Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries from Tuesday, November 20, 2007

2008 Novak Award Nominations Being Accepted

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The nomination process has begun for the international 2008 Novak Award. Named after theologian Michael Novak, this $10,000 award rewards new outstanding research into the relationship between religion and economic liberty. Over the past seven years, this award has been given to young, promising scholars throughout the world.

To nominate an emerging scholar, please complete the online form. We encourage professors, university faculty, and other scholars to nominate those who are completing exceptional research into themes relevant to the mission and vision of the Acton Institute.

Suitable nominees will have received their doctorate in the past 5 years or be a doctoral candidate working closely with themes relevant to the Acton Institute.

Selection Timetable:

Nomination Deadline: November 30, 2007
Nominee’s Submission Deadline: December 31, 2007
Award Announcement: January 31, 2008
Recipient’s Calihan Lecture: TBA

To see the full description of the award and its requirements, visit: www.acton.org/programs/students/novak.php.

Please direct questions to Anthony Pienta at apienta@acton.org.

Posted by Anthony Pienta in Programs at 15:07 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
events, novak award, scholarships

PowerBlog Updates

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Taking a cue from No Straw Men, I’m updating the look and feel of the Acton PowerBlog. Jonathan Rick suggests that completely separating your blog from your organization’s main Web site is a bad idea because you cut off access to useful information and create two distinct audiences rather than integrating traffic between two distinct sections of one Web site.

Website Updates

Acton’s blog has always been on the same domain as the main Acton site (www.acton.org) but we’ve recently given the blog its own sub-domain (blog.acton.org). You can still reach us from www.acton.org/blog/ but will be redirected to the new page rather than the old.

We are adding a new navigation menu bar at the top of our blog page to help tie in the blog to Acton’s main site. We hope to encourage people to explore events, programs, and publications from the Acton Institute. Acton has a lot of great content and resources for people who are interested in the intersection between religion and economics.

Finally, we are updating some of our colors in an attempt to make the blog look a bit more like Acton’s main site and also to make it “look a bit more webbish.” But not too webbish, of course.

(By the way, if the blog looks really odd or the same as it did last week, you may need to reload the page so that you get all the new css stylesheets and images.)

Posted by Jonathan Spalink in General at 14:28 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
acton.org, blogging, webbish

No Plan? No Problem

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Cato Institute and Randal O’Toole offer an appealing new book, The Best Laid Plans—a recounting of the failures of government planning. Think of it as extensive documentation of the truth Hayek observed half a century ago: it is impossible for a central authority to collect all the information or make all the predictions necessary to foresee how economic activity will play out. Therefore, it is impossible to plan centrally the operation of major sectors of the economy such as transportation and land use. (More precisely, it is impossible to do it well.)

Those two items—transportation and land use—are the main focus of O’Toole’s book. A taste, from the introduction:

Somewhere in the United States today, government officials are writing a plan that will profoundly affect other people’s lives, incomes, and property. Though it may be written with the best intentions, the plan will go horribly wrong. The costs will be far higher than anticipated, the benefits will prove far smaller, and various unintended consequences will turn out to be worse than even the plans critics predicted.

Posted by Kevin Schmiesing in Publications at 12:59 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
transportation, urban planning

Alarmism and Corruption

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Regis Nicoll over at The Point notes a WaPo story that is getting a lot of play on the blogosphere about the UN’s downgrade of the estimate of the extent of the AIDS epidemic, “U.N. to Cut Estimate Of AIDS Epidemic: Population With Virus Overstated by Millions.”

Nicoll writes that while of course it is good news that fewer people are infected than were previously thought, “The bad news is that previous estimates were inflated because of politics, bad science, or both.”

Nicoll continues, “While reading the announcement, I couldn’t help but draw parallels with certain climate change proponents and Intelligent Design critics whose tactics involve alarmism, exaggerated estimates and the politicization of science to protect their study grants and mandarin status.”

That’s something I’ve been wondering about a long time, and have previously drawn comparisons between climate change alarmism and the exaggerated claims of the spread of AIDS (as well as between the challenged position that ID proponents and climate change skeptics share).

The financial incentive for governments, the UN, and NGOs to play up potential cash cows for their pet social and scientific agendas is one that cannot be overlooked. And it’s the sort of corruption that those who really want to tackle corruption should take a hard look at.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Public Policy at 12:37 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
aids, alarmism, climate change, corruption, global warming, united nations

Reports on Globalization and National Capital

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last month the World Bank published a report titled, “Where is the Wealth of Nations?” (HT: From the Heartland). The report

describes estimates of wealth and its components for nearly 120 countries. The book has four sections. The first part introduces the wealth estimates and highlights the level and composition of wealth across countries. The second part analyzes changes in wealth and their implications for economic policy. The third part deepens the analysis by considering the importance of human and institutional capital, and by linking wealth to production. The fourth part reviews existing applications of resource and environmental accounting in developed and developing countries.

Also out recently is an index of the most globalized nations by Foreign Policy (HT: International Civic Engagement). The top ten, based on 2005 data, which claims to “measure countries on their economic, personal, technological, and political integration”:

Singapore (252,607)
Hong Kong (NR)
Netherlands (421,389)
Switzerland (648,241)
Ireland (330,490)
Denmark (575,138)
United States (512,612)
Canada (324,979)
Jordan (31,546)
Estonia (66,769)

In parenthesis after the name of the country in the top ten, I’ve placed the total wealth estimate for the year 2000 from the World Bank report (appendix 2 PDF).

Look at Estonia, for example. Even though its total wealth score is much smaller relative to other nations on the globalization list, the majority of its wealth score (41,802) in the World Bank report is garnered from “intangible capital,” which refers to, as the From the Heartland blogger put it, “the value of the nation’s economic and political institutions,” such as the rule of law. And now compare Estonia with the Republic of Congo, which has almost the same ratings in terms of tangible capital as Estonia, but whose -12,158 intangible capital rating keeps its total wealth score disturbingly low (3,516).

Clearly it isn’t the case that countries that only have rich natural resources have something to offer the international marketplace. Strong and responsible economic and political institutions can foster intellectual creativity, technological innovation, and social capital that more than makes up for deficits in natural resources.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in International Trade at 11:16 | Comments (2) | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
capital, estonia, globalization, natural resources, republic of congo, rule of law, world bank