One of the best books on political theory that I’ve read in years is Mark Pennington’s Robust Political Economy. I’ll be writing more about it in the future.
Bob Higgs here discusses the relevance to economic theory of the recovery of consumer spending.
In today’s Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute’s Dan Ikenson argues that “the president should strongly advocate the elimination of duties on imported manufacturing inputs and other domestic impediments to U.S. competitiveness abroad and at home.” [Dan’s correct – although I pick a nit: talk of “U.S. competitiviveness,” while it might help to better sell politically the case for freer trade, is wrong and misleading. As Paul Krugman correctly argued in 1994, “competitiveness is a meaningless word when applied to national economies.”]
