An economic argument about why there are more “man-childs” around.

Hayek on economics and knowledge:
Correct foresight is then not, as it has sometimes been understood, a precondition which must exist in order that equilibrium may be arrived at. It is rather the defining characteristic of a state of equilibrium ( Read more... )

Best footnote ever: a wonderful takedown of Sigmund Freud.

Heinrich Heine was the master of the put down.

Reminding ourselves of how academic scholastic Aristotelians responded to Galileo’s astronomical claims.

Nice post about problems in use of terms in argument.

About moral ontology.

Scott Adams on the knowledge that matters in spotting ( Read more... )

About the economics of natural disasters.

Selecting the top 20 articles from (pdf) the AER since it started. About that selection.

Great talk by Deidre McCloskey on economic history and optimism.

About aggregate supply and aggregate demand.

Nice post on the success of Swedish monetary policy - by a Czech physicist.

About productivity in recent ( Read more... )

A post on monetary economics is here explaining it for a lay audience and why it matters so much. My favourite monetary economist, Scott Sumner of Bentleigh University who writes the Money Illusion blog, thought it a "great post".

A book on the recurring booms-and-busts of capitalism reviewed here, here and here.

(The author thought the review "very fair".)

A great visual animation of life expectancy and average income over the last two centuries. Visual proof that the West did not get rich "at the expense of" the Rest.

A few weeks ago I tripped and fell, twisting my knee. It was a very contemporary trip, I was consulting Google(tm) maps on my iPhone(tm) at the time ( Read more... )

The history of a spurious statistical indicator that began as satire and refuses to die.

I, Toaster: trying to make a toaster from scratch: a lesson in division of labour, specialisation and commerce. The toaster project.

Evidence that culture matters.

Hans Rosling doing 200 years of progress in great graphics. About economic optimism being a ( Read more... )

About a search for new economic ideas. An interview with Deidre McCloskey about economics for grownups:
No science can predict its own future, which is what predicting business cycles entails. Economists are among the molecules their theory of cycles is supposed to predict ( Read more... )

Noting problems with the concept of ‘livability’.

A post with some nice graphs on the bursting of the American housing bubbles. Graph showing that housing price surges occurred in several countries.

Economics aspires to be a science: too bad it is about people then:
the more everyone believes the model, and the more everyone uses the same model ( Read more... )