Here is an incredibly interesting reading list, on the political economy of belief, courtesy of the young Daniel Chen.  Even better, here is one of his recent papers, check out the abstract:

Religious intensity as social insurance may explain why fiscal and social conservatives and fiscal and social liberals come hand-in-hand. We find evidence that religious groups with greater within-group charitable giving are more against the welfare state and more socially conservative. Libertarians (fiscal conservatives–social liberals) are more abundant than the religious left (fiscal liberals–social conservatives). The alliance reverses for members of a state church: social conservatives become fiscal liberals. Increases in church-state separation precede increases in the relationship between fiscal and social conservatism. The framework provides a novel explanation for religious history: as credit markets develop, elites gain access to alternative social insurance and legislate increasing church-state separation to create a constituency for lower taxes. This holds if religious voters exceed non-religious voters, otherwise, elites prefer less church-state separation in order to curb the secular left. This generates multiple equilibria where some countries sustain high church-state separation, high religiosity, and low welfare state, and vice versa. We use this framework to explain the changing nature of religious movements, from Social Gospel to the religious right, and why church-state separation arose in the US but not in many European countries.

Maybe this is not fully sound, but it is one of the most interesting papers I have read in years.  I have high hopes for the guy.

Bryan Caplan argues that IQ research has strong policy implications.  His conclusion:

The more IQ matters, the more likely it becomes that existing government policies are a waste of money – and that you would get a bigger payoff by doing less – or maybe nothing at all.

Surely this deserves some discussion of the Flynn Effect, that near-universal albeit mysterious process whereby average IQs rise each generation.  Should we re-gear government policy to subsidize whatever factors deserve the credit for this phenomenon? 

But I have a simpler worry about Bryan’s libertarian conclusion.  When Bryan says "IQ matters a great deal" I hear "inelastic factors of production."  IQ won’t change much in the short run, and perhaps IQ — rather than effort or environment — accounts for more of good (and bad) outcomes than we used to think.  But we all know that inelastic factors of production can be taxed and subsidized without much deadweight loss.  More generally, the belief that value comes from inelastic factors will not favor markets or liberty.  The historical correlation between IQ research and anti-egalitarian social engineering is not a complete accident. 

Yes IQ matters for policy, but I see no particular reason why libertarians should welcome this conclusion.  Libertarian philosophy does better under the traditional story of the self-made man.  Thomas More, I believe, understood a similar point, albeit in the language of his time.

Addendum: Here is Jane Galt on same topic.

Here are his economics posts.  Here is his very intelligent blog, which is a mix of economics and business school analysis.

Land prices in Biloxi are up.  The reason?  Mississippi is a poor state and so historically even homes with water views were modest.  When the coast boomed, due to gambling and tourism, the land became a lot more valuable in alternative uses like hotels, casinos, and vacation homes for the rich.  But it’s costly and takes a long time for developers to buy up small lots and bundle them into bigger packages.  The hurricane, however, acted like nature’s form of eminent domain.  With the small houses destroyed there are many sellers, bundling is becoming easier, and everyone expects that zoning will be changed to favor the developers.

Absurdly, CNN paints the speculators as almost as bad as the hurricane itself:

But what Katrina spared, the real estate rush now imperils.  The arrival of speculators threatens what’s left of bungalow
neighborhoods that are among the Gulf’s oldest communities, close-knit
places of modest means where casino workers, fishermen and their
families could still afford to live near the water.

But while there is a certain sadness in seeing an old way of life decline no one is being forced to sell and those who do sell must be very pleased that there are eager buyers.

Thanks to Edward Johnson for the pointer.

"Private governments,” such as homeowners associations and condominium cooperatives, provide all manner of collective consumption goods, from road maintenance, trash collection, and snow removal to transportation, policing, and medical care. These organizations were practically unheard of in 1960, but today some 54.6 million people in the United States live in various neighborhood associations.

That’s from my latest paper, What are Private Governments Worth? written with Amanda Agan.  Despite the explosion of private governments, very little research has been done on measuring their value.  Thus, Agan and I compare the value of homes within HOAs (home owner associations) with the value of homes outside of HOAs.  After controlling for a wide variety of housing characteristics including age, size, style and so forth we find that homes within HOAs sell for a whopping 5.4 percent or $14,000 more than similar homes outside of HOAs.  Put differently a 3 bedroom home within an HOA is worth about as much as a 4 bedroom home outside of an HOA.  This result is robust and continues to hold even when we look at similar homes inside and outside of HOAs but within the same subdivision.

For more on HOAs see The Voluntary City (which I edited) and especially Robert Nelson’s excellent new book from the Urban Institute, Private Neighborhoods And the Transformation of Local Government.