After almost 17 years of blogging at EconLog, I have decided to resign, effective today, and focus more on my Substack. It’s called “I Blog to Differ.” The big advantage of my Substack is that I have total control over subject matter and content.
These 17 years, which include my last 9 as an economics professor and my first 8 as a retiree, have been very fulfilling. If I highlighted a lot of the posts I’m particularly proud of, this would turn out to be a long post.
So I’ll mention:
A series of 4 posts on monopsony;
A series of 3 posts on Tyler Cowen’s critique of the Great Barrington Declaration;
A post on how New York City, despite all the regulation, works as a city;
A post in which I advocated allowing contraceptives to be sold over the counter;
A post challenging some wokeness engaged in by the New York Times.
Monopsony
In October 2016, economists at Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers published an electronic report in which they argued that there was a lot of monopsony in the U.S. economy. It’s titled, “Labor Market Monopsony: Trends, Consequences, and Policy Responses.” Their claim struck me as odd and so I pored over the report. I found a lot wrong with it, too much to put in one post. So I did a 4-parter.
Here’s “The CEA’s Mixed Thinking on Labor Market Monopsony, Part I,” EconLog, October 27, 2016, which gives some background before I proceed to critique the CEA report.
Here’s “The CEA’s Mixed Thinking on Labor Market Monopsony, Part II,” EconLog, October 28, 2016, where I lay out some huge weaknesses in the CEA report as well as some fine economic reasoning.
Here’s “The CEA’s Mixed Thinking on Labor Market Monopsony, Part III,” EconLog, October 31, 2016.
I won’t quote from the above 4 posts. Doing so would make this post way too long.
And finally, here’s “The CEA’s Mixed Thinking on Labor Market Monopsony, Part IV,” EconLog, November 5, 2016.
By the way, this series led to an interview of me by Ben Casselman of the New York Times. He did this article on January 25, 2018, over a year after I wrote. I reported on the NYT piece here.
I didn’t bother pointing it out because it happens so often and I get so tired of pointing it out, but notice that Casselman identified (not completely correctly, by the way) the ideology of the Hoover Institution. Apparently the authors of the NBER report, even Marshall Steinbaum, have no ideology.
Cowen on the Great Barrington Declaration
I wrote a number of posts addressing arguably the most important U.S. policy issue from 2020 to 2022: how to deal with Covid. I’ll focus here on my critique of some sloppy thinking by Tyler Cowen.
Here’s “Is Cowen Right about the Great Barrington Declaration? Part 1,” EconLog, October 16, 2020.
Here’s “Is Cowen Right about the Great Barrington Declaration? Part 2,” EconLog, October 17, 2020.
Here’s “Tyler Cowen Doubles Down,” EconLog, October 26, 2020.
Reflections on Life in New York City
Here’s “Reflections on Freedom in New York,” EconLog, January 12, 2011.
Here are three paragraphs:
Because I persuaded United to fly me to San Diego instead of back to Monterey (I would have got back to Monterey too late to catch my flight to San Diego for a Liberty Fund conference), I’m short on clothing. So I bought a nice dress shirt on sale at a store on Fifth Ave. The man behind the counter, who was friendly and helpful, was dark-skinned and had an accent. I asked him if he was from Iran. He is. When he saw that it was just my curiosity at work and not some kind of negative judgment on my part, he warmed up more. When I asked him his name, it sounded complicated, and I spelled it correctly the first time, he was pleased.
Why do I tell these stories? Because, when I think of New York city abstractly, I think of a city that doesn’t work. Taxes are high, there are too many crowds, people are pushy and unfriendly, etc. Then, when I actually experience New York, I see how well it works. People are trying to give me what I want, at a fairly low price. The immigrants I run into–and there have been many over the last two days–don’t seem to have come here for welfare but for opportunity to get wealthier. And people are friendly.
Why are people friendly? Partly because I love people and I’m friendly to them. But also partly because they are paid to be friendly; they do better by being friendly to customers. As I laid out in The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey, markets create virtue. Part of virtue is simple friendliness and helpfulness.
Let Contraceptives Be Sold Over the Counter
In “How to Cut the Cost of Contraceptives by Regulating Less,” EconLog, February 13, 2012, I laid out how women could get contraceptives more quickly and more cheaply if the feds allowed them to sold over the counter. I was one of the first to do so, but in the next few months, several people made the same proposal.
Workplace Challenges
Finally, this post, “Workplace Challenges,” EconLog, January 7, 2019, on a New York Times article about a panel at the January 2019 American Economic Association meetings. Notice in the comments how my thoughts upset economist Joshua Gans.
Fortunately, commenter RP Long, responding to Gans, understood my point, writing:
David presents a very reasonable, empowered, and assertive solution to the problem: Rather than getting caught up in what we privately think people might want and might do, he suggests simply asking people how they want to be treated, and then obliging them. Not only is that reasonable, but it’s also consistent with the recommendation of clinical psychologists: stop worrying about what people might think and just ask them outright (politely, respectfully) what they think.
A Final Note
I have enjoyed immensely blogging for Liberty Fund. One of the things that always animated me is the name of the organization that funded me: Liberty Fund. I believe strongly in liberty. That’s different, by the way, from saying that I substituted belief in liberty for good economic reasoning.
Writing an average of 24 posts per month helped me develop my ideas and my writing ability (especially my speed at writing.) Lauren Landsburg was very helpful when I was getting my feet wet and Amy Willis has been great to work with. Thanks to Emilio Pacheco for offering me the gig and to former fellow blogger Bryan Caplan for being so welcoming when I began.
Thanks also to the literally hundreds of commenters who have added valuable insights or asked good questions.
Remember that if you want to follow my work and thinking, subscribe to my Substack “I Blog to Differ.”
