Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 3

Labor Econ Versus the World: Essays on the World’s Greatest Market

Big announcement: I’m publishing eight new books of my all-time best EconLog essays.  Today, the first volume – entitled Labor Econ Versus the World: Essays on the World’s Greatest Market, goes on sale on Amazon.

I spent weeks reviewing the several thousand essays I’ve written since 2005, organizing them all by theme.  Labor Econ Versus the World collects my top pieces on the world of work, broken down into four categories.  “Laissez-Faire and Labor” analyzes the sorry effects of labor market...

I Win My Education Bet with David Henderson

Back in 2011, many futurists expected online education to give traditional four-year colleges a run for their money.  I demurred, arguing that:

Education is not primarily about teaching concrete skills.  It’s a stably wasteful way to sort people according to their intelligence, conscientiousness, conformity, etc.

So what happens when an innovator claims to have a cheaper, easier substitute for traditional education?  The lazy and the weird gravitate to Cheap Easy U like moths to the flame.  As a...

The Office of Unreasonable Rules

I have a modest proposal.  Every large bureaucratic organization – schools, corporations, charities, and of course every level of government – should create an Office of Unreasonable Rules.  The sole power of this Office is to hear complaints about unreasonable rules elsewhere in their organizations.  Should they determine that a rule is unreasonable, they (a) Grant the complainant an exception, and (b) Tell whoever made the rule to make the rule more reasonable.

For example, at a certain univer...

The Best Argument Against School Closures

People’s behavior shows that they place immense value on convenience.  Think about how much you dread calling technical support.  Doing your taxes.  Filling out medical forms.  Yet politicians almost never name “convenience” as an important value.  It just doesn’t sound good to say, “Sorry, we could save your life, but that would be awfully inconvenient for the rest of society.”  No politician has ever ended a speech with a resounding, “Give me convenience or give me death!”

As a result, politic...

Scott’s Search

Scott Alexander got married!  Congratulations to the happy couple.  And true to form, Scott takes a rationalist approach to the whole experience, starting with details on his search algorithm:

[M] recommendation for those of you in the same place I was ten years ago is: accrue micromarriages.

Micromarriages come from this post by Chris Olah. They’re a riff on micromorts, a one-in-a-million chance of dying. Risk analysts use micromorts to compare how dangerous different things are: scuba diving i...

RCTs and the Status Quo: The Special Relationship

In economics, Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) now stand at the pinnacle of the methodological hierarchy.  “Natural experiments” are a distant second.  Work based on old-fashioned observational data is actually hard to publish anywhere prestigious.  For many scholars, RCTs aren’t just the gold standard of research.  Nothing else is even fungible.  This is the Age of the Randomista.

Which raises a serious problem: How can researchers address questions where no RCT is feasible?  To do an RCT o...

Hanania in Austin

Thanks to the wonderful generosity of Steve Kuhn, Richard Hanania will be presenting his new book, Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy, in Austin, Texas next week, with special guest Razib Khan.

Free and open to the public!

Location: Dreamland Dripping Springs, on the big outdoor stage

Time: January 19, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

The Schedule:

6:30-7:00 – Richard Hanania presents his new book

7:00-7:30 – Caplan interviews Hanania about the book

7:30-8:30 – Ask Me Anything with Hanani...

Charge, Baby, Charge

Donald Shoup, famed author of the most fascinating possible book about parking, can also do comedy.  From his recent essay on “The Pseudoscience of Parking Requirements“:

Everyone wants to park free, and most people consider parking a personal issue, not a policy problem. Rational people quickly become emotional about parking, and staunch conservatives turn into ardent communists. Thinking about parking seems to take place in the reptilian cortex, the most primitive part of the brain responsible...

The Good Group

As a professor and public speaker, I’ve spoken to a wide range of student groups.  On reflection, my very favorite turns out to be: Effective Altruism.  Indeed, I’ve had positive experiences with 100% of the EA groups I’ve encountered.

What’s so great about the Effective Altruists?  They combine high knowledge, high curiosity, and high iconoclasm.  When I ask EAs if they’ve heard of signaling, or the Non-Identity Problem, or pollution taxes, most of them say Yes.  The ones who say No are eager t...

The Davis Parks Experience

I received two compelling emails from Northwestern University student Davis Parks, who recently read my Case Against Education.  Reprinted with his bold permission.

Email #1

Dear Professor Caplan,

I hope this email finds you well in the new year! I may not have a PhD—or even a BA as of now—which makes my opinion irrelevant to academics, but I found your book to be a soberingly accurate depiction of my experience with the education system. I was devastated by the “Afterward” to see that critics...