Author Archive | Tyler Cowen

Michael, at www.2blowhards.com offers his usual astute commentary on the possibilities for the new editorship at NYTBR. Here is some of his advice: “# I’d de-emphasize new books somewhat, especially new literary books. Have you ever looked at a copy of a year-old Book Review Section? Nearly all of the lit-fiction that was reviewed so […]

Several of you have written me and claimed that we already let in everyone who wants to come. I’ve seen similar arguments circulating around the blogosphere. This is simply untrue. Some illegals overstay their visas, but of course visas are hard to get in the first place, especially if you are from a poor country. […]

Yesterday I considered how we might think about immigration reform. One key problem was our limited ability and willingness to treat immigrants on a harsh and differential basis. This problem resurfaces in a number of guises. Let us now consider option number 3 (see the link for the full list), namely taking in many immigrants […]

Let us think about immigration policy in general terms. Here are some basic options: 1. Let everyone in.2. Let everyone in but terrorists and the infectious.3. Let many people in but try to control their behavior ex post.4. Try to keep as many people out as possible.5. Try to influence who gets in.6. Create new […]

I very much enjoyed Garcia Marquez’s new memoir, Living to Tell the Tale. I would go so far as to call it a modern classic. It is both poignant and slow, and quite out of temper with what passes for entertainment these days. Nonetheless I found it to be entrancing in a virtually Proustian manner. […]

Many illegals who cross into the United States cannot easily be sent back to their home countries, especially if they do not come from Mexico. Nor is there any jail space to hold them. So what do we do? We release them on their own recognizance. It is estimated that about 6000 people received this […]

“In 1972, David Rosenhan, a newly minted psychologist with a joint degree in law, called eight friends and said something like, “Are you busy next month? Would you have time to fake your way into a mental hospital and see what happens?”…First, there was training. Rosenhan instructed his confederates very, very carefully. Five days prior […]

Read Doug Irwin on this controversial topic. Doug is arguably America’s leading trade economist these days. He writes: “Has U.S. manufacturing been vaporized in the process? No–manufacturing production has risen about 40 percent over the past decade. Despite lower wages abroad, foreign firms have chosen to produce cars made by high-wage workers here, including Honda […]

Paul Craig Roberts wrote Alienation and the Soviet Economy, first published in 1971. An entire generation of market-oriented economists were influenced by this book. Many of us envied Roberts for the work. It combined history, history of ideas, analysis, and political science into a brilliant whole. He was the first American economist to flesh out […]

Usually I avoid this topic when blogging, but here is some rare common sense, combined with a sense of balance. My favorite passage: “Intelligence failure was inevitable given the nature of the Iraqi regime. The new conventional wisdom is that Hussein wanted us to think he had a more advanced WMD program than he thought […]

It is one of the Corante group, www.corante.com/transition, the blogger is Nick Schulz of TechCentralStation.com fame. Read about the politics of steroids, how athletes calculate [disclaimer: this post praises my writings], and sex change operations in the former East Germany. Why a serious sports blog? Sports is both big business and a significant part of […]

I just attended a three-day arts policy conference in the Berkshires. Not only was Internet access scarce but my cell phone often didn’t work either. Fortunately I am sufficiently balanced not to have felt frighteningly alone. The telecommunications reforms of 1996 were supposed to prevent local governments from banning cell phone towers. Yet in just […]

Readers of The New York Times Op-Ed page will know that Nicholas Kristof has recently purchased the freedom of two young girls in a brothel. It appears that the young girls were held there against their will and tricked or coerced into joining in the first place. As an economist of course I wondered whether […]

In response to my last post, I received this from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous: “Prof. Cowen, just a flippant note about the difference between men who describe themselves as libertarians and men who describe themselves as conservatives: Male libertarians are generally conservatives who want to date liberal women. For example, in law […]

Jim Kalb speaks on this important topic: “Conservatism and libertarianism are both generally viewed as right-wing. Can you spell out the main differences between them from the conservative point of view? What, in your view, are libertarianism’s shortcomings? Kalb: They’re both viewed as right-wing because centralized bureaucratic control is the main engine of social rationalization […]