Spencer Levan Kimball on How the Federal Government Can Support and Direct Rather than Undermine State Regulation

 

The Republicans have promised to repeal and replace Obamacare. I continue to think the proposal I made in "Evan Soltas on Medical Reform Federalism—in Canada" is a good way to go:

Let’s abolish the tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance, with all of the money that would have been spent on this tax exemption going instead to block grants for each state to use for its own plan to provide universal access to medical care for its residents.

On another set of policy issues that I discussed in "Against Anticompetitive Regulation," I am very concerned at the way state and local governments are harming economic growth by overregulating land use and licensing more and more occupations. To me, it is a legitimate and appropriate use of the interstate commerce clause in the US Constitution to require states to respect the benefits greater economic freedom in certain key areas can have for enhancing economic growth. 

In both cases, the approach is for the Federal government to lay down general rules of the road while the states do the driving.

I was delighted to discover from reading my uncle Spencer Levan Kimball's autobiography that he recommended  a similar approach in his area of expertise: insurance law. His approach to Federalism in auto insurance law is described well in this passage from A Tale That is Told: The Autobiography of Spencer L. Kimball, pp. 314-317. In this passage he also expresses a clear-eyed view of the nature of government. 

In 1967 a proposal was made in Congress for a study of automobile accident compensation by The Department of Transportation ("DOT"); in May 1968 Congress "authorized and directed" it by Joint Resolution and I spent a day in Washington consulting about planning the study. ...

The principal non-quantitative study was of mass marketing in liability insurance. It was the only one in which the authors' conclusions on policy questions were forthrightly stated as part of the study. Herb Denenberg and I stated them; we were the contracting parties. We drew on our combined knowledge of the property and liability lines of the insurance business to write Mass Marketing in Property and Liability Insurance, a small book making the case for freedom to try marketing methods that had the potential to reduce the cost of putting business on the books of the company. ... 

In September 1968 the Secretary of Transportation invited me to serve on the Economic Regulation Advisory Committee for the project. I accepted promptly, despite being in the middle of the Wisconsin Insurance Laws Revision project and also working on the mass marketing study for the same [DOT] project. This committee assignment was a major undertaking, involving at least a dozen full day meetings, most in Washington. I had two reasons for agreeing, despite heavy commitments: (1) the participation was recognition I felt was important to my further work in the insurance field, and (2) I was becoming suspicious about the political motivations lying behind many actions emanating from Washington, both from Congress, which had ordered the study and from the administrative agency planning and executing it. My ready acceptance and advocacy of big government as a young man was fading fast. ...

On January 16, 1969 we were sworn in. I was named Chairman of our committee. At that meeting an agenda was supplied for our next meeting on February 7. As Chairman I had a role in preparing agendas, but the basic planning was done by full-time staff, which apparently had the duty of keeping a tight rein on us, for while Department rules required at least one staff member to be present at each meeting, in fact several did attend each of our meetings. Perhaps they found our discussions particularly informative and useful. They did not find us malleable. As a group, we were well-informed and most of us were opinionated; our opinions ran approximately in parallel, so that we presented a united front to the bureaucrats. 

Comments on staff plans for studies tended to fill the agendas. Whether our discussions were used is doubtful ... 

I wrote on February 19 to one of the responsible members of the staff, saying in part: 

... I should like to reemphasize a point made by Dick Roddis at the meeting which has seemed of even more importance since the meeting than then. At the very heart of the whole study, it seems to me as to him, is the economic profitability of the automobile insurance enterprise. ... 

[I]t is not appropriate to omit cost-efficiency or a good cost-benefit ratio as a criterion for judging regimes of compensation. If you need to regard this as a mere fact finding study, then no criteria should be stated and those already stated should be expunged ...

If I understand the statement that you made in Chicago, the omission of the criterion was essentially a political omissions. ... I would appreciate it if you would give me your reflections upon these points at as early a date as possible, after having consulted on the matter with the necessary people up the line of command. 

On June 2, 1969, Richard F. Walsh, Director of Operations of the overall study, asked the Advisory Committee for its comments on an administration bill, S. 2236, which would create a national insolvency fund supported by levies on all policy-holders. All Committee members except Governor Ellington met with five members of the staff on July 8 and prepared a statement of position under severe time pressure. The excellent minutes say that: 

The Committee also agreed that S. 2236 is an undesirable bill—badly drafted and difficult to administer (e.g., the primary emphasis is on examination, the receivership process is lengthy and cumbersome and not in accordance with modern practices, etc.). The members felt that the bill would simply be a `back door' approach to achieving Federal regulation, eventually replacing regulation by the States. In fact, it was suggested that this may be a major purpose of the bill's framers. 

Our statement of position said that we agreed with the objective of the bill, but that we all thought the bill was unsound: 

S. 2236 creates a basic dilemma, then seeks to resolve it by an impossible compromise. It would create a Federal Guaranty Fund by levying a tax on all policyholders throughout the country. It then provides for Federal administration of the insolvency fund and Federal participation with state insurance supervisors in the financial supervision of insurers and in the administration of insolvent insurers. It evidences a purpose to preserve the pattern of existing state regulation, yet at the same time recognizes that the administrators of the Federal fund cannot rely entirely upon state regulation. 

Actually, the bill would create a dramatic counter-incentive to the fulfillment of the objective of sound financial supervision of insurers. States which have not in the past shown great motivation to establish legal standards and administrative controls adequate to minimize insurer insolvencies would further lose incentive to do so. This is true because insolvency losses in those states would be paid for from the Federal fund derived largely from the people of other states. The only control offsetting this economic counter-incentive would be the aggressive utilization by the Federal agency of the direct powers conferred upon it by the bill. This, however, automatically results in the superimposition of a system of Federal supervision on the existing pattern of state regulation. ... Comprehensive Federal control will, indeed must, follow Federal financial responsibility. ... What is needed is a Federal law requiring all states to adopt insolvency guaranty laws, establishing minimum standards for such laws, and creating forceful incentives for the states to comply, but which avoids Federal administrative involvement. 

We suggest that these objectives can be met by the enactment by the Congress of a law which would provide for the imposition of a substantial Federal general revenue tax on insurance premiums ... [with] the tax [to] be forgiven in full for all states which have in effect an insolvency guaranty law meeting certain criteria specified in the Federal law. ... 

The two methods most likely to be adopted would be either an insolvency fund law such as has long existed in New York, or a post-insolvency assessment law such as that proposed by the Wisconsin Insurance Laws Revision Committee. ... 

[T]he proposed approach ... would result in maximum pressure on state legislatures and regulators to have adequate administrative supervision of insurers. It would permit a minimum of administration at the Federal level and would avoid the need for accumulation of substantial funds under the control of a Federal agency. ... The proposed law has the virtue of largely being self-executing. ... 

In June, 1970, the research studies were presented by their authors (or a staff member) to the combined Committees. Authors of the quantitative fact-finding studies placed their views on the policy implications of the research on the record separately. Herb's and my views were in the study itself, which was a brief for mass marketing. ...

Despite our general opposition to federal regulation, in Mass Marketing we advocated a narrow federal statute to remove the barriers to the freedom of insurers to use mass marketing. We wrote to all insurance commissioners, urging state action to eliminate the barriers and remove the need for federal legislation with its inevitable threat of greater federal intervention. We said the report 

... describes the many unreasonable barriers to the free development of mass marketing now on the statute books or in regulations. ... The [National Association of Insurance Commissioners] will have to provide more vigorous leadership in protecting the consumer interest if it is to prevent the regulatory center of gravity from continuing to shift to Washington. 

 

 

 

A Beautiful Example of Evolution Right Before Our Eyes

Sometimes people claim that there is little evidence of evolution that we can actually see, or that the examples are of only trivial importance. I thought the article above on the research of Regina Baucom and coauthors was a wonderful example of evolution before our eyes. 

When Roundup (containing the active herbicide glyphosate) is used to kill the pretty weed morning glory, some morning glory plants have genes that help protect them and therefore survive better.

But there is more. Morning glory plants have both male and female parts: pollen-producing anthers and the pollen-receiving stigma. Some of the Roundup-resistant morning glories have anther and stigma close together so they frequently self-fertilize, while other Roundup-resistant morning glories have anther and stigma far apart, so they are less likely to self-fertilize and more likely to be fertilized by another morning glory that might not be Roundup-resistant. Because the descendants of the Roundup-resistant morning glories with anther and stigma close together are more likely to inherit the Roundup-resistant genes, they will be more common in the next generation. Because these increasingly common descendants from self-fertilization of Roundup-resistant morning glories are also likely to have genes for anther and stigma close together, the population of morning glories shifts to a higher frequency of anther and stigma close together. Thus, Roundup causes the population of morning glories to evolve toward having anther and stigma close together—a different reproductive strategy—as well as causing the population of morning glories to evolve toward Roundup-resistance. 

Not Perfect: Spencer Levan Kimball on Spencer Woolley Kimball's Transgression Against Freedom of Thought

"[As a Mormon missionary in 1937] One of the activities I mentioned in a letter to Kathryn was 'library work,' by which I meant 'putting Books of Mormon in libraries and trying to remove anti-Mormon literature.' It is apparent that I had not acquired from my early training the belief that the best test of truth is in the marketplace of ideas (an idea forcefully expressed in those terms by one of my later heroes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and by John Stuart Mill before him). Indeed, my father had inadvertently given me a lesson in the contrary position that I would later reject. In Montreal we visited a branch library together. While I prepared a sermon, he thumbed through current magazines and came across an article uncomplimentary to Mormonism. He tore it out. HIs conduct startled me, at the time mainly because he was destroying someone else's property. Not long after my mission was over, I would regard such an attempt at 'censorship,' coupled with damage to another's property, as seriously wrong. I do not know whether with my father's unquestioning faith in his Church's doctrine's he ever overcame that inclination to suppress contrary views when he could. It was a flaw--one I would later regard as serious--in the otherwise sterling character of a great and good man."

--Spencer LeVan Kimball (son of Spencer Woolley Kimball, oldest brother of Edward Lawrence Kimball and uncle of Miles Spencer Kimball) in his autobiography A Tale That is Told, pp. 77-78.

David K. Evans and Anna Popova: Cash Transfers and Temptation Goods →

Abstract: Cash transfers have been demonstrated to improve education and health outcomes and alleviate poverty in various contexts. However, policy makers and others often express concern that poor households will use transfers to buy alcohol, tobacco, or other “temptation goods.” The income effect of transfers will increase expenditures if alcohol and tobacco are normal goods, but this may be offset by other effects, including the substitution effect and the effect of social messaging about the appropriate use of transfers. The net effect is ambiguous. This article reviews 19 studies with quantitative evidence on the impact of cash transfers on temptation good expenditure, as well as 11 studies that surveyed whether respondents reported they used transfers to purchase temptation goods. We conduct a meta-analysis to gauge the average impact of transfers on temptation goods. Results show that on average cash transfers have a significant negative effect on total expenditures on temptation goods, equal to −0.18 standard deviations. This negative result is supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, for both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs. A growing number of studies therefore indicate that concerns about the use of cash transfers for alcohol and tobacco are unfounded.

Spencer Levan Kimball Fighting the TIAA/CREF Monopoly at the University of Chicago in 1980

In his time, my Uncle Spencer Levan Kimball was arguably the world's leading expert on insurance law. After serving as Japanese interpreter in World War II and a Rhodes scholarship, he was a young Law School Dean at the University of Utah, an older Law School Dean at the University of Wisconsin (where my father was also on the faculty), and between those two deanships a professor at the University of Michigan Law school for a long time. He lead a revision of the insurance code for the state of Wisconsin and had a hand in a revision of the insurance code for the State of Utah. Spencer finished his academic career in Chicago, as Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation and Seymour Logan Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He had no formal economic training, but learned some economics from his work on insurance law. And he wrote in his autobiography that rubbing shoulders with others on the Chicago law faculty provided him with some additional education in economics. Below, is Uncle Spence's account of how the University of Chicago decided to allow faculty to invest their required retirement contributions in Vanguard (from A Tale That is Told: The Autobiography of Spencer L. Kimball, pp. 369-370). 

The most important Committee on which l served at Chicago was a University ad hoc faculty-administrative committee on faculty retirement annuities. The University was systematically considering all fringe benefits. In that context, Provost Ken Dam, who was also my law school colleague, asked me to chair the committee on December 2, 1980, "to determine whether contributors should be able to invest their contributions, and those made on their behalf by the University, with organizations other than TIAA and CREF." Such a broadening had taken place with regard to supplemental contributions, as a result of a report of a similar committee chaired by Eugene Fama of the Economics Department, one of the developers of the "efficient market" theory justifying index funds. I had taken advantage of the options allowed and had put my own supplemental retirement funds in Vanguard. 

The personnel of the committee was excellent, motivated and regular in attending our frequent meetings. On February 24, I wrote a memorandum outlining the questions I thought we needed to discuss, including how far the University should continue its "paternalistic" posture. We heard presentation from TIAA/CREF, which would like us to make no changes, from Vanguard which would like to be cut in on the act, and from Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company. VALIC made such a poor presentation that we dropped it at once. That left us with the addition of Vanguard or the status quo as our two realistic options, for the University administration balked at having a wide range of choices because of administrative costs. Vanguard made an impressive presentation. TIAA/CREF's attitude was the natural one of a monopolist: any change would be for the worse and, in fact, would violate their rights. TIAA tried to use the principles of the American Association of University Professors and American Association of Colleges about retirement benefits to strengthen their position, but that made little impression on us. A few other schools were beginning to break loose from the hegemony of TIAA, Stanford among them. On March 26 I sent the members an initial draft of a report, done "off the top of my head" in order to get something to discuss. On April 21 I sent the committee members a draft into which I had been able to work the numerous suggestions of the others. A week later I sent a draft to the Provost. After minor corrections our final report went to him May 6, 1981, only three months after our appointment, almost a record for University committees dealing with complex and important questions. The report was compressed into 19 double-spaced pages plus appendices. It recommended enlarging the options of the faculty to include some but not all of Vanguard's funds; it retained the restrictions that compelled annuitization or its equivalent. I made appearances to support the proposal, which finally got approval on October 13 and was quickly implemented. TIAA fought a rear guard action against additional alternatives for retirement funds in various universities and colleges but liberalization of retirement fund accumulation methods was spreading in the academic world, with Chicago leading. 

 

 

 

Top 150 Posts and All Columns on supplysideliberal.com, Ranked by Popularity, as of December, 2016

This page is intended to provide ready access to all of my most important posts. To begin with, I list all of my columns and the top 150 other posts based on May 28, 2012 through July 31, 2016 data, when this blog was on Tumblr. Then I give links to other posts in categories. For more recents posts, don't miss:

Even more recent posts can be seen at the Archive link above, and my most popular storified Twitter discussions are here.

Recent Bloomberg and Quartz Columns: (no pageview data available to enable ranking):

Quartz Columns Through 2017, in Order of Popularity:

  1. There’s One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don’t

  2. The Coming Transformation of Education: Degrees Won’t Matter Anymore, Skills Will

  3. The Hunger Games is Hardly Our Future: It’s Already Here

  4. The Complete Guide to Getting into an Economics PhD Program

  5. Why Thinking about China is the Key to a Free World

  6. The Case for Gay Marriage is Made in the Freedom of Religion

  7. How to Turn Every Child into a “Math Person”

  8. How Big is the Sexism Problem in Economics?

  9. After Crunching Reinhart and Rogoff’s Data, We Find No Evidence That High Debt Slows Growth

  10. The Swiss National Bank Means Business with Its Negative Rates

  11. The National Security Case for Raising the Gasoline Tax Right Now

  12. Will Narendra Modi’s Economic Reforms Put India on the Road to Being a Superpower?

  13. The Shakeup at the Minneapolis Fed and the Battle for the Soul of Macroeconomics

  14. How Increasing Retirement Saving Could Give America More Balanced Trade

  15. Human Grace: Gratitude is Not Simple Sentiment; It is the Motivation that Can Save the World

  16. Larry Summers Just Confirmed That He is Still a Heavyweight on Economic Policy

  17. An Economist’s Mea Culpa: I Relied on Reinhart and Rogoff

  18. Examining the Entrails: Is There Any Evidence for an Effect of Debt on Growth in the Reinhart and Rogoff Data?

  19. How to Avoid Another NASDAQ Meltdown: Slow Down Trading (to Only 20 Times Per Second)

  20. Odious Wealth: The Outrage is Not So Much Over Inequality but All the Dubious Ways the Rich Got Richer

  21. Benjamin Franklin’s Strategy to Make the US a Superpower Worked Once, Why Not Try It Again?

  22. America’s Big Monetary Policy Mistake: How Negative Interest Rates Could Have Stopped the Great Recession in Its Tracks

  23. Gather ‘round, Children, and Hear How to Heal a Wounded Economy

  24. Show Me the Money!

  25. QE or Not QE: Even Economists Needs Lessons In Quantitative Easing, Bernanke Style

  26. Don’t Believe Anyone Who Claims to Understand the Economics of Obamacare

  27. Swiss Pioneers! The Swiss as the Vanguard for Negative Interest Rates

  28. Radical Banking: The World Needs New Tools to Fight the Next Recession

  29. The Government and the Mob

  30. How Italy and the UK Can Stimulate Their Economies Without Further Damaging Their Credit Ratings

  31. Janet Yellen is Hardly a Dove: She Knows the US Economy Needs Some Unemployment

  32. Four More Years! The US Economy Needs a Third Term of Ben Bernanke

  33. Japan Should Be Trying Out a Next Generation Monetary Policy

  34. Why the US Needs Its Own Sovereign Wealth Fund

  35. One of the Biggest Threats to America’s Future Has the Easiest Fix

  36. Could the UK be the First Country to Adopt Electronic Money?

  37. Righting Rogoff on Japan’s Monetary Policy

  38. Optimal Monetary Policy: Could the Next Big Idea Come from the Blogosphere?

  39. Why You Should Care about Other People’s Children as Much as Your Own

  40. Get Real: Bob Shiller’s Nobel Should Help the World Improve Imperfect Financial Markets

  41. In Defense of Clay Christensen: Even the ‘Nicest Man Ever to Lecture’ at Harvard Can’t Innovate without Upsetting a Few People

  42. Actually, There Was Some Real Policy in Obama’s Speech

  43. Meet the Fed’s New Intellectual Powerhouse

  44. Read His Lips: Why Ben Bernanke Had to Set Firm Targets for the Economy

  45. More Muscle than QE3: With an Extra $2000 in their Pockets, Could Americans Restart the U.S. Economy?

  46. How Subordinating Paper Money to Electronic Money Can End Recessions and End Inflation

  47. That Baby Born in Bethlehem Should Inspire Society to Keep Redeeming Itself

  48. Three Big Questions for Larry Summers, Janet Yellen, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Head the Fed

  49. Judging the Nations: Wealth and Happiness Are Not Enough

  50. The Man in the Tank: It’s Time to Honor the Unsung Hero of Tiananmen Square

  51. Yes, There is an Alternative to Austerity Versus Spending: Reinvigorate America’s Nonprofits

  52. John Taylor is Wrong: The Fed is Not Causing Another Recession

  53. However Low Interest Rates Might Go, the IRS Will Never Act Like a Bank

  54. Why Austerity Budgets Won’t Save Your Economy

  55. Monetary Policy and Financial Stability

  56. Make No Mistake about the Taper—the Fed Wishes It Could Stimulate the Economy More

  57. Nationalists vs. Cosmopolitans: Social Scientists Need to Learn from Their Brexit Blunder

  58. Off the Rails: What the Heck is Happening to the US Economy? How to Get the Recovery Back on Track

  59. VAT: Help the Poor and Strengthen the Economy by Changing the Way the US Collects Tax

  60. Talk Ain’t Cheap: You Should Expect Overreaction When the Fed Makes a Mess of Explaining Its Plans

  61. Economics Is Unemotional—And That's Why It Could Help Bridge America's Partisan Divide

  62. Obama Could Really Help the US Economy by Pushing for More Legal Immigration

  63. Does Ben Bernanke Want to Replace GDP with a Happiness Index?

  64. How to Stabilize the Financial System and Make Money for US Taxpayers

  65. How the Electronic Deutsche Mark Can Save Europe

  66. Al Roth’s Nobel Prize is in Economics, but Doctors Can Thank Him, Too

  67. Italy Should Look to Ancient Rome to Reform Its Ineffective Senate

  68. Symbol Wanted: Maybe Europe’s Unity Doesn’t Rest on Its Currency. Joint Mission to Mars, Anyone?

Bloomberg Columns (in Chronological Order)

  1. Fight the Backlash Against Retirement Saving Nudges: Everyone Benefits When People Save More for Old Age

Major Pieces First Appearing in Other Outlets (in Arbitrary Order)

Columns Rejected by Quartz Because of Their Topics

Top 150 Posts on supplysideliberal.com:

  1. John Stuart Mill’s Brief for Freedom of Speech 11,434

  2. How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide 11,386

  3. Contra John Taylor 11,239

  4. Joshua Foer on Deliberate Practice 10,821

  5. Daniel Coyle on Deliberate Practice 10,614

  6. The Medium-Run Natural Interest Rate and the Long-Run Natural Interest Rate 10,375

  7. Shane Parrish on Deliberate Practice 9,966

  8. The Logarithmic Harmony of Percent Changes and Growth Rates 8,894

  9. The True Size of Africa, Revisited 8,827

  10. The Wall Street Journal’s Quality-Control Failure: Bret Stephens’s Misleading Use of Nominal Income in His Editorial 'Obama’s Envy Problem’ 7,594

  11. Dr. Smith and the Asset Bubble 7,158

  12. Sticky Prices vs. Sticky Wages: A Debate Between Miles Kimball and Matthew Rognlie 7,126

  13. What is a Supply-Side Liberal? 6,730

  14. Monetary vs. Fiscal Policy: Expansionary Monetary Policy Does Not Raise the Budget Deficit 6,256

  15. Balance Sheet Monetary Policy: A Primer 5,932

  16. Why I Write 5,890

  17. On Master’s Programs in Economics 5,813

  18. Government Purchases vs. Government Spending 5,157

  19. Scott Adams’s Finest Hour: How to Tax the Rich 4,976

  20. Why Taxes are Bad 4,714

  21. William Graham Sumner: Social Darwinist 4,696

  22. Isaac Sorkin: Don’t Be Too Reassured by Small Short-Run Effects of the Minimum Wage 4,669

  23. The Message of Mormonism for Atheists Who Want to Stay Atheists 4,485

  24. Heroes of Science Action Figures 4,021

  25. Noah Smith Joins My Debate with Paul Krugman: Debt, National Lines of Credit, and Politics 3,819

  26. Electronic Money: The Powerpoint File 3,797

  27. The Deep Magic of Money and the Deeper Magic of the Supply Side 3,717

  28. Noah Smith: God and SuperGod 3,488

  29. Two Types of Knowledge: Human Capital and Information 3,339

  30. The Path to Electronic Money as a Monetary System 3,207

  31. The Egocentric Illusion 3,102

  32. Noah Smith: Mom in Hell 3,047

  33. The Unavoidability of Faith 3,010

  34. Silvio Gesell’s Plan for Negative Nominal Interest Rates 2,985

  35. You Didn’t Build That: America Edition 2,840

  36. Trillions and Trillions: Getting Used to Balance Sheet Monetary Policy 2,788

  37. Can Taxes Raise GDP? 2,686

  38. Robert Shiller: Against the Efficient Markets Theory 2,643

  39. No Tax Increase Without Recompense 2,634

  40. The Mormon View of Jesus 2,626

  41. On the Great Recession 2,579

  42. How Conservative Mormon America Avoided the Fate of Conservative White America 2,574

  43. The Shape of Production: Charles Cobb’s and Paul Douglas’s Boon to Economics 2,519

  44. Teleotheism and the Purpose of Life 2,506

  45. Books on Economics 2,432

  46. Three Revolutions 2,384

  47. Getting the Biggest Bang for the Buck in Fiscal Policy 2,285

  48. International Finance: A Primer 2,225

  49. Discounting Government Projects 2,158

  50. A Minimalist Implementation of Electronic Money 2,155

  51. A Note for Graduate Students in Economics Looking for Ph.D. Dissertation Topics 2,108

  52. Why I am a Macroeconomist: Increasing Returns and Unemployment 2,093

  53. Noah Smith: You Are Already in the Afterlife 2,083

  54. Magic Ingredient 1: More K-12 School 2,068

  55. Three Goals for Ph.D. Courses in Economics 2,033

  56. So You Want to Save the World 2,011

  57. Nicholas Kristof: “Where Sweatshops are a Dream” 2,001

  58. Social Liberty 1,993

  59. Ben Bernanke on Why the Fed Has an Inflation Target of 2% 1,978

  60. Milton Friedman: Celebrating His 100th Birthday with Videos of Milton 1,901

  61. Is Taxing Capital OK? 1,881

  62. When the Government Says “You May Not Have a Job” 1,829

  63. Let the Wrong Come to Me, For They Will Make Me More Right 1,821

  64. Scrooge and the Ethical Case for Consumption Taxation 1,794

  65. Inequality Aversion Utility Functions: Would $1000 Mean More to a Poorer Family than $4000 to One Twice as Rich? 1,719

  66. Is Monetary Policy Thinking in Thrall to Wallace Neutrality? 1,702

  67. Jobs 1,674

  68. Kevin Hassett, Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw and John Taylor Need to Answer This Post of Brad DeLong’s Point by Point 1,672

  69. Leveling Up: Making the Transition from Poor Country to Rich Country 1,614

  70. Miles’s Linguistics Master’s Thesis: The Later Wittgenstein, Roman Jakobson and Charles Saunders Peirce 1,610

  71. Corporations are People, My Friend 1,587

  72. Rich, Poor and Middle-Class 1,577

  73. Henrik Jensen: Willem and the Negative Nominal Interest Rate 1,557

  74. Jonathan Meer and Jeremy West: Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment Dynamics 1,552

  75. Mark Thoma: Laughing at the Laffer Curve 1,550

  76. Avoiding Fiscal Armageddon 1,495

  77. Noah Smith: Buddha Was Wrong About Desire 1,485

  78. For Sussing Out Whether Debt Affects Future Growth, the Key is Carefully Taking into Account Past Growth 1,467

  79. Noah Smith: Go Ahead and Believe in God 1,465

  80. Expansionist India 1,458

  81. Thoughts on Monetary and Fiscal Policy in the Wake of the Great Recession: supplysideliberal.com’s First Month 1,415

  82. Helicopter Drops of Money Are Not the Answer 1,378

  83. Wallace Neutrality and Ricardian Neutrality 1,343

  84. Matt Rognlie on Misdiagnosis of Difficulties and the Fear of Looking Foolish as Barriers to Learning 1,343

  85. Bruce Greenwald: The Death of Manufacturing & the Global Deflation 1,198

  86. Miles Kimball and Brad DeLong Discuss Wallace Neutrality and Principles of Macroeconomics Textbooks 1,178

  87. 18 Misconceptions about Eliminating the Zero Lower Bound 1,176

  88. Noah Smith: Islam Needs To Separate Church and State 1,169

  89. The Flat Tax, The Head Tax and the Size of Government: A Tax Parable 1,146

  90. In Praise of Trolls 1,134

  91. John Stuart Mill’s Brief for Individuality 1,134

  92. Marvin Goodfriend on Electronic Money 1,129

  93. Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig and John Cochrane on Bank Capital Requirements 1,118

  94. Roger Farmer and Miles Kimball on the Value of Sovereign Wealth Funds for Economic Stabilization 1,101

  95. The Neomonetarist Perspective 1,094

  96. John Stuart Mill on Being Offended at Other People’s Opinions or Private Conduct 1,074

  97. Raj Chetty on Taxes and Redistribution 1,074

  98. The Wrong Side of Cobb-Douglas: Matt Rognlie’s Smackdown of Thomas Piketty Gains Traction 1,071

  99. Cathy O'Neil on Slow-Cooked Math 1,061

  100. The Arbitrage Pricing Theory as a Noise Trader Model 1,059

  101. Larry Summers: The Fed Looks Set to Make a Dangerous Mistake by Raising Rates this Year 1,051

  102. Cyborgian Immortality 1,046

  103. Health Economics 1,041

  104. Why My Retirement Savings Accounts are Currently 100% in the Stock Market 1,029

  105. Noah Smith: Why Do Americans Like Jews and Dislike Mormons? 1,029

  106. The Overton Window 1,014

  107. Robert Graboyes on Enabling Supply-Side Innovation in Health Care 999

  108. Michael Huemer’s Immigration Parable 994

  109. Cognitive Economics 977

  110. Greg Shill: Does the Fed Have the Legal Authority to Buy Equities? 957

  111. Will Mitt’s Mormonism Make Him a Supply-Side Liberal? 952

  112. Legal Notice Relating to Reproduction or Use of Content from supplysideliberal.com, Superseding All Earlier Legal Notices on supplysideliberal.com 952

  113. Facebook Convo on Women in Economics 949

  114. Preventing Recession-Fighting from Becoming a Political Football 947

  115. Future Heroes of Humanity and Heroes of Japan 944

  116. What to Do When the World Desperately Wants to Lend Us Money 934

  117. Miles’s April 9, 2006 Unitarian Universalist Sermon: “UU Visions” 929

  118. Evan Soltas: The Great Depression in Graphs 924

  119. Godless Religion 907

  120. Friends and Sparring Partners: The Skyline from My Corner of the Blogosphere 889

  121. A Year in the Life of a Supply-Side Liberal 884

  122. Jeff Smith: More on Getting into an Economics PhD Program 862

  123. The Euro and the Mark 860

  124. Mary O'Keeffe on Slow-Cooked Math 822

  125. What is a Partisan Nonpartisan Blog? 812

  126. John Stuart Mill’s Argument Against Political Correctness 812

  127. John Stuart Mill: The Paternalistic Temptation 810

  128. Bruce Bartlett on Careers in Economics and Related Fields 810

  129. John Stuart Mill: A Remedy for the One-Sidedness of the Human Mind 795

  130. How to Handle Worries about the Effect of Negative Interest Rates on Bank Profits with Two-Tiered Interest-on-Reserves Policies 790

  131. John Stuart Mill’s Vigorous Advocacy of Education Vouchers 780

  132. On the Future of the Economics Blogosphere 752

  133. A Supply-Side Liberal Joins the Pigou Club 750

  134. How the Idea that Intelligence is Genetic Distorted My Life–Even Though I Worked Hard Trying to Get Smarter Anyway 747

  135. From a Request for a Referee Report 745

  136. If a Central Bank Cuts All of Its Interest Rates, Including the Paper Currency Interest Rate, Negative Interest Rates are a Much Fiercer Animal 740

  137. 21 GIFs That Explain Mathematical Concepts | IFLScience (direct link to where my link post points) 733

  138. Principles of Macroeconomics Posts through September 3, 2012 728

  139. Laura Overdeck: Math for Pleasure 723

  140. What Do You Mean by “Supernatural”? 720

  141. Matt Strassler on Theoretical Physics 710

  142. Miles’s Best 7 “Save-the-World” Posts, as of July 7, 2012 708

  143. When Honest House Appraisers Tried to Save the World 708

  144. Higher Inflation Is Not the Answer 703

  145. Going Negative: The Virtual Fed Funds Rate Target 700

  146. Paul Romer on Charter Cities 693

  147. Marc F. Bellemare’s Story: “I’m Bad at Math” 693

  148. How Americans Spend Their Money and Time 688

  149. Responding to Joseph Stiglitz on Negative Interest Rates 685

  150. Glenn Ellison’s New Book: Hard Math for Elementary School 685

Most Important Aggregator Posts

Other Aggregator Posts

Monetary Policy Other Than Negative Interest Rates (most recent first)

  1. Pro Gauti Eggertsson

  2. Peter Conti-Brown on Marriner Eccles and the Refounding of the Fed

  3. Dominic Chu Interviews Miles Kimball for CNBC about the Need for the Fed to Reverse Course More Often

  4. On Making the Fed’s Governance Constitutional

  5. What Bond Risk Premia Mean for Monetary Policy

  6. Gauti Eggertsson and Miles Kimball: Quantitative Easing vs. Forward Guidance

  7. Luke Kawa: How Central Banks Gained More Control Over the World’s Major Currencies

  8. Why a Weaker Effect of Exchange Rates on Net Exports Doesn’t Weaken the Power of Monetary Policy

  9. Alex Rosenberg Interviews Miles Kimball on the Responsiveness of Monetary Policy to New Information

  10. Ben Bernanke on Trial

  11. Owen Nie: Maryland’s 1733 Monetary Helicopter Drop

  12. Owen Nie: Monetary Policy in Colonial New York, New Jersey and Delaware

  13. Owen Nie: Pre-Revolutionary Paper Money in Pennsylvania

  14. Owen Nie: Playing Card Currency in French Canada

  15. Paul Krugman Deconstructs Martin Feldstein's Critique of Quantitative Easing

  16. Jon Hilsenrath, Brian Blackstone and Lingling Wei on Monetary Policy: Low Rates and QE “Didn’t Cause the Hyperinflation or Obvious Asset Bubbles that Some Lawmakers and Critics Feared”

  17. Terry Pratchett: How High Interest Rates Hurt the Poor

  18. Jo Craven McGinty: Easy to Lose and Expensive to Produce: Is the Penny Worth It?

  19. Richard Serlin: In Theory (but Not in Practice) the Minnows Counter the Whale to Yield Wallace Neutrality

  20. Allan H. Meltzer: Don't Be Distracted by the Last 5+ Years--Massive Inflation is Coming

  21. Ezequiel Tortorelli: The Trouble with Argentina

  22. João Marcus Marinho Nunes on Japan’s Monetary Policy Experiment

  23. Paul Krugman: Things That Aren’t Bubbles

  24. 19th Century Populist and Monetary Dove Ignatius Donnelly

  25. Wallace Neutrality Roundup: QE May Work in Practice, But Can It Work in Theory?

  26. Miles and Mike Konczal vs. Peter Schiff on HuffPost Live: What is Inflation? How Does Monetary Policy Work? What Causes Financial Crises?

  27. Reaching for Yield: The Effects of Interest Rates on Risk-Taking

  28. Let’s Have an End to “End the Fed!”

  29. Ryan Avent on the Fed's Plans to Keep Rates Low Even After Recovery is Underway

  30. Pedro da Costa on Krugman’s Answer to My Question “Should the Fed Promise to Do the Wrong Thing in the Future to Have the Right Effect Now?”

  31. Michael Woodford Endorses Monetary Policy that Targets the Level of Nominal GDP

  32. The Euro and the Mark

  33. Should the Fed Promise to Do the Wrong Thing in the Future to Have the Right Effect Now?

  34. The Euro and the Mediterano

  35. Mike Konczal: What Constrains the Federal Reserve? An Interview with Joseph Gagnon

  36. The supplysideliberal Review of the FOMC Monetary Policy Statement: June 20th, 2012

  37. Is Monetary Policy Thinking in Thrall to Wallace Neutrality?

Miscellaneous Religion Posts (most recent first)

  1. The Consequences of Overly Strong Incentives: Wells Fargo, Baseball Baptisms, and Academic Advancement

  2. In Proportion to Our Capacity

  3. The K-12 Roots of Moral Relativism

  4. Christianity as Atheism Toward All Gods But One

  5. The Aluminum Rule

  6. Simple Obedience

  7. Christian Kimball: Anger [1], Marriage [2], and the Mormon Church [3]

  8. The Mormon Church Decides to Treat Gay Marriage as Rebellion on a Par with Polygamy

  9. Samantha Shelley: Why I'll Never Regret Being Mormon

  10. Debating the Morality of Immigration Restrictions

  11. Slavoj Zizek on the Psychological Insecurities of Terrorists

  12. Thomas Jefferson and Religious Freedom

  13. Rodney Stark’s Contrarian Assessment of the Crusades

  14. Clay Christensen: Religion as a Foundation of Democracy

  15. What If Jesus Was Really Resurrected? Musings of a Non-Supernaturalist

  16. Inside Mormonism: The Home Teachers Come Over

  17. The Teleotheistic Achievement of the New Testament

  18. John Erdevig and Kenji Yano: A Personal East/West Convergence and “The Nature God”

  19. Steven Landsburg: Physics or Faith?

  20. W. Keith Warner and Edward L. Kimball: Creative Stewardship

  21. John Erdevig on Head and Heart in “Saving” the Earth

  22. Robin Hanson: Dark Pain, Dark Joy

  23. Truth or Consequences

  24. Will Women Ever Get the Mormon Priesthood?

  25. Timothy Dolan: The Pope’s Case for Virtuous Capitalism

  26. The Wall Street Journal Sneers at Wiccan

  27. My Missionary Companion on the Reconstruction of Faith

  28. The Message of “Sal Tlay Ka Siti”

  29. Christian Kimball on the Fallibility of Mormon Leaders and on Gay Marriage

  30. Flexible Dogmatism: The Mormon Position on Infallibility

  31. How Like a God!

  32. Daniel Bergstresser on Religion, Past and Future

  33. How I Became Optimistic

  34. Self-Control as Inaction

  35. The Descent–and the Divine Calling–of the Modernists

  36. The Dark Side of the Human Spirit: Take 1

  37. What Do You Mean by “Supernatural”?

  38. Melvyn Bragg: Daoism

  39. What to Say to the God of Death

  40. Cyborgian Immortality

  41. Eliezer Yudkowsky: Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs

  42. Marcelo Gleiser: "Astrotheology: Do Gods Need to Be Supernatural?"

  43. The 7 Principles of Unitarian Universalism

  44. Michael Quinn, Mormon Historian

  45. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music”

  46. Rodney Stark on the Status of Women in Early Christianity

  47. Rodney Stark, the Rig Veda Hymn of Creation and the Cult of Bacchus

  48. Standing Firmly for Freedom of Speech within Mormonism

  49. A Book of Mormon Story Every Mormon Boy and Girl Knows

  50. The Matrix and Other Worlds: The Videos

  51. Will Mitt’s Mormonism Make Him a Supply-Side Liberal?

  52. Evolution: Faces of Our Ancestors

Inspirational Posts (most recent first)

  1. Proxima Centauri b

  2. The Equilibrium Paradox: Somebody Has to Do It

  3. Poverty of the Heart

  4. Jesus’ Upside-Down Kingdom

  5. Toward Freedom in Argentina and the Rest of the World

  6. The Storm and the Battle Ahead

  7. God in the Utility Function

  8. Stephen Strobbe’s 12 Life Lessons

  9. On Idealism Versus Cynicism

  10. Prioritization

  11. The Importance of the Next Generation: Thomas Jefferson Grokked It

  12. May the Best in the Human Spirit Vanquish the Worst in the Human Spirit

  13. So What If We Don’t Change at All … and Something Magical Just Happens?

  14. Learning to Do Deep Knee Bends Balanced on One Foot

  15. Lightbulbs & Corridors

  16. Michael Huemer on Moral Progress

  17. Lars Christensen: Beating the Iron Law of Public Choice

  18. Anat Admati’s Words of Encouragement for People Trying to Save the World from Another Devastating Financial Crisis

  19. Jessica Tozer: Boldly Going into a Future Where All Men and Women are Created Equal

  20. Tyler Cowen: The Egalitarian Tradition in Economics

  21. A Wish in the Wake of the Boston Marathon Bombings

  22. Economists’ Learned Helplessness

  23. As I Faced the Fiscal Cliff, I Failed to Find Comfort in the Words of Winston Churchill

  24. Persuasion

  25. How to Find Your Comparative Advantage

  26. Daniel Dennett’s Spirituality

  27. The Litany Against Fear

  28. Milan Kundera on the Contribution of Novels to the Liberal Imagination

  29. The True Story of How Economics Got Its Nickname "The Dismal Science"

John Locke Posts (in chronological order)

  1. John Locke: Revolutions are Always Motivated by Misrule as Well as Procedural Violations

  2. John Locke Looks for a Better Way than Believing in the Divine Right of Kings or Power to the Strong

  3. John Locke on Legitimate Political Power

  4. On Consent Beginning from a Free and Equal Condition

  5. John Locke on the Equality of Humans

  6. The Religious Dimension of the Lockean Law of Nature

  7. Vigilantes in the State of Nature

  8. John Locke on Punishment

  9. John Locke: The Right to Enforce the Law of Nature Does Not Depend on Any Social Contract

  10. Reparation and Deterrence

  11. John Locke: Theft as the Little Murder

  12. John Locke: Law Is Only Legitimate When It Is Founded on the Law of Nature

  13. John Locke: People Must Not Be Judges in Their Own Cases

  14. John Locke: Foreign Affairs Are Still in the State of Nature

  15. Human Beings as Social—and Trading—Animals

  16. John Locke: Lions and Wolves and Enemies, Oh My

Law, Regulation and Policy (most recent first)

  1. On the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

  2. Dan Benjamin, Ori Heffetz and Miles Kimball–Repairing Democracy: We Can’t All Get What We Want, But Can We Avoid Getting What Most of Us *Really* Don’t Want?

  3. Gwynn Guilford: The Epic Battle Between Clinton and Trump is a Modern Day Morality Play

  4. How the Free Market Works Its Magic

  5. Selfishness and the Fall of Rome

  6. In Praise of the 9th Amendment

  7. Against Anticompetitive Regulation

  8. With a Regulatory Regime That Freely Accommodates Housing Construction, Lower Interest Rates Drive Down Rents Instead of Driving Up the Price of Homes

  9. Inequality Is About the Poor, Not About the Rich

  10. Density is Destiny

  11. Ed Glaeser Argues Against Raising the Minimum Wage

  12. Cass Sunstein on the Rule of Law

  13. Matt Ridley: Patent Reform is More Important for Technological Progress than Government Funding of Basic Science

  14. Eric Schlosser on the Underground Economy

  15. Nigeria Struggling to Be Free

  16. Rick Perry’s New Look

  17. Next Year’s Momentous Supreme Court Decision: Reining in Public Sector Unions?

  18. Will Wilkinson: Belief and the Atomism Of Social Change

  19. Nonpartisan Redistricting

  20. The Economist--Destination Unknown: Large Increases in the Minimum Wage Could Have Severe Long-Term Effects

  21. Smoking Out the Essence of Minimum Wage Effects

  22. Finding Out the Truth about Infrastructure Projects

  23. Edward L. Kimball: Civil Disobedience

  24. Does the Fabric of Our Society Depend on a Lie?

  25. The New Republican Majority Should Keep Doug Elmendorf as Director of the Congressional Budget Office

  26. The Wonderful, Now Suppressed, Republican Study Committee Brief on Copyright Law (direct link)

  27. Uwe Reinhardt: Does Occupational Licensing Deserve Our Approval? A Review of Work by Morris Kleiner (direct link)

  28. “Keep the Riffraff Out!”

  29. Tyler Cowen: Regulations Hinder Development of Driverless Cars

  30. Tyler Cowen on How Much Easier It Is to Create Regulations Than to Get Rid of Them (direct link)

  31. Amanda Foreman: When Justice Drowns in Law (direct link)

  32. Italy’s Supply-Side Troubles

  33. Robert L. Woodson Sr. on Helping the Poor

  34. Drew Hinshaw: Nigeria Produces Half the Electricity of North Dakota-for 249 Times More People

  35. The Irresistability of Market Forces in 1890 New York City

  36. Jeff Smith: Why I Won’t Sign a Petition to Raise the Minimum Wage

  37. Josh Barro: We Need a New Supply Side Economics–Here Are 8 Things We Can Do

  38. John Cochrane: What Free-Market Medical Care Would Look Like

  39. An Experiment with Equality of Outcome: The Case of Jamestown

  40. Michael Huemer’s Libertarianism

  41. Luigi Zingales: Pro-Market vs. Pro-Business

  42. The Rise and Fall of Venice

  43. Franklin Roosevelt: The Hard Road to Democracy

  44. Franklin Roosevelt on the Second Industrial Revolution

  45. Adam Ozimek’s Regional Visa Proposal

  46. Edmund Burke’s Wisdom

  47. Steven Pinker on How the Free Market Makes Us Uneasy

  48. Neil Irwin: American Manufacturing is Coming Back. Manufacturing Jobs Aren’t

  49. God and Devil in the Marketplace

  50. Holman Jenkins on the Role of Organized Labor in Blocking Policy Initiatives in the Democratic Party

  51. Is Nuclear Energy Safe? Well, Which One?

  52. Copyright

  53. Adam Ozimek on Worker Voice

  54. Paul Romer on Charter Cities

Clay Christensen Posts (in chronological Order)

  1. Clay Christensen, Jeffrey Flier and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan on How to Make Health Care More Cost Effective

  2. Saint Clay

  3. Clay Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang on the Agenda for the Transformation of Health Care

  4. Clay Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang on How the History of Other Industries Gives Hope for Health Care

  5. Clay Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang on Intuitive Medicine vs. Precision Medicine

  6. Clay Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang on the Personal Computer Revolution

  7. Clay Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang on the Three Basic Types of Business Models

  8. Clay Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang: How to Divide and Conquer Our Health Care Problems

  9. In Defense of Clay Christensen: Even the ‘Nicest Man Ever to Lecture’ at Harvard Can’t Innovate without Upsetting a Few People

Math, Statistics, Writing and Teaching (most recent first)

  1. Calculus is Hard. Women Are More Likely to Think That Means They’re Not Smart Enough for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

  2. Examining the Statistics in “Math at Home Adds Up to Achievement in School” by Talia Berkowitz, Marjorie Schaeffer, Erin Maloney, Lori Peterson, Courtney Gregor, Susan Levine and Sian Beilock

  3. Brio in Blog Posts

  4. Effort vs. Innate Ability: What I Learned from Being in the Spelling Bee

  5. Nina Easton: Class Reimagined

  6. On Having a Thesis

  7. Jethra Spector: Using Miles and Noah’s Math Column in the Classroom

  8. My Advice to Qatar: Make Math Education a Research Grand Challenge

  9. Jessica Lahey: Teaching Math to People Who Think They Hate It

  10. Barbara Oakley: How We Should Be Teaching Math

  11. Fields Medal Winner Maryam Mirzakhani’s Slow-Cooked Math

  12. Kevin Remisoski on Teaching and Learning Math

  13. Marjorie Drysdale: Even When You Can Do Math, You May Not Love It

  14. Kate Owino: Kenyan Women Can Love Math Too

  15. Math Camp in a Barn

  16. The Problem of Teacher Sorting

  17. Michael Bloomberg: A University Cannot Be Great If Its Faculty Is Politically Homogenous

  18. Elizabeth Cleland: How I Get All My Students to be Good at Math (direct link)

  19. Mary O'Keeffe on Slow-Cooked Math

  20. Matt Waite: How I Faced My Fears and Learned to Be Good at Math

  21. Jing Liu: Show Kids that Solving Math Problems is Like Being a Detective

  22. Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice

  23. Eric Hanushek on the Importance of Improving Teacher Quality

  24. Jonah Berger: Going Viral

  25. Joshua Foer on Memory

  26. How Albert Einstein Became a Celebrity

  27. The Spell of Mathematics

  28. Steven Pinker on the Goal of Education

  29. Learning Through Deliberate Practice

Humanities, Science, History and Culture (most recent first)

  1. The Aquatic, Groupish, Warlike Ape

  2. Rodney Stark: Historians Ought to Count–But Often Don’t

  3. The University of Michigan Stands Up for Freedom of Speech

  4. Economic Fiction (The Good Kind)

  5. On Real and Fictional Economists

  6. Paul Finkelman: The Monster of Monticello

  7. Against Bullying

  8. The Racist Origins of the Idea of the “Dumb Jock”

  9. Schumpeter: Digital Disruption on the Farm | The Economist

  10. Sliding Doors: Hillary vs. Barack

  11. Colleges Should Stand Up For Freedom of Speech!

  12. On Freedom of Political Speech

  13. Matt Ridley on the Debate Between Economists and Ecologists

  14. Matt Ridley, Michelle Klein and Rob Boyd on Population Size and Technology: Why Some Islanders Build Better Crab Traps

  15. Jonathan Haidt–What the Tea Partiers Really Want: Karma

  16. Marriage 101

  17. Bret Stephens and Paul Krugman: What Should a Correction Look Like in the Digital Era?

  18. Tom Bowen’s Gift to Humanity: A Powerful Australian Technology

  19. Recasting “The Hunger Games” as a Parable about Immigration Policy

  20. David Byrne: The Power of Democratizing Making Music and Art

  21. Enlightened Self-Interest vs. the Anti-Immigration Mob

  22. Activate Comix: Biography of Ayn Rand

  23. Ragnarok

  24. The “Wait But Why” Blog on Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy

  25. Steven Pinker: Science Is Not the Enemy of the Humanities

  26. How to Introduce the Next Generation to Literature

  27. David Byrne on the Japanese Way of Art

  28. John Maynard Keynes as Art Snob

  29. David Byrne: De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

  30. David Byrne on Non-Monetary Motivations

  31. Calvin Coolidge on the Declaration of Independence

  32. Pounds of Carbon Dioxide Produced Per Million British Thermal Units of Energy When Different Fuels are Burned

  33. Population Distribution of the United States in Units of Canadas (direct link)

  34. The Rise of Tape Recording

  35. New Words for a New Year

  36. Steven Pinker on Scientific Etiquette

  37. Steven Pinker on How Taboos on What We Let Ourselves Think and Say Can Steer Us Wrong

  38. George Lakoff on Science

  39. Steven Pinker on Straw Men

  40. Tunku Varadarajan on the Backlash Against Winner-Take-All in Online Journalism

  41. Debora Spar on the Dilemma of Modern Women

  42. Freeman Dyson on the State of Philosophy

  43. Jonathan Rauch on Democracy, Capitalism and Liberal Science

  44. Miles’s Linguistics Master’s Thesis: The Later Wittgenstein, Roman Jakobson and Charles Saunders Peirce

  45. Gary Cornell on Andrew Wiles

Other Posts I Want to Highlight Not Listed Above Nor in Aggregator Posts (most recent first)

  1. My Dad

  2. John T. Harvey: Five Reasons You Should Blame The Economics Discipline For Today's Problems

  3. Q&A: Why is Fiscal Policy So Close to Being Neutral in Many Modern Macro Models?

  4. Why I Blog

  5. Sarah Sloat: What is Cognitive Economics? Understanding the World Through New Types of Data

  6. Q&A: Evidence that Financial Flows Determine the Overall Balance of Trade, Not Tariffs

  7. Crush Cuckoo CoCo Coddling

  8. Remittances in International Finance

  9. Thinking About New Financial Technologies--Izabella Kaminska and Gillian Tett on Excitement about Fintech Eclipses Basel III at Davos

  10. Brad DeLong on Managing China’s Peaceful Rise

  11. When Women Don’t Get Any Credit for Coauthoring with Men

  12. The Economist on the End of Cars as We Know Them

  13. Answering Adam Ozimek’s Skepticism about a US Sovereign Wealth Fund

  14. David Dreyer Lassen, Claus Thustrup Kreiner and Søren Leth-Petersen–Stimulus Policy: Why Not Let People Spend Their Own Money?

  15. Stephanie Shimko Interviews Miles Kimball about His Earliest and Latest Research

  16. Beacons

  17. Robbie Strom: Finding Growth in Nepal’s Rubble

  18. Robin Green: Don’t Recognize Racist Externalities with a Pigou Tax

  19. On the National Research Council’s Geoengineering Report

  20. Paul Krugman: Wall Street’s Revenge

  21. Noah Smith: These are the Econ Blogs You Need to Read

  22. David Warsh’s Take on New Classical Economics, Circa 1985

  23. Gary Cornell on Jonathan Gruber’s Indiscretion

  24. Jonathan Gruber in the Hot Seat

  25. Ricardo Hausman: The Tacit Knowledge Economy

  26. Richard V. Reeves, Isabel Sawhill and Kimberly Howard: The Parenting Gap

  27. Edward Glaeser, Joshua Gottlieb and Oren Ziv: Maximizing Happiness Does Not Maximize Welfare

  28. Why Economic Theory Predicts a Chronic Shortage of Nurses

  29. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Comes Out for a Straight 15% Equity Requirement

  30. American Wizards

  31. Shark Tank Markups

  32. The J Curve

  33. Charles Lane on Thomas Piketty and Henry George

  34. Jonathan Clements on Integrating Human Capital into Your Portfolio

  35. Another Quality Control Failure on the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page?

  36. Brad Delong: Mr. Piketty and the “Neoclassicists”: A Suggested Interpretation (direct link)

  37. Why I Read More Books than Economic Journal Articles

  38. Capital Budgeting: The Powerpoint File

  39. My Experiences with Gary Becker

  40. The Wisdom of Gary Becker - WSJ.com

  41. Jennifer Breheny Wallace--The Upside of Envy: Envy Can Lower "Life Satisfaction," but at Its Best, Can Provide Motivation and Inspiration

  42. Robert Flood and Miles Kimball on the Status of the Efficient Markets Theory

  43. Christina Romer: After A Financial Crisis, Economic Disaster Is Not Inevitable--Bonnie Kavoussi Reports

  44. Big Banks'€™ Shadow Dance by Simon Johnson

  45. Miles on #econchat, March 30, 2014

  46. Justin Wolfers, Matthew Adler and Ori Heffetz: Round Table on Happiness

  47. Will Econ Blogging Hurt Your Career?

  48. Justin Briggs and Alex Tabarrok: Fewer Guns, Fewer Suicides

  49. Ali Sina Onder and Marko Tervio: Citation Analysis Suggests that the Freshwater/Saltwater Divide is the Deepest Division in Economics

  50. The Volcker Rule

  51. Banks Now (2008) and Then (1929)

  52. Andrew Carnegie on Cost-Cutting

  53. The Red Banker on Supply-Side Liberalism

  54. Jeff Smith on Reinhart and Rogoff

  55. Evan Soltas: How Economics Can Save the Whales

  56. Bruce Bartlett on Careers in Economics and Related Fields

  57. Jeff Smith: More on Getting into an Economics PhD Program

  58. Cetier the First: Convertible Capital Hurdles

  59. John L. Davidson on the Decline of the Quality of Information Processing in Lending

  60. Miles on HuffPost Live: Barack Obama Talks about the Long Run, While We Wonder about His Pick for Fed Chief

  61. Miles on HuffPost Live: Getting Beyond Economics 101

  62. What Would Economic Growth Look Like If We Properly Valued the Web?

  63. John L. Davidson on Resolving the House Mystery: The Institutional Realities of House Construction

  64. Allison Schrager: The Economic Case for the US to Legalize All Drugs

  65. My Father’s Trash Can

  66. Pieria Debate on the UK Productivity Puzzle

  67. Instrumental Tools for Debt and Growth

  68. Ori Heffetz: Quantifying Happiness

  69. For Sussing Out Whether Debt Affects Future Growth, the Key is Carefully Taking into Account Past Growth

  70. We Don’t Talk Enough About the Story Outside the Model

  71. Canadians as the Voice of Reason on Financial Regulation

  72. My New Companion Blog: “Links I am Thinking About”

  73. Miles on HuffPost Live: Debt, Electronic Money, Federal Lines of Credit, and a Public Contribution Program

  74. Niklas Blanchard Defends Me Against the Wrath of Paul Krugman, Despite My Lack of Nuance

  75. Miles on HuffPost Live: The Wrong Debate and How to Change It

  76. A Bare Bones Model of Immigration

  77. How a US Sovereign Wealth Fund Can Alleviate a Scarcity of Safe Assets

  78. Libertarianism, a US Sovereign Wealth Fund, and I

  79. Miles’s First TV Interview: A US Sovereign Wealth Fund

  80. Q&A on the Financial Cycle

  81. The Marginalization of Economists at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

  82. Twitter Round Table on Consumption Taxation

  83. Bonnie Kavoussi's List on Huffington Post of "26 Economists You Should Be Following on Twitter" (direct link)

  84. Duncan Green: Lant Pritchett v. the Randomistas on the Nature of Evidence--Is a Wonkwar Brewing?

  85. Steven Johnson: We're Living the Dream, We Just Don't Realize It

  86. Noah Smith: The Well-Behaved Japanese Poor Call Into Question the Idea that Poverty Stems from Bad Behavior (direct link)

  87. Enrico Moretti on Rich Cities and Poor Cities

  88. Joshua Hausman: More Historical Evidence for What Federal Lines of Credit Would Do

  89. How Marginal Tax Rates Work

  90. The supplysideliberal Style Guide for Referring to Public Figures

  91. Bill Clinton on the National Debt

  92. International Finance: A Primer

  93. Q&A with Evan Soltas on the Fragility of Markets

  94. What Should the Historical Pattern of Slow Recoveries after Financial Crises Mean for Our Judgment of Barack Obama’s Economic Stewardship?

  95. About Paul Krugman: Having the Right Diagnosis Does Not Mean He Has the Right Cure

  96. My Mother

  97. Another Dimension of Health Care Reform: Discouraging Soft Drink Consumption

  98. Love’s Review

  99. My Proudest Moment as a Student in Ph.D. Classes

  100. How Americans Spend Their Money and Time

  101. The Magic of Etch-a-Sketch: A Supply-Side Liberal Fantasy

  102. Bill Dickens on Helping the Poor

  103. Evan Soltas on Medical Reform Federalism--in Canada

  104. Larry Summers on the Reality of Trying to Shrink Government

  105. Audio of Miles's Q&A with Ann Arbor Science & Skeptics

  106. Miles Kimball and Noah Smith on Job Creation

  107. Rich People Do Create Jobs: 10 Tweets

  108. Daniel Kuehn: Remembering Milton Friedman

  109. Isomorphismes: A Skew Economy & the Tacking Theory of Growth

  110. Milton Friedman's Thermostat: An Econometric Cautionary Tale

  111. Joshua Hausman on Historical Evidence for What Federal Lines of Credit Would Do

  112. My Ec 10 Teacher Mary O'Keeffe Reviews My Blog

  113. “It Isn’t Easy to Figure Out How the World Works” (Larry Summers, 1984)

  114. Things are Getting Better: 3 Videos

  115. Adam Smith as Patron Saint of Supply-Side Liberalism?

  116. Charles Murray: Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem

  117. Adam Ozimek: What “You Didn’t Build That” Tells Us About Immigration

  118. Miles’s First Radio Interview on Federal Lines of Credit

  119. What to Do About a House Price Boom

  120. Will the Health Insurance Mandate Lead People to Take Worse Care of Their Health?

  121. Bill Greider on Federal Lines of Credit: “A New Way to Recharge the Economy”

  122. Tyler Cowen Reminisces about Our Days in Graduate School

  123. Dissertation Topic 3: Public Savings Systems that Lift the No-Margin-Buying Constraint

  124. Miles’s Presentation at the Federal Reserve Board on May 14, 2012 (pptx)

  125. Dissertation Topic 2: Multisector Models

  126. Dissertation Topic 1: Federal Lines of Credit (FLOC’s)

  127. My Corner of the Blogosphere: As of July 1, 2012

  128. Mark Thoma on Rainy Day Funds for States

  129. @mileskimball on Twitter

  130. Diana Kimball on the Beginnings of supplysideliberal.com

  131. Leading States in the Fiscal Two-Step

  132. Henry George and the Carbon Tax: A Quick Response to Noah Smith

  133. Noah Smith: "Miles Kimball, the Supply-Side Liberal"

  134. National Rainy Day Accounts

  135. Clive Crook: "Supply-Side Liberals"

     

Note: Although the primary location of supplysideliberal.com is now on Squarespace, posts from 2016 and before still exist on Tumblr. The archive for these posts on Tumblr is here at http://supplysideliberal.tumblr.com/archive.

The Scope and Readership of supplysideliberal.com

I need a post like this first and foremost for myself--to see what I have done in general, and on particular topics. But I also hope it helps both those who want to look at a few top posts and those who want to do a deep dive into supplysideliberal.com. 

This post is especially valuable in showing the range of topics covered on supplysideliberal.com beyond negative interest rate policy, since here those posts are mostly covered indirectly by the one aggregator post “How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide.”  

I care a lot about current and future super-readers of this blog, who individually want to read many posts! Despite all of its flaws, Google Analytics is adequate for showing that there are indeed many super-readers. For example, taking the data in the graph below at face value, one can deduce using division and bounding that there are at least 73 readers with between 101 and 200 reading sessions each, and at least 193 readers with between 51 and 100 reading sessions each. At the other end of the spectrum, Google Analytics shows 364,219 distinct readers have been exposed to the website supplysideliberal.com itself exactly once.

It is interesting to see some of the demographic and geographical breakdown of readers. I wish I had more female readers, but I am happy with having readers of many different ages, though of course the young are more into blogs than the old:

I am especially pleased to have readers from around the world. Here are the top 50 cities shown by Google Analytics with the admittedly imperfect measure of sessions as follows giving some indication of relative weight:

         City              Sessions

  1. New York 29,052

  2. Ann Arbor 29,006

  3. Washington 18,304

  4. London 16,944

  5. Chicago 10,034

  6. Los Angeles 6,082

  7. Sydney 5,663

  8. Toronto 5,535

  9. San Francisco 5,004

  10. Boston 4,706

  11. Seattle 4,424

  12. Melbourne 4,231

  13. Singapore 4,140

  14. Cambridge, MA 4,077

  15. Arlington 3,962

  16. Philadelphia 3,871

  17. Houston 3,460

  18. Austin 3,176

  19. Paris 3,118

  20. Minneapolis 3,072

  21. San Diego 2,747

  22. Ottawa 2,494

  23. Hong Kong 2,408

  24. Madison 2,219

  25. Dublin 2,199

  26. Columbus 2,104

  27. Canberra 2,069

  28. Rome 2,063

  29. Denver 2,044

  30. Portland 2,026

  31. Montreal 1,874

  32. Atlanta 1,855

  33. Berlin 1,848

  34. New Delhi 1,793

  35. Calgary 1,790

  36. Brisbane 1,771

  37. Bethesda 1,769

  38. Cambridge, UK 1,738

  39. Copenhagen 1,732

  40. Berkeley 1,712

  41. Durham 1,700

  42. Bengaluru 1,696

  43. Wellington 1,585

  44. St. Louis 1,567

  45. San Jose 1,557

  46. Seoul 1,542

  47. Evanston 1,480

  48. Salt Lake City 1,451

  49. Dallas 1,450

  50. Mumbai 1,448

Explanation of the rankings:

The top 150 posts on supplysideliberal.com listed above are based on Google Analytics pageviews from June 3, 2012 through December 24, 2016. The number of pageviews is shown by each post. However, Google Analytics has been getting worse and worse in the job it is doing, both mechanically, and because more and more of the traffic has migrated to forms such as mobile access that Google Analytics is very bad at counting. Google Analytics counts 887,732 pageviews during this period but that is a big underestimate of the impact because of 

  1. that failure to count most readers on mobile devices

  2. the failure to count those reading on Tumblr itself

  3. not counting people reading the columns on Quartz

  4. the mysterious dropoff to no more than a trickle of Google Analytics pageviews counted after the end of July, 2016 with no corresponding dropoff in any other measure of activity at that time.

Furthermore, of those 887,732 pageviews that are counted by Google Analytics, 221,260 are to the homepage, and so cannot be categorized by post. 

(As I mentioned yesterday, in addition to greater confidence in the future of Squarespace than the future of Tumblr and increasingly greater functionality of Squarespace in creating and displaying posts compared to Tumblr, an important motivation for moving supplysideliberal.com to Squarespace is better analytics. For a long time now, I have felt I was flying blind with my blog given how little I could see through Google Analytics applied to a Tumblr blog.)

Nevertheless, the relative popularity of different posts for that limited subset of pageviews is informative. Indeed, with the passage of more time, the pageview ratings have come closer to my own judgment of the relative importance of posts as it becomes possible to see which posts have stood the test of time. And to be clear, if I think a post is more important, over time that adds to its pageviews because I link to it more often in subsequent posts and in tweets. 

I have to handle my Quartz columns separately because that pageview data is proprietary. My very most popular pieces have been Quartz columns, so I list them first. I have listed them all plus a few columns in other outlets, with the ones with no data (yet) listed at the bottom. (To avoid duplication, I have disqualified companion posts to Quartz columns from the top 40 blog post list, since they eventually get recombined with the Quartz columns when I repatriate the columns. For these columns, the ranking is by pageviews at a point where things have settled down. For later posts, that is standardized to pageviews during the first 30 days when Quartz has an exclusive.)  

Musings about the Top 10 Quartz columns:

The page view data I have for the Quartz columns is proprietary. But I can say that the top Quartz columns have dramatically more pageviews than are shown by Google Analytics for the top posts on my blog. So it is worth musing about the popularity of the top ten Quartz columns. 

  • Five of the top ten Quartz columns–1, 2, 4, 7, 8–are about education. Somewhat to my surprise, this has emerged as an important theme on my blog, as Noah Smith identified when writing about this blog.

  • Four of the top ten columns are coauthored: 1 and 4 with Noah Smith, 8 with Anonymous and 9 with Yichuan Wang. It helps to have a top-notch coauthor.

  • Two of the top ten–3 and 6–are relatively recent columns with a strong religious or moral tone to them. I am glad to see that my efforts to articulate religious and moral themes find an audience as well as what I have to say about economics. I actually consider 5 to be in this category as well.

  • One of the top ten–9–is about Reinhart and Rogoff. Levels of interest for understanding Reinhart and Rogoff’s mistake was extraordinary.

  • One thing I pay attention to is how great a reach my most popular column on negative interest rates is. I am pleased to have one at 10.

  • Two of the top ten–3 and 5–touch on national security.

John Locke: The Right to Enforce the Law of Nature Does Not Depend on Any Social Contract

It is often said that democratic governments rule by the consent of the governed. But this is wrong in two ways. First, many individuals do not consent to what the government is doing. Secondly, when it comes to basic things such as punishing murderers, there is no need for consent on the part of the offender. On this second point, in section 9 of his 2d Treatise on Government: “On Civil Government,” John Locke writes:

I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some men: but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me, by what right any prince or state can put to death, or punish an alien, for any crime he commits in their country. It is certain their laws, by virtue of any sanction they receive from the promulgated will of the legislative, reach not a stranger: they speak not to him, nor, if they did, is he bound to hearken to them. The legislative authority, by which they are in force over the subjects of that commonwealth, hath no power over him. Those who have the supreme power of making laws in England, France or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the world, men without authority: and therefore, if by the law of nature every man hath not a power to punish offences against it, as he soberly judges the case to require, I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of another country; since, in reference to him, they can have no more power than what every man naturally may have over another.

In the prosecution of moral laws so basic (such as the prohibition of murder) that they can be legitimately enforced on those who have not consented to be subject to those laws, it may be reasonable to use a majority vote to determine the particulars of how that law will be enforced. But if a government has no legitimate right to enforce a law in the first place, no vote short of unanimity can make it legitimate to enforce that law. 

Libertarianism and the quite prevalent statism in the world both take relatively extreme positions on what a government can legitimately do. It is logically possible to take an intermediate position: that there are many actions a government has no right to take no matter what supermajority (short of unanimity) is in favor—in particular, for the US, things the government has no right to do even if a constitutional amendment says it can—but that the set of actions permitted to a democratic government are broader than those sanctioned by Libertarian ideas. To me, the principle that there are at least some things no government has the right to do no matter what supermajority (short of unanimity) says it does is the most important principle. The boundary between legitimate and illegitimate actions of government can then be a matter of debate. But it is horrifying to say that a government can legitimately do anything that a large supermajority (short of unanimity) votes for. As Edmund Burke said:

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Calculus is Hard. Women Are More Likely to Think That Means They’re Not Smart Enough for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

Believing that you can make it is an important ingredient in success. For women, that confidence is harder to come by when they are pursuing science, technology, engineering or math. A study by the Mathematical Association of America found that of those in Calculus I who initially intended to go on in science, technology, engineering or math, 

... if we restrict our analysis to just those who are earning an A or B in the course ...  18 percent of the women, but only 4 percent of the men, believed they did not understand calculus well enough to continue.

I’ll bet the phenomenon of women who are objectively doing equally well as men having much less confidence than men extends to many other moments in education in technical subjects--including training in economics. Professors and other instructors can do a lot of good by bolstering the confidence of female students who are in fact doing well in a class or in independent research. 

In my own experience, I have sometimes been quite surprised at how much my expressions of confidence in a female student in economics have meant to that student--as if that student were in a parched desert for such expressions of confidence, despite what seemed to me excellent skills. 

In addition to discouragement, low confidence in oneself also causes other people to underestimate one’s skills. It is quite difficulty to know how skilled someone is, but typically quite easy to tell how skilled they think themselves to be. So people use a job candidate’s opinion of herself or himself as a shortcut for judging her or his skills. 

For those who need to come across as more confident I highly recommend the weekend personal growth workshops conducted by Landmark Education Corporation, beginning with the Landmark Forum. In my view, almost everyone entering the dissertation writing and then job-hunting phases of getting a PhD in economics should do the Landmark Forum because of how much it will help the psychology of being able to focus on dissertation research and then the psychology of self-presentation for getting a job. I am sure that the same advice would apply to students in many other fields, at many stages of education. 

Switching to Squarespace

Today I am switching supplysideliberal.com from Tumblr to Squarespace. The change should be mostly invisible to readers except for cosmetic differences. In particular, links to older posts should mostly still work. 

My main reasons for the shift are: 

  1. Squarespace should work better on mobile devices.
  2. Squarespace seems a more solid company for the future than Tumblr.
  3. I will be able to get better analytics on Squarespace.
  4. Squarespace has better functionality.
  5. Moving to Squarespace will restore the ability of readers to post comments—a capability that was broken using Disqus with Tumblr about 8 months ago. 

Thanks to my daughter Diana for helping enormously with the migration.

Vincent Del Giudice and Wei Lu: America’s Best and Brightest Are Headed to Boulder

This chart says it: the cities marked in red are the “metropolitan areas with the greatest loss of advanced-degree holders, white-collar jobs and earnings generated by employment in computer, engineering and science occupations” while the cities marked in blue are those with the greatest gain. The Boulder Colorado metropolitan area, where I live (see “Miles Moves to the University of Colorado Boulder”) is number one in brain-gain in this chart. Maybe you, too, should join this migration to the Boulder area :)