Author Archive | Tyler Cowen

When I was in college during the Reagan years the accepted wisdom on the limited government side of the aisle was that the only way to limit government spending was to first reduce government revenues.  The logic was that the dynamics of interest-group politics were such that spending would rise indefinitely until it hit some […]

The subtitle is Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic.  Here is one good excerpt: For Ben and Anna Bernanke, excitement was jointly doing the New York Times Crossword puzzle nearly every day — although they skipped the easier beginning-of-the-week puzzles.  “That’s the one thing we do together,” Bernanke joked.  “It’s shows our sexy social […]

I’ve been wondering and maybe you have been too. Here is one opinion: I imagine that the legal answer to that question depends on a nice distinction between practice and plain language. Under the plain language of the statute, interpreted imaginatively, the Fed can extend credit, upon the right showing, to any company or individual, […]

Here is a new paper on the topic, by Anthony Niblett, Richard Posner, and Andrei Shleifer: The efficiency of common law rules is central to achieving efficient resource allocation in a market economy. While many theories suggest reasons why judge-made law should tend toward efficient rules, the question whether the common law actually does converge […]

Like Orin, I’m supporting McCain for the Republican nomination. I disagree with him strongly about campaign finance reform and a few other issues. But he’s taken the right stands, roughly speaking, on many other important matters, like national security, Iraq, torture, immigration, and fiscal responsibility. On federalism grounds, he’s also opposed (and twice voted against) […]

That’s the question being addressed by speakers at a symposium I’m organizing. It’s a first-of-its-kind event, devoted entirely to what has become an intramural debate among conservatives about the issue. The symposium will be held at the South Texas College of Law in Houston on February 15. Besides me, the speakers include: Professor Gerard Bradley […]

Johan Richter writes the following query to me: As the primary elections are coming up is is interesting to note that so many of the contenders are lawyers, something that is also true of the members of Congress, where I believe half are lawyers. Why are so many US politicians lawyers? It seems odd considering […]

That is the title of a new book by Elyn R. Saks, law professor at USC, and it seems now a psychology and psychiatry professor there as well. I was very taken by the gripping narrative of this book. The subtitle is My Journey Through Madness. Here is one short review. Here is an excerpt. […]

Over at MarginalRevolution.com I offered free books — my new Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist — to fifteen people who gave me good reasons for getting the book for free. They also had to vouch that these were reasons they truly believed […]

In my new book Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist, I discuss the claim that lawyers get better treatment from their doctors and dentists, at least compared to the average person. Fear of litigation is one possible mechanism, but not the only one. […]

The subtitle of my new book is “Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.” You can order it here. Eugene asked me to write a few posts on the book; I thought I would start by citing an Economist.com characterization: An earlier generation of these books, like Steven […]

I’m offering personalized podcasts for people who pre-order my new book Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist, due out August 2. Here is the Amazon link. Here is the Barnes&Noble link. The podcast is personalized because it is sent directly to you and […]

This new and important paper (scroll to p.29) has lots of useful information: …the average profits per partner in the top 50, top 100, and top 200 U.S. law firms in 2004, respectively, were $1.26, $1.01 and $0.83 million. These averages are the averages of the average profit per partner for each firm. The medians […]

Fabio Rojas says quite possibly so. Excerpt: You might doubt that Miers had a reasonable chance of maintaining O

I’ve never blogged song lyrics before, but these, sent to me by Jeffrey Grimmer, reminded me of Richard Epstein: The song is called “Effect & Cause” and it’s from the White Stripes’ new album Icky Thump: Well, in every complicated situation, You’re the human relation, Makin’ sense of it all, Take a whole lot a […]