Author: Tyler Cowen

– Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to…

Just an FYI that my Twitter has been hacked.  I am in touch with the company, hope to have it back to normal soon! Update: Twitter now fixed!

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided small businesses with roughly $800 billion dollars in uncollateralized, low-interest loans during the pandemic, almost all of which will be forgiven. With 93 percent…

From a reader: Re your observation that most people don’t know what their strengths are and your interest in finding and fostering talent: I haven’t done the two things I’ve…

1. The effect of Protestant missionaries in China. 2. Alas Keri Hulme has passed away.  And a Kiwi tribute. 3. Norms for surf break governance. 4. The infrastructure cost for…

As it happens, Balzac is Houellebecq’s hero. Anéantir not only demonstrates comparable ambition to Balzac; it is also proof of Houellebecq’s tireless work. In his various books he has accumulated…

We develop experimental evidence on cooperation and response to sanctions by running prisoner’s dilemma and third party punishment games on three different pools of subjects; students, ordinary criminals and Camorristi…

I will be doing a Conversation with him.  He is Ireland’s greatest historian, here is part of his Wikipedia entry: He has written early biographies of Charles Stewart Parnell and…

I was two days ago at Hereticon, and wondering which views actually should be considered heretical.  It seems there are some distinct categories, for instance here are a few categories…

The Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University will be hosting another Summer Institute on the History of Economics this summer from June 20-29, 2022. The program…

TikTok stars are dancing their way to the bank. Some are making more than America’s top chief executives. Charli D’Amelio, who started posting videos of herself dancing on TikTok in…

That question is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  The wealthy can fly to the sun, meet outdoors, test regularly, and find many other workarounds.  Poorer individuals tend to…

From the excellent John List, the subtitle is How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale.

I’ll break this into parts, and put my answer after each query: 1) I’m a remote worker. Why should I live in a city? Heck, why should I live in…

The gender-equality paradox refers to the puzzling finding that societies with more gender equality demonstrate larger gender differences across a range of phenomena, most notably in the proportion of women who pursue…

She is one of the world’s leading classical guitarists.  Here is the transcript and audio, here is part of the CWT summary: She joined Tyler to discuss that transition from…

Stuart asks: 1) what do you think are good long-term investments in your health? I know you’re a teetotaler and non-smoker, what about exercise? where do returns start not making…

Sean requests: Say you were trying to teach yourself, to a 99th percentile *layperson’s* level, how, say, an electric car actually worked. How would you go about doing that, precisely?…

Executive teams in U.S. firms are becoming increasingly partisan, leading to a political polarization of corporate America. We establish this new fact using political affiliations from voter registration records for…

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: Columbia University, with its sizable endowment, is a relatively well-capitalized entity. Still, it’s appropriate to ask what…

Compared with the previous year, the survey showed a drop in the number of people who wanted to work and study abroad, work with foreigners in Japan and learn foreign…

This is from 2018, I hadn’t know it was put on-line this last summer.  The title is about threats to democracy, but much of the actual 24-minute talk is about…

Here is the interview.  Here is one excerpt: N.S.: So how would you generally describe the zeitgeist of the moment, if you had to give a simple summary? What do…

The world number one player was questioned for over seven hours about his paperwork and who had approved medical exemption permission for his arrival in Australia. Here is the link. …

Now readers may wonder, has the government really hit the MMT highway? Am I mischaracterizing Kelton’s views? Is our current mess really an indictment of MMT? Well, here is an article/interview…

Using a recent sample of super-elite chess games, the present paper shows that males are substantially quicker to quit when dominated by a female than by a male. In contrast,…

In New York, racial minorities are automatically eligible for scarce COVID-19 therapeutics, regardless of age or underlying conditions. In Utah, “Latinx ethnicity” counts for more points than “congestive heart failure” in a…

At this point, there are basically two companies. Almost all dApps use either Infura or Alchemy in order to interact with the blockchain. In fact, even when you connect a wallet like MetaMask to…

First-dose vaccinations quadruple in Quebec ahead of restrictions at liquor and cannabis stores Maybe that works! Via Paul G.

That is a physiological or biological concept, or it may appear in the other sciences.  It rarely plays a direct role in economics, though I think it is important for…

From Sean: From his NYT obit: “But Mr. Karajan was always more than a mere conductor: he was a man of enormous energy and careerist determination, and he managed at…

The only trades which it seems possible for a joint stock company to carry on successfully, without an exclusive privilege, are those, of which all the operations are capable of…

Unemployment is at 3.9%, and can’t get much better.  In the new report just 199,000 jobs were added.  Job growth is slowing and that is a pre-omicron phenomenon.  Labor force…

From Dinwar, in the comments: As for what it means to think like a geologist….it’s complicated. There definitely is a particular way of thinking unique to geologists. I’m convinced that…

That is the question I ask in my latest Bloomberg column, as Princeton won’t let you leave Mercer County and Yale won’t let you go into town.  Here is the…

According to a person close to the tournament with direct knowledge of the sequence of events, Djokovic followed every step of the country’s visa process properly. Moreover, the person said,…

A reader request: I also recently heard you mention on the Clearer Thinking Podcast that Geology is a field you are not as naturally curious about…would love a blog post…

As a Marginal Revolution reader, I wanted an Android App. Then one day I realized, wait a second, I’m a programmer — why not just make one myself? I couldn’t think of…

From my latest Bloomberg column: The more dramatic developments have come from China itself. China did effectively wield state power to build infrastructure, manage its cities and boost economic growth.…

To improve our agencies’ performance, we need to think about restructuring the federal bureaucracy itself. I propose we do so by creating two positions within the executive branch that operate…

Brainstorming a wedding hashtag? Good luck finding one that hasn’t #beendone. More than a decade of wedding hashtags have flooded social-media sites to help couples curate guests’ photos on their special…

What would Marshall McLuhan say?: Staring at your non-fungible tokens on a smartphone or laptop screen is fine and all, but why not remind everyone who visits your home of…

Fergus asks: Having enjoyed your posts on how to read canonical Western literature and how to get started with opera, I’d like the same thing but for film, and perhaps for architecture. Today…

“What’s the best example of an experiment or trial that could be scientifically useful and informative but which can’t be done for legal, ethical or logistical reasons?” Comments are open…

Andrew Alexander asks: Why are meetings so bad? There’s a standard set of criticisms of meetings (e.g., ambiguous purposes, wasted time, poor presentation and moderation skills by the leader), most…

Of all the early McCartney albums, this one has been the easiest to dislike.  Band on the Run was recognized as high quality and classy from the beginning, whereas McCartney…

So what would you like to hear about over the course of the next year? I can promise at least that requests will not be counterproductive.

Russia’s sabre-rattling in Ukraine has reignited the debate in Finland as to whether the Nordic country should join Nato, defying demands from Moscow that seek to limit expansion of the…

Here it is, one of the better written pieces of this (or last) year.  It is mostly about China, manufacturing, and economic policy, but here is the part I will…

1. Galbraith on Krugman and price controls, channeled through Kelton.  Guess which side I agree with?  And PK follow-up. 2. It is appropriable cereal gains that lead to the state.…