Liberty
R.I.P. The Scottish Enlightenment 1697-2024
That’s the title of an article that appeared this week at the Daily Sceptic. It presents a bleak but accurate picture of Scotland’s recent sad decline. Here’s an excerpt. The…
Alex Tabarrok
Canadian economist
Research Brief
Law & Public Safety
More Cops, Less Crime
A large and growing body of academic literature confirms that police presence deters crime and helps maintain public order. Increased police presence has been shown to be an especially effective…
Law & Public Safety
Is Defunding the Police a Good Idea?
Calls for defunding the police have been heard across the country this month, but there is a body of research that calls defunding into question. In his recent research brief…
Research Brief
Law & Public Safety
Why Defunding the Police Is a Terrible Idea
George Floyd’s death has elicited many proposals for improving America’s criminal justice system. Some of these, such as banning public employee unions, ending qualified immunity, and reducing our currently absurd…
Budget, Taxation & Economy
How Costs Have Diverged Over Time
John Cochrane has posted a review of Why Are the Prices So D*mn High? by Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok that highlights this revealing chart: The increase in health care…
Liberty
Whose Lives Matter in Chicago?
An unsettling post at the American Interest looks at Chicago’s shocking murder stats and comes to some provocative conclusions: Over Labor Day weekend, Chicago saw its 500th murder, making 2016 the city’s…
Liberty
University of Chicago Affirms Its Committment to Freedom of Speech
At the Marginal Revolution blog, Alex Tabarrok provides an excerpt from a letter that the University of Chicago recently sent to incoming freshman: Earning a place in our community of scholars is no…
Health Care
A different kind of ‘doc fix’
You might have read a recent commentary from Patrick Gleason and Katherine Restrepo calling for a permanent solution to the annual congressional “doc fix” debate. Now David Henderson of the…
Liberty
Superb online course on the great economists
Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University have been adding to their Marginal Revolution University course offerings and here’s one that just caught my eye — The Great…
Liberty
Respect for bailbondsmen
Alex Tabarrok says private bounty hunters do good work and are getting more of it from states. (h/t Schumpeter)
Liberty
Simon/Ehrlich Wager, Redux
Don Boudreaux has challenged UC-Berkeley professor Brad DeLong to a wager similar to the famous 1980 Julian Simon/Paul Ehrlich wager.? (See his letter below) Simon bet Ehrlich that the prices,…