I enjoyed this EconTalk podcast with Michael Clemens of the Center for Global Development. Host Russ Roberts talked with Clemens about two of Clemens’s publications on foreign aid and migration.[1] A few interesting extracts with policy implications. Roberts and Clemens start with the big question of how to solve the problem of poverty. One approach […]
Clemens on migration, poverty, and domestic wages Read More »
The last question on my Introduction to Philosophy exam was: In your judgment, what is the most dangerous work we read this semester? First give a clear and sympathetic presentation of the work’s important themes; second, state your criterion/criteria of dangerousness; finally, explain why you think the work is dangerous. Eighteen students took the exam.
The most dangerous philosophy book, Fall 2013 Read More »
In a recent Kaizen interview, Argentine entrepreneur Enrique Duhau discussed some of the challenges of doing business in a country with a politicized economy. I was reminded of Campante and Glaeser’s comparative study of Buenos Aires and Chicago, two cities that were very similar in the nineteenth century. They were similar in population size, with
Comparing Buenos Aires and Chicago — politics and economics Read More »
“Por que a arte se tornou feia?” Escrito por Stephen Hicks. Tradução de Ronaldo Bassit. Revisão de Matheus Pacini. Publicado: 29 Novembro 2013. Também: English, German [pdf], Korean [pdf], and Spanish.
Por que a arte se tornou feia? [Portuguese translation] Read More »
Following up on “European country data on the minimum wage,” here are the data for eighteen Western European countries in table form. Or here is the Excel spreadsheet. Sources: “List of sovereign states in Europe by minimum wage,” Wikipedia. “List of countries by unemployment rate,” Wikipedia. Both viewed 9 December 2013. Related: My video-lecture on
Table: Unemployment and Minimum Wages in Europe, 2013 Read More »
My colleague Shawn Klein is editing a new volume on Steve Jobs and Philosophy, to be published as part of Open Court’s Popular Culture and Philosophy series. For those interested in writing an original contribution to the volume, please see Dr. Klein’s Call for Abstracts with more information about the scope of the volume and
*Steve Jobs and Philosophy* (call for abstracts) Read More »
In Barron’s, Paul Theroux argues that 150 years of aid to Africa has not helped much — and may have hurt more than it helped. Theroux discusses the failure of several recent externally-generated efforts, including Jeffrey Sachs’s top-down Millennium Project and the long history of well-meaning “Telescopic Philanthropists,” as well as Africa’s internal problems of
Paul Theroux on ending aid to Africa Read More »
Researchers say the average woman speaks 20,000 words a day, and the average man speaks 7,000. Apparently, the Foxp2 protein is implicated. So we may now have an answer to this wry question from Austin O’Malley: “Why is the word tongue feminine in Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French and German?” And this intriguing study of