A blog of the NYU Colloquium on Market Institutions and Economic Processes
by Mario Rizzo
I admit upfront that I did not find David Brooks’s New York Times column on Mr. Bentham and Mr. Hume as updated characters at all amusing, funny or informative. I am sure I am in the minority. It is no comfort to me that Brooks seems to favor “Mr. Hume.” I leave it to Jeremy Bentham’s partisans to evaluate his portrayal.
I think David Hume was one of the greatest political philosophers of all time. Read the rest of this entry »
by Roger Koppl
We are all fascists now. That is true in an empty sort of way I suppose. Unfortunately, it is also true in a more historically accurate way. When I was in college “fascist” meant, “You are to the right of me and therefore bad.” Today, “fascists” in that old fashioned sense have turned the tables on the left. Now, “fascist” may also mean, “Your are to the left of me and therefore bad.” That pretty much covers the ground. By linguistic fiat all Americans are now “fascists.” Nothing could be less important. What matters is the other sense in which we have become, all of us, perfect fascists. Read the rest of this entry »
by Jerry O’Driscoll
Benjamin M. Friedman wrote a review essay for the New York Review of Books on the crisis of the economy and the economics profession. In an otherwise very good piece, he took an obligatory swipe at deregulators: “There is a long arc from Roosevelt’s acceptance of a useful role for government institutions and government regulation to the conviction of Reagan and Thatcher that the government is never the solution but actually the problem” (p. 43). That is a straw man all around, but one promoted by textbook presentation of markets and the equilibrating role of prices. Read the rest of this entry »
by Sandy Ikeda
A year ago the Bush administration proposed auctioning landing slots at Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark airports in the New York region. Yesterday the Obama administration canceled these plans. From the NYT article:
“In proposing to rescind the auctions, the department noted that the rule making was highly controversial and that most of those filing comments opposed the slot auctions,” the Transportation Department said in a statement. “The Department also noted that circumstances have changed since the rules were issued, including changes in the economy.”
Among those opposed were the airlines themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mario Rizzo
In an under-appreciated book, The Foundations of Morality (1964), the Wall Street Journal and New York Times economic journalist, Henry Hazlitt, wrote that the price system does not send accurate signals in the absence of private property rights.
“It is important to insist that private property and free markets are not separable institutions… If I am a government commissar selling something I don’t really own, and you are another commissar buying it with money that really isn’t yours, then neither of us really cares what the price is” (p. 304).
The so-called Geithner (U.S. Treasury) plan to purchase toxic assets from banks disregards the relationship between an adequately functioning price system and property rights. Read the rest of this entry »
