My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy turned 50 this past Sunday. Unfortunately, the covid-19 crisis caused the cancelation of her big birthday-celebration bash. No matter. Vero here celebrates the market’s ability to enable her many friends and loved ones to congratulate her on her birthday. (Happy Birthday, Vero!)
Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins has been remarkably insightful throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s a slice from his latest column:
That politicians took steps out of panic is understandable. That these steps were unjustified by the science that existed then much less now doesn’t mean their motives were bad. We can accept, especially in a panic, that the media will eschew complexity in favor of a story of an enemy who must be vanquished.
Our country and our Constitution are finished, however, if the most sweeping, authoritarian and undemocratic restrictions on individual liberty ever contemplated are not subjected to legal challenge and accountability.
Russ Roberts – sporting a covid beard – interviewed Nobel-laureate economist Paul Romer.
GMU Econ alum Ray Niles argues that what we need are millions of individual experiments.
Already I miss blogging from Arnold Kling.
GMU Econ alum Alex Nowrasteh makes the case against banning H-1B workers.
Among the greatest economists not only of the past 100 years, but of all time is Harold Demsetz (1930-2019). Whenever he and his late UCLA colleague Armen Alchian were alone in the faculty lounge, that lounge then contained in it far more economic knowledge, insight, and critical thinking than it would contain in 9 out of every 10 times of it being filled with any randomly chosen 5 or 6 Nobel-laureate economists. I’m glad that David Henderson’s new biographical essay of Demsetz is now up at The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
