Today’s episode features Zachary Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. We discuss freedom of speech, FIRE’s work to protect it on college campuses, and its importance for maintaining a liberal society.
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Phil Magness returns to the podcast to discuss the life and work of James Buchanan and to defend him against some of the more bizarre criticisms levied against him.
James Buchanan was a Chicago-school economist who created the field of public choice economics along with Gordon Tullock. He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1986.
Buchanan has received criticism recently from Duke historian Nancy MacLean, whose book Democracy in Chains places Buchanan at the center of a grand right-wing conspiracy to maintain segregation and undermine democratic institutions. Phil shows that the theory of Buchanan as a segregationist falls apart under scrutiny. It all stems from a typo in a footnote that erroneously placed Buchanan’s article on school choice in a segregationist newspaper (the Richmond News-Leader) when in fact the article was published in the competing (and not segregationist) Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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This week’s episode is a little different. There’s an ongoing controversy related to a two–time guest of this show, Robin Hanson. I talk through the scandal, giving a whole decade of background so you can understand where this scandal comes from.
There are many links for this episode. Here they are in the order they are discussed:
Robin Hanson’s books, The Age of Em and The Elephant in the Brain.
“Unequal Beauty Silence” October 19, 2009
“Pretty Smart Healthy Privilege” September 26, 2014
“Inequality Talk Is About Grabbing” August 7, 2013
“Two Types of Envy” April 26, 2018
“Redistribution” means “change the distribution”. A great many who have commented can’t imagine any policy options to change the distribution of sex access other than rape and slavery, and so accuse me of advocating such things. But a great many other policy options exist.
? Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) April 28, 2018
“it’s not hard to come away with the impression that [Hanson] believes men are owed sex, that women are devious about it, & that rape is a subject that can be toyed with lightly as an intellectual exercise.” None of which I’ve said, & all of which I deny. https://t.co/Lp6alX6aWr
? Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) April 30, 2018
Calls me hypocritical because, while I don’t support income redistribution, I ask why others who do don’t support sex redistribution. Because I mention promoting monogamy, I’m “a disquieting example of how what we might call hyper-misogyny.” https://t.co/oz3m9LTUsV
? Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) May 1, 2018
“Why Economics Is, And Should Be, Creepy” May 2, 2018
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Andrea Matranga of the New Economics School in Moscow joins the podcast with a fascinating question: Why did humans adopt agriculture in the times and places they did? His research paper, The Ant and the Grasshopper: Seasonality and the Invention of Agriculture, offers a potential solution. Here’s the abstract:
During the Neolithic Revolution, seven populations independently invented agriculture. In this paper, I argue that this innovation was a response to a large increase in climatic seasonality. Hunter-gatherers in the most affected regions became sedentary in order to store food and smooth their consumption. I present a model capturing the key incentives for adopting agriculture, and I test the resulting predictions against a global panel dataset of climate conditions and Neolithic adoption dates. I find that invention and adoption were both systematically more likely in places with higher seasonality. The findings of this paper imply that seasonality patterns 10,000 years ago were amongst the major determinants of the present day global distribution of crop productivities, ethnic groups, cultural traditions, and political institutions.
Continue reading The Neolithic Revolution with Andrea Matranga
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My guest today is Ryan Muldoon of the University at Buffalo. He is the author of Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World: Beyond Tolerance. Continue reading Diversity and the Social Contract with Ryan Muldoon
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The assiduous Vincent Geloso returns to the podcast to discuss his work with Rosolino Candela on lightships and their importance in economics. The abstract of their paper reads as follows:
What role does government play in the provision of public goods? Economists have used the lighthouse as an empirical example to illustrate the extent to which the private provision of public goods is possible. This inquiry, however, has neglected the private provision of lightships. We investigate the private operation of the world’s first modern lightship, established in 1731 on the banks of the Thames estuary going in and out of London. First, we show that the Nore lightship was able to operate profitably and without government enforcement in the collection of payment for lighting services. Second, we show how private efforts to build lightships were crowded out by Trinity House, the public authority responsible for the maintaining and establishing lighthouses in England and Wales. By including lightships into the broader lighthouse market, we argue that the provision of lighting services exemplifies not a market failure, but a government failure.
Continue reading Lightships and Public Goods with Vincent Geloso
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My guest for this episode of Economics Detective Radio is Bart Wilson of Chapman University. He is the author of many experimental economics studies. Our conversation today focuses on one particular study entitled Language and cooperation in hominin scavenging. The abstract reads as follows: Continue reading Experimental Economics and the Origin of Language with Bart Wilson
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My guests for this episode are Alex Nowrasteh and Andrew Forrester of the Cato Institute. Our topic is a working paper they recently published titled How Mass Immigration Affects Countries with Weak Economic Institutions: A Natural Experiment in Jordan. The abstract reads as follows:
Saddam Hussein’s unexpected 1990 invasion of Kuwait forced 300, 000 Kuwaitis of Palestinian descent to flee into Jordan. By 1991, this large exogenous population shock increased Jordan’s population by about 10 percent. Jordanian law allowed these refugees to work, live, and vote in Jordan immediately upon entry. The refugees did not bring social capital that eroded Jordan’s institutions. On the contrary, we find that Jordan’s economic institutions substantially improved in the decade after the refugees arrived. Our empirical methodology employs difference-in-differences and the synthetic control method, both of which indicate that the significant improvement in Jordanian economic institutions would not have happened to the same extent without the influx of refugees. Our case study indicates that the refugee surge was the main mechanism by which Jordan’s economic institutions improved over this time.
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My guest for this episode is Bryan Caplan of George Mason University. We discuss his latest book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, in which he argues that the social value of education is negative.
This may seem paradoxical given that more educated individuals tend to earn more than less educated individuals. This can be explained in two ways: First, people who get more education were likely more skilled in the first place; in other words, there is a selection effect. Second, people who are already skilled can use education to demonstrate their skill to employers; economists call this signalling. Continue reading The Case Against Education with Bryan Caplan
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Today’s guest is Russ Roberts, host of the quintessential economics podcast EconTalk. (If you haven’t heard EconTalk, go subscribe to it right now, because it is excellent!)
We discuss EconTalk’s role in the economics profession, the things Russ has learned in the course of making it, the importance of intellectual honesty, and the enduring insights of Adam Smith. Continue reading EconTalk, Intellectual Honesty, and Adam Smith with Russ Roberts
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