance, law, […]

A commenter to my March Madness winner post asked where one can get a Volokh Conspiracy t-shirt. At Cafe Press here. Update: The link is now fixed.

Conservative columnist George Will has written an op ed describing the role of umpires as “baseball’s judicial branch.” He joins a long list of jurists, including Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who have analogized umpires to judges: Baseball is . . . the only sport that asks an on-field official to demarcate the most […]

Congratulations to Dan Huitink, the winner of this year’s VC March Madness competition. Dan narrowly edged out James Meuret by a mere 2 points (311-309). James actually picked more games correctly but Dan must’ve picked some key upsets. Both predicted Arizona into the Sweet 16, but Dan picked Dayton’s first-round upset which was just enough […]

John Hinderaker has excerpts from Hank Greenberg’s testimony in Congress. Greenberg was the former head of AIG who was hounded out by Eliot Spitzer. My friend David Skeel has making a lot of noise lately arguing that Chapter 11 is an appropriate mechanism for resolving the distress of financial companies, including Lehman. He had a […]

Thanks to everyone who participated in the VC March Madness pool this year. And a special thanks to all who are willing to ignore my terrible performance. Eyeballing the situation for this weekend, it looks like this (I haven’t run all the permutations, so I may have missed something–please correct me if there is a […]

I was traveling over the weekend and so didn’t get a chance to post on Friday about my latest piece in the WSJ, a contribution to an Editorial Page symposium on Alan Greenspan’s argument a few weeks ago that the Fed didn’t cause the housing bubble. My argument that the Fed did is in the […]

Truth on the Market will have a two-day symposium on March 30 and 31 on Micheal Carrier’s new book Innovation for the 21st Century: On Monday, March 30th, we will focus primarily on the antitrust aspects of Carrier’s proposals. The four discussants will be: Dan Crane (University of Chicago/ Cardozo), Geoff Manne (TOTM/LECG), Phil Weiser […]

I read this editorial in the Washington Post yesterday and it seemed to me that the editors must’ve been making a straw man out of Pope Benedict’s position on condom use and AIDs: THE LATE New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.” […]

Ed Whelan comments on Dalia Lithwick’s latest (noted by Orin). Whelan’s response seems to me to be more persuasive and certainly more factually developed than Lithwick’s. On particular point caught me eye–Lithwick dredges up a supposedly sexist joke made by John Roberts back in the day. I have to say, I don’t see how anyone […]

Last week I heard Charles Murray speak at the AEI annual dinner and the topic of his remarks was “The Happiness of the People.” I thought it an extraordinarily insightful and challenging speech, especially for someone with strong law & econ instincts like myself. It is really a remarkable statement on what exactly it means […]

I’ve received a number of emails wondering whether I would do another VC March Madness Pool. Sure, what the heck! And my colleague Ross Davies, Editor of the Green Bag, has again offered to put up a Justice Kennedy bobblehead to the winner. And I’ll throw in a Volokh Conspiracy t-shirt again to boot. And […]

Well, it turns out the ABA’s liberal bent isn’t just “perceived,” at least according to a new study reported in the National Law Journal (HT: Curt Levey).