Fairly Recently: Must- and Should-Reads, and Writings... (May 28, 2019)
Hoisted from the Archives: James Buchanan (1997): Has Economics Lost Its Way?
Comment of the Day: Charles Steindel: "One interesting thing in this material was Buchanan's groaning about how he was discriminated against in Navy Officer training relative to Yankee Ivy Leaguers. Herman Wouk's recent passing stirred me to reflect on this process. As was mildly fictionalized in the Caine Mutiny, Work was outstripped in his training class by none other than Jim Tobin. Yes, both Wouk and Tobin were northern 'Ivy Leaguers' (Wouk Columbia and Tobin Harvard). But the Jew from New York and the Irish kid from Illinois would surely not have seen themselves as more on the 'inside' than Buchanan...
Comment of the Day: Cosma Shalizi: "Young... give[s] a table of average maximum 'leverages', which is something like 0.25 for the two most influential observations. This matters, because regression asymptotics are... about... leverage goes to zero.... If two observations (or clusters) are driving 1/4 of the estimate, asymptotics are irrelevant...
Weekend Reading: Robert Heilbroner (1996): The Embarrassment of Economics
(23013): Mourning the Death of James Buchanan: "Daniel Kuehn gets it right, I think, on the significance of the career of the late Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan: 'He got a lot right, with public choice and constitutional economics. He also got a lot quite wrong, particularly his take on the political economy of the Keynesian revolution. But he certainly was a talented and productive economist well deserving of his Nobel prize.' I would go somewhat further: he got a lot right that desperately needed to be gotten right and that nobody else would have gotten right in his absence. He made a difference in economics at more than the margin, which is something you can say of very few economists... | Six Faces of Right-Wing Chain-Forging Economist James Buchanan...
Abigail Adams (1776): Letter to John Adams: "What sort of Defence Virginia can make against our common Enemy?... I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for Liberty cannot be Eaquelly Strong in the Breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow Creatures of theirs. Of this I am certain that it is not founded upon that generous and christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us...
James Buchanan (1997): Has Economics Lost Its Way? https://delong.typepad.com/buch_econlostway.pdf
Dierdre McCloskey: Review of Buchanan, "Better than Plowing"
Wikipedia: Étienne Maurice Gérard: "1er Comte Gérard (4 April 1773–17 April 1852) was a French general, statesman and Marshal of France. He served under a succession of French governments including the ancien regime monarchy, the Revolutionary governments, the Restorations, the July Monarchy, the First and Second Republics, and the First Empire (and arguably the Second), becoming Prime Minister briefly in 1834...
Wikipedia: List of American and British defectors in the Korean War
Rather than saying, with Stigler, that industrial policy is too dangerous because it is too vulnerable to rent-seeking, more economists should be writing papers like this: Reda Cherif and Fuad Hasanov: The Return of the Policy That Shall Not Be Named: Principles of Industrial Policy: "Industrial policy is tainted with bad reputation among policymakers and academics and is often viewed as the road to perdition for developing economies. Yet the success of the Asian Miracles with industrial policy stands as an uncomfortable story that many ignore or claim it cannot be replicated. Using a theory and empirical evidence, we argue that one can learn more from miracles than failures. We suggest three key principles behind their success: (i) the support of domestic producers in sophisticated industries, beyond the initial comparative advantage; (ii) export orientation; and (iii) the pursuit of fierce competition with strict accountability...
That your grandfather Governor John Buchanan campaigned against federal voting rights acts, raised the poll tax, and established pensions for Confederate veterans—that all that goes unmentioned in the context of "I have shared in the emotional damage imposed by discrimination...", "From that day forward I have shared in the emotional damage imposed by discrimination..." and "'fairness' assumed for me a central normative position..." demonstrates either an absolutely stunning lack of self-awareness or a conscious intellectual judo move to distract attention from the racial politics of the white southern establishment: James Buchanan (2009): Karen Ilse Horn, ed, "Roads to Wisdom: Conversations with Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics" https://delong.typepad.com/document.pdf: "What did the Navy teach you?... I experienced overt discrimination for being a non-Easterner, a nonestablishmentarian. In the whole group of 600 boys, there were only about twenty who were graduates of Yale, Harvard, Princeton—all Ivy League. By the end of this first boot camp period, they had to select midshipman officers. Out of the 20 boys from the establishment universities, 12 or 13 were picked, against a background of a total of 600. It was overtly discriminatory towards those of us who were not members of the establishment... | James Buchanan (2009): Better than Plowing: "From that day forward I have shared in the emotional damage imposed by discrimination, in any form, and 'fairness' assumed for me a central normative position decades before I came to discuss principles of justice professionally and philosophically...
Let us be clear: any of the members of the FOMC who marked up their estimate of 2019 growth because of the strong first quarter is an under briefed moron, who does not belong on any forecasting or policy body: Tim Duy: Fed Sticking With "Patient" Policy Stance | Tim Duy's Fed Watch: "The minutes of the April/May FOMC meeting revealed that participants were generally comfortable maintaining the 'patient' policy stance initiated in January. While some policymakers recognized that special factors boosted the first quarter growth numbers, the mood was fairly optimistic: 'For this year as a whole, a number of participants mentioned that they had marked up their projections for real GDP growth, reflecting, in part, the strong first-quarter reading. Participants cited continuing strength in labor market conditions, improvements in consumer confidence and in financial conditions, or diminished downside risks both domestically and abroad, as factors likely to support solid growth over the remainder of the year...
Daniel Seligson and Anne McCants: Economic Performance Through Time: A Dynamical Theory: "The central problems of Development Economics are the explanation of the gross disparities in the global distribution, D, of economic performance, E , and its persistence, P . Douglass North argued, epigrammatically, that institutions, I, are the rules of the game, meaning that I determines or at least constrains E. This promised to explain D. 65,000 citations later, the central problems remain unsolved. North’s institutions, IN, are informal, slowly changing cultural norms as well as roads, guilds, and formal legislation that may change overnight. This definition, mixing the static and the dynamic, is unsuited for use in a necessarily time-dependent theory of developing economies. We offer here a suitably precise definition of I, a dynamical theory of economic development, a new measure of the economy, an explanation of P, a bivariate model that explains half of D, and a critical reconsideration of North’s epigram...
Douglas MacArthur (March 23, 1951): Ceasefire Communique: "Of even greater significance than our tactical successes has been the clear revelation that this new enemy, Red China, of such exaggerated and vaunted military power, lacks the industrial capability to provide adequately many critical items necessary to the conduct of modern war.... Formerly his great numerical potential might well have filled this gap but with the development of existing methods of mass destruction numbers alone do not offset the vulnerability inherent in such deficiencies.... These military weaknesses have been clearly and definitely revealed since Red China entered upon its undeclared war in Korea. Even under the inhibitions which now restrict the activity of the United Nations forces and the corresponding military advantages which accrue to Red China, it has been shown its complete inability to accomplish by force of arms the conquest of Korea. The enemy, therefore must by now be painfully aware that a decision of the United Nations to depart from its tolerant effort to contain the war to the area of Korea, through an expansion of our military operations to its coastal areas and interior bases, would doom Red China to the risk of imminent military collapse. These basic facts being established, there should be no insuperable difficulty in arriving at decisions on the Korean problem...
George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman (1984): "The Day We Didn't Go to War" Revisited: "Eisenhower's position is... characteristically elusive.... Eisenhower and Dulles agreed that the United States should go in only as part of a genuinely collective effort and that United States ground forces must not become bogged down in Asia.... The congressmen... insisted that the United States must not go to war for colonialism.... They made collective intervention dependent on British support and French concessions, each of which would be difficult to obtain.... Churchill... told Radford on April 26 that since the British people had let India go they could not be expected to give their lives to hold Indochina for France.... The British would not be drawn into what they feared would be 'Radford's war against China'...
Peng Dehaui (February 24, 1952): To the Zhou Enlai-Chaired Central Military Commission: "You have this and that problem. You should go to the front and see with your own eyes what food and clothing the soldiers have! Not to speak of the casualties! For what are they giving their lives? We have no aircraft. We have only a few guns. Transports are not protected. More and more soldiers are dying of starvation. Can't you overcome some of your difficulties?...
Valle de Bravo: Pueblo Magico
Wikipedia: Stephanie Jones-Rogers
Wikipedia: David W. Blight
2019 Bay Area Book Festival: The Business of Brutality: Slavery and the Foundations of Capitalism
Hoisted from the Archive: Joseph Schumpeter on "Liquidationism"s
Olivier Blanchard and Takeshi Tashiro: Fiscal Policy Options for Japan
That your grandfather Governor John Buchanan campaigned against federal voting rights acts, raised the poll tax, and established pensions for Confederate veterans—that all that goes unmentioned in the context of "I have shared in the emotional damage imposed by discrimination...
Wikipedia: James M. Buchanan: "Buchanan completed his M.S. at the University of Tennessee in 1941. He served in the United States Navy on the staff of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz in Honolulu during the war years, when he met Anne Bakke, whom he married on October 5, 1945. Anne, of Norwegian descent...
Tennessee Encyclopedia: John Price Buchanan: "The war ruined his family's land, and Buchanan moved to Rutherford County, where he established a livestock farm on Manchester Pike. Buchanan's political life was entwined with the rise of the Farmers' Alliance...
Wikipedia: John P. Buchanan: "He campaigned against the federal Lodge Bill, which would have provided protections for voting rights for blacks in the South.... [He] enacted a measure providing pensions for Confederate veterans. Buchanan strengthened the state's poll tax, and enacted several voting restrictions aimed at suppressing the African-American vote...
Wikipedia: "The Lodge Bill... of 1890 was a bill drafted by Representative Henry Cabot Lodge (R) of Massachusetts, and sponsored in the Senate by George Frisbie Hoar; it was endorsed by President Benjamin Harrison. The bill would have authorized the federal government to ensure that elections were fair. In particular, it would have allowed federal circuit courts (after being petitioned by a small number of citizens from any precinct) to appoint federal supervisors of congressional elections...
James M. Buchanan: Economics from the Outside in: "Better Than Plowing" and Beyond https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1585446033
James M. Buchanan (1997): Has Economics Lost Its Way?: Reflections on the Economic Enterprise at Century's End
HET: James M. Buchanan
Wikipedia: Gettysburg Address
Wikipedia: Treaty of London (1839)
Wikipedia: Belgian Revolution
Britannica.com: Korean War: The Final Push: "Supervision of the armistice actions fell to a Military Armistice Commission (10 officers representing the belligerents), a Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, and Czechoslovakia), and a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission (the same four states, plus India as the custodian of the POWs).... 75,823 communist soldiers and civilians (all but 5,640 of them Koreans) returned to their most-favoured regime, and 7,862 ROK soldiers, 3,597 U.S. servicemen, and 1,377 persons of other nationalities (including some civilians) returned to UNC control.... The handling of those who refused repatriation turned into a nightmare, as agents among the communist POWs and interrogators made life miserable for the Indians. By the time the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission gave up the screening process in February 1954, only 628 Chinese and Koreans had changed their minds and gone north, and 21,839 had returned to UNC control. Most of the nonrepatriates were eventually settled in South Korea and Taiwan...
Wikipedia: President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur
Wikipedia: Chiang Kai-shek: "Chiang Kai-shek (/ˈtʃæŋ kaɪˈʃɛk, dʒiˈɑːŋ/;[2] 31 October 1887–5 April 1975), also known as Generalissimo Chiang or Chiang Chungcheng and romanized as Chiang Chieh-shih or Jiang Jieshi...
P. K. Rose: Two Strategic Intelligence Mistakes in Korea, 1950: "Perceptions and Reality...
Britannica.com: James A. van Fleet
Britannica.com: Korean War: To the Negotiating Table
#noted #weblogs
