• Two Economics Papers About Culture

    Updated: 2010-08-30 15:23:31
    | Peter Klein | The New Institutional Economics focuses mainly on formal rules, both “macro” (constitutions, legal systems, written languages) and “micro” (firms, contracts, other formal agreements). But there are many studies of informal or semi-formal constraints — norms, conventions, religion, belief systems, and other aspects of culture, broadly conceived. Given their commitment to methodological individualism, [...]

  • Department of “Duh”

    Updated: 2010-08-27 15:50:22
    | Peter Klein | It must be acknowledged, however, that a researcher’s political ideology or vested interest in a particular theory can still enter even ostensibly descriptive analysis by the data set chosen for the research; the mathematical transformations of raw data and the exclusion of so-called outlier data; the specific form of the mathematical [...]

  • An Industry Study for the Beautiful People

    Updated: 2010-08-26 12:45:12
    | Peter Klein | It’s Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry by Geoffrey Jones (Oxford University Press, 2010). From the blurb: This book provides the first authoritative history of the global beauty industry from its emergence in the nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how today’s global giants grew. It shows [...]

  • Texting Victorians

    Updated: 2010-08-24 22:22:06
    | Peter Klein | I knew that the Victorians had their own Internet, that information goods and open innovation are old hat, and that S-curves go back a hundred years. But apparently the Victorians used texting language too! We instruct our students to avoid it, but apparently Victorian poets thought writing I “love U 2 [...]

  • Austrian Economics PhD Course

    Updated: 2010-08-23 19:46:40
    | Peter Klein | This semester I am teaching a PhD course in the Austrian school of economics. Here’s a preview. Visitors to Columbia, Missouri are welcome to sit in! Excerpt from the syllabus: It is difficult to cover an entire school of thought in one semester. Austrian economics, after all, is not an applied [...]

  • The Corporate Hierarchy Dies, Again

    Updated: 2010-08-23 05:14:10
    | Peter Klein | Ronald Coase described his 1937 paper on the firm as “much cited, but little used.” He was referring to the academic literature, but these days it seems to apply to the popular press as well. Almost every week brings a new article on the death of the corporate hierarchy: you know, firms [...]

  • Note on Anonymous Comments

    Updated: 2010-08-21 21:41:41
    | Peter Klein | We interrupt our regular programming for a note from the site administrators: When you comment here at O&M, the server asks you for a name, email address, and (optionally) a URL. The email address is hidden (to protect your privacy), while the name and URL (if provided) are published with the [...]

  • The Economics of Freedom of Speech

    Updated: 2010-08-21 16:17:25
    | Nicolai Foss | Recent, uhhmm, debate here on O&M has made me wonder why we don’t have an economics of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has been hailed as the fundamental hallmark of free, open societies and a fundamental human right. It is also clear that freedom of speech is under attack, not [...]

  • Experimental Philosophy

    Updated: 2010-08-20 20:37:04
    | Peter Klein | Experimental economics is mainstream, and is increasingly popular in management (as well as sociology, political science, criminology, etc.). Laboratory and natural experiments seem to fill more journal pages every year. Esther Duflo took home this year’s Clark Medal for her work on randomized controlled trials. Identification is all the rage in empirical [...]

  • One-Size-Fits-All Higher Ed?

    Updated: 2010-08-19 23:54:39
    | Peter Klein | Alternative title: “An Economist Tries Talking to an English Professor, and Gives Up.” Perhaps one of you wants to take up the mantle over at UD? The point, which I’ve raised in previous posts (e.g., here and here), is that higher education isn’t one, well-defined thing, but a variety of things, [...]

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