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1. Dissing "The Theory of Moral Sentiments": Twenty-Six Critics, from 1765 to 1949

   • I discovered something that is a maybe:
     Hugh Murray, Enquiries Historical and Moral, Respecting the Character of Nations, and the Progress of Society (Edinburgh, 1808).

     Of “the science which analyses the faculties of the human mind,” he writes:

     “The progress of this science accordingly, has been still slower than that of physics. It is only recently indeed that it has reached its <i>acme</i> of corruption, and has with difficulty found any sure ground on which to rest its foot.”

     For a couple of reasons, I think he might have Ed. 6 of TMS in mind as the acme of corruption.

     In the next paragraph he looks forward to the sciene’s “establishment on a firm and permanent foundation.”

     In the book he mentions (just once each, I believe) Kames, Hume, Ferguson, and Millar, but never Smith.

     He makes some remarks against conjectural history (167), the drift being that we should seek facts, not make things up.

     Several pages of his description of savages reminds one strongly of Smith, “death song”, etc. pp. 276ff.

   • 11 comments
   • First comment 11 Jun 2018 by Daniel Klein
   • Last comment 31 Jan 2023 by Daniel Klein

2. Economic Enlightenment in Relation to College-going, Ideology, and Other Variables: A Zogby Survey of Americans

   • I enjoyed this article but I have a concern that the questions are not truly measuring “economic enlightenment”, but rather how readily individuals repeat the platitudes of their respective parties. A person who has little economic education could potentially appear to be economically enlightened simply by repeating the standard catch phrases of the Republican or Libertarian parties, without actually understanding the economic logic which makes their position correct. Is this person really enlightened?

     I agree with Mr. Potts that it is necessary to have some questions that would challenge the libertarian and conservative positions. Such questions might show that respondents answer correctly by and large when the answer conforms with their party’s standard phrasing.

     I may come to be a libertarian or conservative not through the process having thought through the results of various policies, but rather because I was born into a family that professed libertarian or conservative values. I may not know why rent control leads to housing shortages, I just know government intervention is bad (because that’s what I heard at the dinner table), and so I’m against rent control. This could explain the lack of correlation between enlightenment and education.

   • 6 comments
   • First comment 10 Jun 2010 by N. Joseph Potts
   • Last comment 16 Nov 2015 by wargames83

3. Adam Smith, the Last of the Former Virtue Ethicists

   • Deirdre McCloskey’s article, “Adam Smith, Last of the Former Virtue Ethicists,” is a well-reasoned piece that seeks to dispel the notion that Adam Smith was primarily an economist. As she states in the opening sentence (I love writers who get to the point), “Smith was mainly an ethical philosopher.” Her article traces the line of ethicists from Plato to Smith who believed that seven primary virtues (justice, fortitude, prudence, temperance, benevolence, faith, and hope) provide the foundation for all morality. Where Smith based his economics in his philosophy of ethics, McCloskey shows how modern economists have largely forsaken this connection, forgetting the tie that economics (presented in Smith’s Wealth of Nations) must maintain with ethics (presented in his Theory of Moral Sentiments). In fact, the ethical side of Smith, represented by TMS, was largely forgotten until relatively recently.

     Ms. McCloskey is well-qualified to write a piece on Adam Smith the philosopher, instead of Adam Smith, the economist. Of course Adam Smith WAS really a philosopher: his job title at University of Glasgow circa 1760 reads “Professor of Moral Philosophy.” McCloskey’s position description is similarly expansive at University of Illinois, Chicago: “Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication.” She is, like Smith, evidently a polymath.

     Most economists today approach Adam Smith from one of two angles. Either he was (1) a free-market capitalist, originator of the “Invisible hand” and early opponent of mercantilist voodoo; or (2) a free-market capitalist and author of The Wealth of Nations (WN), who also wrote a book of philosophy (TMS), which is probably brilliant, but contains language and concepts foreign to (and apparently inconsistent with) WN, and thus to be avoided.

     McCloskey sees no inconsistency between Smith’s two great published works. She sees no need to jettison the moral reasoning of TMS in order to focus on the economic insight of WN. Indeed, she sees Smith’s ethical philosophy as foundational to his economics, and urges present-day economists to make a similar connection. Smith she sees as primarily an ethicist (like the other former virtue ethicists: namely Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas), whose moral thinking drove his economic thinking. Divorcing the moral aspect of Smith’s thought (as modern-day economists do when they ignore TMS) rends WN, leaving it devoid of its context and true meaning. Similarly, such a divorce rends modern economics from a sure foundation, leaving it amoral, adrift on a sea of maximum utility.

   • 6 comments
   • First comment 22 Sep 2010 by Steve Kunath
   • Last comment 14 Nov 2012 by Todd Peckarsky

4. Mankiw vs. DeLong and Krugman on the CEA’s Real GDP Forecasts in Early 2009: What Might a Time Series Econometrician Have Said?

   • The article misreads Krugman’s comments. In the blog entry the article cites (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/roots-of-evil-wonkish/), Prof. Krugman makes a technical argument against Mankiw’s use of the unit root in his analysis. He does not make a prediction about the speed of the recovery. Krugman’s articles around the time had made it clear that he thought the recession would be deep and the stimulus too small and that the Obama administration was setting itself up for problems in the future by underestimating what needed to be done.

     I will include the full text below:

     March 3, 2009, 9:06 PM
     Roots of evil (wonkish)
     As Brad DeLong says, sigh. Greg Mankiw challenges the administration’s prediction of relatively fast growth a few years from now on the basis that real GDP may have a unit root — that is, there’s no tendency for bad years to be offset by good years later.

     I always thought the unit root thing involved a bit of deliberate obtuseness — it involved pretending that you didn’t know the difference between, say, low GDP growth due to a productivity slowdown like the one that happened from 1973 to 1995, on one side, and low GDP growth due to a severe recession. For one thing is very clear: variables that measure the use of resources, like unemployment or capacity utilization, do NOT have unit roots: when unemployment is high, it tends to fall. And together with Okun’s law, this says that yes, it is right to expect high growth in future if the economy is depressed now.

     But to invoke the unit root thing to disparage growth forecasts now involves more than a bit of deliberate obtuseness. How can you fail to acknowledge that there’s huge slack capacity in the economy right now? And yes, we can expect fast growth if and when that capacity comes back into use.

   • 5 comments
   • First comment 23 Sep 2012 by Brooks
   • Last comment 24 Sep 2012 by Alex Nash

5. Religion, Heuristics, and Intergenerational Risk Management

   • Links to discussions of debt from non-Abrahamic lineages:

     http://www.academia.edu/1122076/Buddhist_Explanations_on_the_Fundamental_Factors_of_Debts

     http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.045.than.html

     Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism … By Gregory Schopen

   • 5 comments
   • First comment 30 May 2014 by Tom Garnett
   • Last comment 15 Aug 2015 by G. Ashton

6. Advanced Placement Economics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

   • This is a great article as the others have said. This study needs far greater exposure to provide greater diversity in economic thinking. There is far more to economics than Keynesianism and the mechanics. Thank you.

   • 4 comments
   • First comment 25 Jan 2011 by Paul Johnson
   • Last comment 16 Mar 2011 by David B

7. The Ideological Profile of Harvard University Press: Categorizing 494 Books Published 2000-2010

   • The percentages in Table 1 are difficult to interpret. There are no 100% totals in this table so we can’t tell if the cell percentages are column percentages or row percentages. With effort, one can determine that all the percentages — except those in the bottom row — are column percentages. Putting 100% totals at the bottom of each column would facilitate understanding. , Showing the prevalence of each subject area could be done in the column titles, in the body or in a separate row below the 100% column totals.
     Figure 1 would have been more useful if the percentages were of “All Ideological HUP Books Surveyed” so the percentages would add to 100%.

   • 4 comments
   • First comment 24 Jan 2011 by Hal Luft
   • Last comment 16 Feb 2011 by Milo Schield

8. The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns

   • Constant’s speech flows effortlessly, enumerating the distinctions between ancient and modern conceptions of liberty. Ancient liberty “consisted in exercising collectively, but not directly, several parts of the sovereignty” and “with this collective freedom [came] the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community” (66). Under ancient liberty, “[a]ll private actions were submitted to a severe surveillance” and “[n]o importance was given to individual independence” (66). Modern liberty exists in a system of representative government, rather than direct participation. Modern liberty is “the right to be subjected only to the laws” (66). Constant summaries the key distinction nicely: “[A]mong the ancients the individual, almost always sovereign in public affairs, was a slave in all his private relations” (67). “Among the moderns, on the contrary, the individual, independent in his private life, is, even in the freest of states, sovereign only in appearance” (67). A paradox seems to emerge with respect to ancient and modern liberty. While we want modern liberty, it is still necessary to keep ancient liberty in the background. “The danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence, and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we should surrender our right to share in political power too easily” (70). Constant warns against putting too much faith in authority figures. He pleads that “we must not leave it to them. No matter how touching such a tender commitment may be, let us ask the authorities to keep within their limits. Let them confine themselves to being just. We shall assume the responsibility of being happy for ourselves” (70). It seems that the dangers of modern liberty are very real and present today. Individuals often look for the government to be more than just. The government is regulating personal happiness through various policies that go against liberty. It’s a slippery slope and Constant would call for us to take responsibility.

   • 4 comments
   • First comment 15 Apr 2011 by Ariel Nerbovig
   • Last comment 06 May 2011 by Stephanie Myla Helmick

9. Entrepreneurship and Islam: An Overview

   • Are you aware of English language resources which make apparent the main schools of thought and areas of unresolved discussion in current religious and/or secular debates in Islamic entrepreneurship and/or finance?

   • 4 comments
   • First comment 31 May 2014 by Eric Rasmusen
   • Last comment 03 Jun 2014 by Nathan W

10. Faculty Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology

    • What is the null hypothesis here? You appear to be assuming that absent the pressures you describe, faculty would resemble the US population. But it’s well known that, other things equal, those with more education tend to be Democrats.

      I suggest a better comparison would be with scientists, who have high levels of education but don’t in general need to make their political views known at work. According to a Pew survey of AAAS members from 2009, 55 per cent of scientists are Democrats and only 6 per cent are Republicans.

      So, a parsimonious hypothesis is that faculty in the disciplines you study are a representative sample of highly educated (PhD +) Americans in general.

    • 4 comments
    • First comment 02 Oct 2016 by John Quiggin
    • Last comment 17 Oct 2017 by Mitchell_Langbert

11. Preference Falsification in the Economics Profession

    • Preference falsification is equivalent to the term “pluralistic ignorance” used in social psychology. There have been a number of studies that have isolated this phenomenon (e.g., public versus private views of drinking habits on college campuses in Prentice and Miller 1993) and suggestions regarding how to alleviate it. For example, Halbesleben et al. (2005) conducted a study on business school students. Previously, it was observed that private views on ethical conduct in business diverged significantly from public views. In general, everyone wanted to be more ethical, but believed everyone else would behave unethically. The researchers administered ethics surveys several times during a semester to students in two classes. The surveys required students to indicate what they would do given a particular situation and what they thought others would do in that situation. In one of the classes, the lecturers spent one session teaching pluralistic ignorance, although not linking this lesson to the surveys or business ethics in general. The researchers found that, in business settings, the class receiving the pluralistic ignorance lesson reduced pluralistic ignorance on the ethics surveys and responded more ethically to surveys.

      This study provides reason for optimism for the economics profession. Merely educating students about the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance (or preference falsification) reduces the phenomenon somewhat. The researchers did not even link the concept of pluralistic ignorance with the ethics surveys. Surely, educating economists on pluralistic ignorance and presenting results of studies similar to Davis’s should greatly reduce pluralistic ignorance in the economics profession. Moreover, one would suspect that the Internet, a medium that strongly promotes the exchange of ideas and internal viewpoints, would also alleviate the “ignorance” of the majority viewpoint. Davis describes that pluralistic ignorance can perpetuate social undesirable practices, but then “can suddenly, and dramatically change” those practices. Perhaps, the economics profession will soon undergo such a change.

      References
      Halbesleben, R. B., A. R. Wheeler, and M. R. Buckley (2005). “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? Pluralistic Ignorance and Business Ethics Education.” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 56, No. 4, pgs. 385-398.
      Prentice, D. A. and D. T. Miller (1993). “Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus: Some Consequences of Misperceiving the Social Norm.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 64, No. 2, pgs. 243–256.

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 21 Apr 2010 by Jon Goldstein
    • Last comment 22 Apr 2010 by Shawn Reed

12. A Life among the Econ, Particularly at UCLA

    • On Bill Allen: One day, when I was an economics graduate student at UCLA, I was waiting for the Bunche Hall elevator. Prof. Allen was waiting as well. I didn’t know him, he had been on leave when I was an undergraduate. Waiting for the elevator, he was friendly and talkative. Afterwards, I asked someone who he was. When they told me he was an economics professor, I was surprised because he had been so friendly and nice!
      I enjoyed listening to the interview, thanks to all involved in putting it together.

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 08 Sep 2010 by morrie goldman
    • Last comment 17 May 2011 by josil

13. Individualism: True and False

    • Using the contrast between two philosophies that both have been referred to as individualism, Hayek outlines many of the usual justifications for a government and an economic system built around precepts of individual liberty. He tracks the intellectual history of the word “individualism”, claiming that what he calls false individualism leads inevitably to socialism and collectivism. He praises true individualism as worthy because it produces the most desirable results; false individualism has been wrongly associated with it and thus usurped its meaning.
      Hayek argues that the basic principle dividing the two philosophies is their differing conceptions of human nature. False individualism is more or less an overconfident humanism, while true individualism freely admits to human foibles and limitations. Thus, people who subscribe to false individualism have inflated expectations that men can rationally design the perfect society. Hayek argues for property rights, limited government, free exchange of goods and services, and the price mechanism built on the idea that men are fallible. The order in society develops unintentionally from the choices that free people make. Hayek’s defense of a classical liberal society on these grounds is utilitarian and compelling.
      It is somewhat surprising the particular battle lines Hayek drew. He equates true individualism with the Anglo-American culture and its associated thinkers, like Adam Smith and Hume, while pointing to French thinkers following in the tradition of Descartes as the primary source of false individualism. Hayek claims that German culture has yet another sense of the word individualism, which is the rejection of historical tradition as a source of authority over one’s behavior. It is an interesting division but a little difficult to believe that nationality follows the divisions between the intellectual traditions so simply.
      The most surprising point in the essay is Hayek’s effort to demonstrate that liberty and cultural traditions are consistently compatible. Cultural norms develop from a spontaneous order that reflects the process of the market. Hayek argues that respect for naturally evolving norms, rather than designed ones, encourages respect for the power of spontaneous order to produce the most desirable outcomes. His assertions seem to match the historical outcomes of the French Revolution, which ended with a military dictatorship, and the American Revolution, which resulted in a system of government with a strong presumption of liberty. The former tried to radically remake the society but the latter was simply an assertion of principles deeply ingrained culturally.

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 22 Sep 2010 by Tony Quain
    • Last comment 10 May 2013 by Matt

14. "The Two Faces of Adam Smith"

    • The Adam Smith Problem has beset philosophers and economists since the time of the man who is its source. What is the best way to integrate the insights of the Wealth of Nations with the ethical theory of the Theory of Moral Sentiments? While consensus has not yet been reached authors still try to resolve the tension. Vernon Smith, the father of experimental economics, attempted to resolve the problem by making an appeal to Adam Smith’s description of the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.

      The propensity that Vernon Smith points to is certainly a component of Adam’s system, but in attempting to resolve the Adam Smith Problem by simply highlighting this propensity seems to ask forces other questions into focus. Assuming that Adam Smith had a singular vision of human nature in some sense, where does the individual’s propensity to exchange emerge? According to David Hume reason is a slave to the passions, which Adam Smith would have been familiar with as it affected the development of his own moral theory. Here a problem arises, if the propensity to exchange is simply the result of an innate principle of action, as Vernon Smith implies, then one needs to determine if this action falls under ethical scrutiny or not. If Adam Smith does not consider natural and uncontrolled actions of the individual, e.g. sneezing, twitching, worthy of ethical consideration as they fall outside of the realm of the individual’s control and thereby are incapable of being done in sympathy with the Impartial Spectator, then how does one square a natural principle with ethical analysis? Perhaps if Vernon Smith had described the propensity to exchange as some type of irreducible good then we could see that it could then serve as a reason for action that would first be described by and ethical system, i.e. it would be fitting to discuss in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and then followed by sound advice on instantiating the good in ones affairs, i.e. the Wealth of Nations would give advice on making it a reality. The point of all this is to say that while Vernon Smith seems to be making a contribution to solving the Adam Smith Question, we are left with further questions that need to be answered.

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 25 Apr 2011 by Echo Keif
    • Last comment 06 May 2011 by Steve Kunath

15. Economic Enlightenment Revisited: New Results Again Find Little Relationship Between Education and Economic Enlightenment but Vitiate Prior Evidence of the Left Being Worse

    • People believing firmly in free market and voluntary exchange efficiency (just missed some fluctuations in Q.16 and negative externalities in Q17) are wrong and “Unenlightened”.
      People believing after USSR economy TOTAL failure and China transition to market economy that voluntary transactions are inefficient and only Gosplan could succeed to organize it are right and enlightened? Are you sure Q16-17 really helpful?
      BTW, conservatives actually able to count negative externalities.
      Q14: say Farmer A hired 5 immigrants from the country w/o tradition to respect property and human life, dignity etc. Let Farmer A saved for a Seazon $100K his costs (taxation, salary) and shared part of $100K among his product consumers. So, public wealth increased $100K. OK, now, close to the end of the Seazon (game almost over, last move of the gamer could be very unpleasant) this immigrant workers grabbed and killed farmer B and raped farmers’ C daughter and escaped to Mexico.
      Public losses counted say $5 million at least. So, conservatives actually count negative externalities, some libertarians so stubbornly ignore (Caplan vs. Friedman):
      http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/06/milton_friedman_10.html

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 17 May 2011 by rihir akidan
    • Last comment 28 Apr 2012 by Moshe

16. The Invisible Hand of Jupiter

    • In The Invisible Hand of Jupiter (1971), Alexander L. Macfie provides an insight on Adam Smiths conception of the relationship between divine guidance, the system of nature and human behavior. The relationship that Smith conceptualizes as the invisible hand appear thrice in his writing. Macfie tries to explain what lead Smith to the reversal of the meaning while noting that, in fact, there is no inconsistency in Smith. The invisible hand of Jupiter is a capricious, energizing force that metaphorically fits the irregularities people have been observing throughout time. The invisible hand of Christian Deity is the order preserving social force that animates orderly development of societies through social individuals.
      While there is no inconsisteny, Macfie is still not satisfied by Smith’s effort to integrate the theological, jurisprudential, ethical and economic arguments. The invisible hand of Jupiter is the innovative force breaking loose of the status quo, whereas the invisible hand of Christian Deity is the conservative force that gravitates towards natural order disturbed by self interested individuals. The invisible hand of Christian Deity appears both in the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and in the Wealth of Nations (1776). Whereas in the Wealth of Nations Smith is concerned with the economic mechanism of the order preserving force that appears in the obvious and simple system of natural liberty which, if perfect, makes itself out in the correspondence of natural and market prices, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith considers the mechanism of distribution of wealth. Smith’s logic is shaky, however, for in the Theory of Moral Sentiments the economic disparity is met by an ethical answer: “In the essentials all the different ranks should be nearly on a level.” While Macfie is aware that Smith distinguishes between benevolence – distributive and esteem justice – and justice – that is commutative justice – and opposes forcing out the levelling of the distribution of essentials, it is not clear whether and how the integration of theological, ethical and economic aspects of Smith’s doctrine bind together and how and whether the invisible hand leads the “rich only [to] select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable […] to make nearly the same distribution […] which would have been made had the earth been divided among equal portions among all its inhabitants (TMS 1759, p. 184).” For Macfie the invisible-hand passage in the Theory of Moral Sentiments remains only an effort, however excellent, to bind the theological ethical and economic arguments into one comprehensive system of thought.

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 15 Oct 2011 by Pavel Kuchař
    • Last comment 15 Nov 2012 by Francis Conlon

17. Can ‘Religion’ Enrich ‘Economics’?

    • I do not share Eric’s confidence in perfectly and justly adminsitered providence.

      If we want things to be better on earth, I do not think we should wait for providence. We may have to wait for a very long time, and poor, starving and vulnerable populations worldwide need out compassion and support today, not whenever providence thinks it is time to do it.

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 30 May 2014 by Eric Rasmusen
    • Last comment 10 Jun 2014 by Nathan W

18. Education Premiums in Cambodia: Dummy Variables Revisited and Recent Data

    • John, I do not believe you understand my point. Computed as discrete changes, which is what you do, the percentage difference of the premia (college versus high school) is not equal to to the difference of the percentage premia (college versus base minus high school versus base). You are implicitly using a false assumption; it is the same false assumption made by the Mexican government in the example I cited: that the difference of the percentage changes (+50 – 33.3) is the percentage change of the difference. It causes you to greatly overestimate the education premium.

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 30 Sep 2015 by Ronald Michener
    • Last comment 30 Oct 2015 by Ronald Michener

19. Ideology Über Alles? Economics Bloggers on Uber, Lyft, and Other Transportation Network Companies

    • I am and always have been surprised by the “cartel” view of taxis. No one calls the Maine lobster industry a cartel. Yet surely and appropriately it is. The lobster fishery is a common access resource. So, too, are the streets of a city. Part of the income enjoyed by lobster fishermen is a scarcity rent. So, too, is the price of a taxi and a taxi-cab medallion. Cities for many, obvious political-economy reasons are awful at managing common access to the streets. Nonetheless, the social value of Uber is not to lower the price of a taxi, which should be even higher in some cases, but to offer the consumer a more technologically efficient way of delivering the scare good

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 30 Sep 2015 by Michael Maloney
    • Last comment 24 Oct 2015 by Carl Edman

20. To Tolerant England and a Pension from the King: Did Hume Subconsciously Aim to Subvert Rousseau's Legacy?

    • Outstanding, thank you so much Professor Tasset. We are reproducing both pieces in a volume from CL Press, and we are making the correction. The erroneous “I mean myself” is in the 1826 Hume edition, the text of which was used by Project Gutenberg, which is where we lifted the English translations of Rousseau from. Thank you again!

    • 3 comments
    • First comment 28 Dec 2021 by Jose Tasset
    • Last comment 31 Aug 2022 by Daniel Klein