I was talking to a keen cyclist a few days ago who told me that he never fixes so much as a puncture on his gleaming pride and joy. “I’d rather leave it to a professional who knows what they’re doing than risk stuffing it up myself,” he told me. I was bemused at the […]
Yesterday’s post on dress codes and signalling drew a comment pointing to Tyler Cowen’s reference to ‘counter-signalling’. TC refers to Steve Jobs dressing down as a counter-signal because he doesn’t need to dress up to show his seniority and importance. It’s a bit of a misleading term because a counter-signal isn’t really a signal at […]
I have always wondered why corporate offices require a dress code for employees, even when the employees never see the outside world. Tyler Cowen blogs about corporate dress and makes a couple of interesting points, but it doesn’t really address my particular curiosity. He’s inspired by a reader who points out not many people are […]
I generally enjoy The Economist’s blog, but I think they’ve taken their free-market philosophy a little far with their post on the “de facto monopoly of the American Medical Association in the distribution of licences to practice medicine.” Their claim is that the AMA extracts large rents from their monopoly and unfairly prevents other from […]
Over at Cato Unbound the health care debate rages on. David Cutler and Dana Goldman reply to Robin Hanson’s original article by almost agreeing with him. They both begin by acknowledging that much of our current health care spending is wasted. The gist of their criticism is that when you reduce health care consumption then […]
It looks like Matt’s not the only brilliant economist campaigning for Pigovian taxation of carbon emissions. Now Greg Mankiw’s weighed in on the side of taxation. To those who claim a carbon tax is regressive because poor people are forced to live in the suburbs and drive more than the wealthy, Mankiw says Gilbert Metcalf, […]