Economics

Blamestorming: “Deregulation Caused the Financial Crisis” [new The Good Life column]

Leave a Comment / Economics, Philosophy, Politics, The Good Life /

The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe: “You’ve heard the claim: ‘Deregulation caused the financial crisis.’ In the years leading up to 2008, the story goes, bad economists convinced bad politicians to deregulate the money/banking/finance sector of the economy, and bad capitalists then enjoyed an orgy of greed that caused the system to go […]

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Where are all those free-market economists who caused the financial crisis? [new The Good Life column]

1 Comment / Economics /

The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe: “A common meme about the financial crisis blames it on capitalism run amok and holds the rise of free-market fundamentalism among economists responsible for unleashing the greed. Academic economists, the argument runs, are largely free-marketers, and they convinced politicians to deregulate important swathes of the American economy,

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“What Justifies Liberal Capitalism: Are Hayek’s, Rand’s, and Friedman’s Answers Compatible?” My 2013 Atlas Summit lecture

Leave a Comment / Economics, Entrepreneurship, Philosophy /

The one-hour video of my lecture is at the Atlas Society site and at YouTube. The lecture starts at 3:40, after the introduction, and is about 45 minutes long, followed by a question-and-answer session. The sub-topics are: * 13 initial arguments for liberal capitalism. * Some quotations from Mises, Schumpeter, Jouvenel, Smith, Hayek, Mill, Rand,

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Transcript of “13 arguments for liberal capitalism in 13 minutes”

3 Comments / Economics, Ethics, Politics /

With much thanks to Matheus Pacini for his work on the transcription, below is the text for my “13 arguments for liberal capitalism in 13 minutes.” The original videos are at YouTube. The graphic integration of the arguments in a flowchart is here. And here’s the transcript in PDF. 13 Arguments for Liberal Capitalism in

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Is Freedom a Subjective Value? Upcoming APEE talk

3 Comments / Economics, Philosophy /

Abstract for my talk at the upcoming APEE conference in Las Vegas: “Is Freedom a Subjective Value? Stephen Hicks Some economists speak of subjective value, by which they mean that value does not inhere in objects but rather is a function of the individual. Different individuals, for example, are willing to pay very different amounts

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Individualism and economic growth — Gorodnichenko and Roland

Leave a Comment / Business Ethics, Culture, Economics, Ethics /

In an NBER paper, “Culture, Institutions and the Wealth of Nations,” Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Gerard Roland compare the growth gains that individualist ethics generate compared to those of collectivist ethics. The first sentences of their abstract: “We construct an endogenous growth model that includes a cultural variable along the dimension of individualism-collectivism. The model predicts

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