Steve Landsburg and David Henderson (here and then here) each – in his own unique way – expresses his lack of great enthusiasm for yesterday’s economics-Nobel awards. I share Steve’s and David’s impressions. The closing line of David’s second post deserves to be quoted here in full:
Maybe one day people will regard it as repugnant that other people hold their moral views on kidney sales so strongly that they are willing to cause innocent people to die for them.
Randy Holcombe succinctly explains that so much of what parades around in policy circles as ‘scientifically sound policy’ is, in reality, nothing more than wishful thinking. (See, e.g, J.M. Keynes’s utterly unscientific notions about the formation and implementation of government policies.) Here’s a slice from Randy’s blog-post (original emphasis):
Fiscal policy, which in theory stabilizes the economy, is in practice what is responsible for destabilizing the Greek economy, and the rest of Europe. But that lesson has not migrated to the United States, where calls for additional fiscal stimulus, and the Fed’s QE3, are actively championed. This is not policy analysis; it is wishful thinking.
News from the great students who are GMU’s Economics Society.
Here’s Sheldon Richman, from 2010, on the border-control bogey.
