Category: Books

The Street Porter and the Philosopher

by  Tyler Cowen in

That’s the new book edited by David Levy and Sandra Peart; the subtitle is Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism, an issue which arises frequently on this blog.  The book offers an excellent dialogue between Buchanan and Warren Samuels, the best essay on Adam Smith’s theory of usury, Deirdre McCloskey on "Sacred Economics," my essay on "Is a Novel a Model?", Crampton and Farrant reinterpreting the socialist calculation debate, and the Rawls-Buchanan correspondence, among other treats.  If you live in the world of "interesting economics," this is definitely a book to pick up.

By the way, Larry Mason wrote a novel which he claims is a model; I haven’t had time to read it yet.  Plus the new novel by Russ Roberts, which illustrates economic concepts, seems to be out now.

What I Haven’t Been Reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Red State Blue State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do, by the consistently impressive Andrew Gelman.

2. Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic; so many smart, virile young men, all writing about destruction.

3. Prosperity Unbound: Building Property Markets with Trust, by Elena Panaritis.  An update on the debates on Hernando de Soto and the associated land and property issues.

4. The Mirrored Heavens, by David J. Williams.  A science fiction story for people who take the idea of space elevators for granted.

5. The Household: Informal Order Around the Hearth, by the noted law and economics scholar Robert C. Ellickson.

If I’m not reading them, it’s because I’ve been spending my time with Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Norris’s McTeague, both for my Liberty Fund conference in Cleveland.

Are books overwritten?

by  Tyler Cowen in

…having said that, spending a lot of time on the internet, as I have
since 2002, has rubbed my nose in something that hadn’t really bothered
me before then: namely just how overwritten so many books and magazine
articles are. Seymour Hersh? He’s great. You could also cut every one
of his pieces by at least 50% and lose exactly nothing. And I’m not
picking on Hersh. At a guess, I’d say that two-thirds of the magazine
pieces I read could be sliced by nearly a third or more without losing
much. That’s true of a lot of books too.

Here is the full piece, by Kevin Drum.  My view is that many readers want overwritten books to tranquillize themselves, just as they enjoy dull, soothing voices on the radio.

Readers, do you agree that most books are overwritten?  Please write your opinion of Kevin Drum’s point in the comments and feel free to refer to specific books.  My favorite rock star, the extraordinary Hillel, would like to again create a song from your opinions.  I will link to the song once it is ready.  Hillel assures me that the quality of his song will reflect the quality of your input.  Be poetic!  Think music!  Overwrite, if you wish!

Who first predicted the mortgage crisis?

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Mortgager and Mortgagee differ the one from the other not more in length of purse, than the Jester and Jestee do in that of memory.  But in this the comparison between runs, as the scholiasts call it, upon all four; which, by the bye, is upon one or two legs more than some of the best of Homer’s can pretend to; — namely, That the one raises a sum and the other a laugh at your expense, and think no more about it.  Interest, however, still runs on in both cases; — the periodical or accidental payments of it just serving to keep the memory of the affair alive; till, at length, in some evil hour, — pop comes the creditor upon each, and by demanding principal upon the spot, together with full interest to the very day, makes them both feel the full extent of their obligations.

That is Laurence Sterne, from Tristram Shandy, chapter XII.

Reading the OED

by  Tyler Cowen in

atechny (n.) A lack of skill; a lack of knowledge of art.

Reading through the dictionary, I am struck again and again by the fact that many words that describe common things are obscure, while many words that describe obscure things are widely known.  For example, everyone knows that word dinosaur, even though no one has ever seen or met one.  Yet, even though we are faced each and every day with artistic ignorance and lack of skill, very few of us know the word atechny.

That’s from Ammon Shea’s superb Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. 

Astorgy is the lack of natural affection when it would normally be present.

Accismus is an insincere refusal of a thing that is desired.

Agathokakological means made up of both good and evil.

And those are just some of the A words.

What I’ve Been Reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of the Byrds’ Gene Clark, by John Einarson.  I loved this book though partly for idiosyncratic reasons.  Failed creative wonders make for memorable stories plus of course I saw Clark perform many times.  There are many ways to kill yourself and this book outlines one of them.

2. Alvin Rabushka, Taxation in Colonial America.  I’m not actually reading it, it’s just sitting here, intimidating me with its length.  It looks very good but you’re reading a blogger long fixated upon Gene Clark.

3. Irish Food & Cooking, by Biddy White Lennon [a great name to write a book like this, no?] and Georgina Campbell.  Don’t laugh, this book is a revelation.  It’s selling on Amazon for $49.95 and in the front of my Borders for $5.99.  If you need to start taking Irish cooking seriously, this is step #1.

4. Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence and the Poverty of Nations, by Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel.  This is a very good summary of what is known about corruption.

The best books with the worst titles

by  Tyler Cowen in

Richard Squire writes to me:

Some friends and I last night came up with a parlor
game, Best Books with Worst Titles.  Here were
our finalists:

Freakonomics

The Audacity of Hope

The Beautiful and Damned

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Moby Dick (winner)

I agree with the middle three picks but think that Freakonomics and Moby Dick are both very good titles.  I’ve never actually liked the title Ulysses, as used by James Joyce.  I know all about the structural parallels with Homer’s Odyssey but to me they are superfluous to enjoying the work.  The title stresses those parallels and so it irritates me.  What nominations do you all have?

The Gridlock Economy

by  Tyler Cowen in

How many popular economics books offer a message which is (mostly) true, non-trivial, and understandable?  Michael Heller’s The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives satisfies that troika.  The key message is that the "tragedy of the anti-commons" is often a bigger problem than the better-known tragedy of the commons.  The tragedy of the anti-commons arises when too many veto rights are exercised.  Here is one simple example:

Tarnation, a spunky documentary on growing up with a schizophrenic mother, originally cost $218 to make at home on the director’s laptop.  It required an additional $230,000 for music clearances before it could be distributed.

Or try tracking down orphaned copyrights or proceeding without explicit permission.  Furthermore many new drugs are more costly to market, or end up not being marketed, because there are so many possible patent infringement issues.  By the way about half of the patents litigated to judgment are not upheld.  Too many interest groups have veto power over infrastructure development, such as wind power or a new oil refinery (my examples).  The U.S. allocates its spectrum far less efficiently than either Japan or South Korea.  Holdouts lower the rate of property redevelopment; I learned that The New York Times used eminent domain to build its new headquarters because otherwise assembling such a large parcel of land in midtown Manhattan was very difficult.  It all boils down to the story of too many tolls on the medieval Rhine.

Yes, the author does give full credit to Buchanan and Yoon for their work on the anti-commons.

Heller does not cover the deeper question of whether a society can respect minority rights to the desired degree without encountering too strong a problem of the anti-commons.  Most of us are for the right to appeal, for the right to a fair trial, for various courses of redress, for the right to sue, for basic rights of intellectual property, and so on.  Some set of interest groups has to support those regimes.  Can those interest groups be so empowered without the excesses outlined in this book?  Would we still want to abolish the anti-commons problems if it led to a more general weakening of minority rights?

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

by  Tyler Cowen in

An overview is here, the list of contributors is very prestigious (disclaimer: I wrote the article on the social discount rate), and the Palgrave name is golden.  The old Palgrave Dictionary of Political Economy still makes for fascinating browsing.  Yet the price tag for the new edition is over $2000, $2500 on Amazon.

Not everyone is good at using Google and Wikipedia.

What I’ve Been Reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Government and the American Economy: A New History, no editor but the book is dedicated to Bob Higgs by Price Fishback.  Imagine essays by economic history luminaries, mostly classical liberals, covering many different eras of American economic history.  For some this is a gold mine.

2. The Third Domain, by Tim Friend.  An overview of archaea, those odd life forms that survive where nothing else can.  A fascinating look at a still mysterious topic.  It’s not as well written as the top-drawer popular science books but since you probably know little or nothing about the topic the amount you will learn is high.

3. Empires of Trust: How Rome Built — and America is Building — a New World, by Thomas F. Madden.  This book is avowed pro-Roman, pro-American, and sees strong parallels across the two regimes; part of the thesis is that neither wanted to build an empire but had to.

4. The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America, by Maury Klein.  This is a big, clunky book with lots of poor exposition.  It also covers a vital era — the real Industrial Revolution — which has remained oddly neglected by too many economic historians.

5. The Race Between Education and Technology, by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz.  This is the most important book on modern U.S. inequality to date; here is my previous coverage of their ideas.  I’m still waiting for Paul Krugman to write a critique but right now their core hypothesis is looking strong.

Which books to take to Africa?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Niall writes me:

I have an optimization problem that I thought you and other loyal MR
readers, like myself, could help me with.

The Question: How should I go about selecting books to bring with me for
a year of field research in rural Africa?

Conditions:
1. I have a limited amount of weight I can carry on the flight
2. There is little or no access to additional books where I will be
3. I only expect to return to the US once during that year

Thanks for continuing the to make MR the most educational blog on the web.

Sadly I do not know this fine gentleman.  But I’ll suggest the following five books: Moby Dick, The Bible (but it must be a serious translation), Plato’s Dialogues, Homer’s Odyssey, and a long, fun book of science fiction or fantasy that you haven’t already read.  LOTR would be a fine first choice if it fits that bill, otherwise ask around.  The basic principles are that the works should be long, deep, divisible into smaller parts, capable of sustaining rereadings, culturally central in some way, and last of all you need one piece of pure fun.  Readers, can you improve upon these tips?

I’ll add that if you read some language other than English, and thus read more slowly in that language, pick a book or two there as well.