Bryan Caplan's Blog

Generalizing Huemer

Mike Huemer has yet another great thought experiment:

Suppose you learned that there was a school staffed mainly by right-leaning teachers and administrators. And at this school, an oddly large number of lessons touch upon, or perhaps center on, bad things that have been done by Jews throughout history. None of the lessons are factually false – all the incidents related are things that genuinely happened and all were actually done by Jewish people. For example, murders that Jews committed, times...

The Efficacy of RCTs: Actual Empirics

What’s the empirical evidence that RCTs actually improve policy?  Incisive comments from the noble Lant Pritchett:

The argument that RCTs would be more than a tiny component of the overall process of improving development outcomes seems, even now, 10 years in, at best not provable and at worst not very likely—as it is at odds with some basic known facts about development and about policy formulation and implementation.

What “basic known facts” does he have in mind?  First, RCTs can’t be crucial ...

The Non-Shopper Problem

In a few high-profile markets, prices seem to stay far above average cost even though there are tons of competitors.  There are thousands of credit card issuers, but the average interest rate is 18.26%.  There are over 100,000 real estate brokerage firms, but the default commission remains 6%.  Sure, unsecured credit has a high default risk, but high enough to justify an 18.26% rate?  And why on Earth would it cost $60,000 to sell a million-dollar home?

From the standpoint of economic theory, s...

College: How to Make the Most of It

You don’t learn much in college.  You endure insipid brainwashing.  And don’t me get started on the dehumanizing Covid theater.  Signaling is the only good reason to go.  Still, once you’re on campus, you might as well make the most of it.  I’ve been in college non-stop for the last 33 years, and I’ve been paying close attention.  Here is how I advise you to get good value for all the time and money you’re spending.

1. Read teaching reviews before you pick your classes.  Teaching ability varies ...

A Fond Farewell to EconLog

I began blogging for EconLog in 2005.  I hadn’t even published my first book, but Liberty Fund took a chance on me and made me a regular blogger.  After seventeen years and thousands of blog posts, I’m supremely grateful to Liberty Fund, my fellow bloggers, and of course you, dear EconLog readers.

Starting on March 1, however, I have accepted a position running an all-new blog, Bet On It, hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas.  I will be the chief blogger as well as th...

Ephemeral Externalities

The textbook notion of externalities is expansive.  Potentially totalitarian, in fact.  Suppose, for example, that you dislike seeing Bahais.  The very fact that you have these bigoted feelings instantly implies that Bahais “impose a negative externality” on you purely by appearing in your field of view.

Indeed, an anti-Bahai zealot could dislike the very existence of Bahais.  If so, this implies that Bahais “impose a negative externality” merely by being in the world.  If you think this is an a...

The Dehiring of Richard Lewontin

Remember “dehiring“?  Dehiring is when, instead of firing a bad employee, you conspire with him to get him a new job someplace else.  As this how-to guide explains:

Managing a problematic employee is time consuming and negatively affects the cohesion of your fitness team. Unfortunately, hoping that a troublesome employee will just go away is not always realistic and may even make the situation worse. Instead of backing away from the problem, take action. By learning how to “de-hire,” you may nev...

No One Cared About My Spreadsheets

The most painful part of writing The Case Against Education was calculating the return to education.  I spent fifteen months working on the spreadsheets.  I came up with the baseline case, did scores of “variations on a theme,”  noticed a small mistake or blind alley, then started over.  Several programmer friends advised me to learn a new programming language like Python to do everything automatically, but I’m 98% sure that would have taken even longer – and introduced numerous additional error...

If the Welfare State Is So Small, Can We Just Get Rid of It?

I’ve done multiple debates with social democrats and avowed socialists.  Both groups unfavorably contrast the United States with Western Europe.  Social democrats tend to see Scandinavia as the pinnacle of human civilization.  Socialists usually hope for something more radical; “getting to Denmark” isn’t good enough for them.  But social democrats and socialists alike condemn the hard-hearted, Scrooge-like, laissez-faire United States.

I have a standard reply.  Namely: Although I wish their desc...

Sanctions and Asylum

According to Richard Hanania, trade sanctions are “ineffective, immoral, and politically convenient”:

Sanctions have massive humanitarian costs and are not only ineffective but likely counterproductive. On these points, there is overwhelming agreement in the academic literature. Such policies can reduce the economic performance of the targeted state, degrade public health, and cause tens of thousands of deaths per year under the most crushing sanctions regimes. Moreover, they almost always fail ...