Prayer for Maundy Thursday

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Sheep and property rights

Regarding biblical economics at St. Maximos’ Hut, Andy Morriss writes on John 10:9-16: “Shepherds care for their flocks because their flocks belong to them; hirelings will not sacrifice for their flocks because the flocks do not belong to them. Continue Reading...

Democracy and education

Here’s an abstract of some recent NBER research: “Why Does Democracy Need Education?,” by Edward Glaeser, Giacomo Ponzetto, Andrei Shleifer “Across countries, education and democracy are highly correlated. We motivate empirically and then model a causal mechanism explaining this correlation. Continue Reading...

Bigger and better

When I was in college, living in the dorms, friends of mine would play a game called bigger and better. In this game, they would take an object–something that they owned–and trade it up for something that was worth a bit more to them, but worth a bit less to the person that they were trading with. Continue Reading...

Rights of skilled and unskilled alike

An op-ed earlier this week in the New York Times examines the emphasis and attention that has been placed on the influx of low-wage immigrants to the United States. According to Steven Clemons and Michael Lind, “Congress seems to believe that while the United States must be protected from an invasion of educated, bright and ambitious foreign college students, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, we can never have too many low-wage fruit-pickers and dishwashers.” Continue Reading...

Hodgepodge is good

Silla Brush penned an interesting little piece in the latest U.S. News and World Report, using the Massachusetts health care bill as a springboard to a wider observation of policy innovation at the level of state government. Continue Reading...

Marriage in the city

In this week’s commentary, Jennifer Roback Morse takes a look at the socio-economic factors that influence the age at which young people aim to get married. Many are waiting. One reason why so many young people put off marriage unitl their late 20s or early 30s, says Morse, is that the cost of setting up an independant household is too high — unjustifiably high. Continue Reading...

The sweetness of the Law

In commenting briefly on Psalm 19, C. S. Lewis observes the description of God’s Law as “sweeter than honey” and “more precious than gold,” the kind of descriptions that occur again and again throughout the Psalter. Continue Reading...

Connecting France with good economics

It seems that it may be possible. An interesting article from yesterday’s International Herald Tribune: Danielle Scache tries to avoid using the term “capitalism” in her economics class because it has negative connotations in France. Continue Reading...

AIDS: not that bad?

Bryan Caplan at EconLog says that he has long wondered about the validity of the statistics of the spread of AIDS on the African continent: The whole story had a quasi-Soviet flavor to it. Continue Reading...