~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (10)

Open borders hasn’t been getting a lot of good press recently but next week Bulgaria and Romania will join the Schengen Area for air and sea travel (road travel will likely follow). No more passports or visa necessary! The Schengen Area is a remarkable achievement for a part of the world once riven by violence […] The post Opening Borders appeared first on Marginal...

The Scottish Enlightenment will die on April 1st 2024, exactly 327 years, eight months and 24 days after the incident that provoked it. For on April 1st the Hate Crime and Public Order Act (Scotland) 2021 comes into force, an Act which will criminalise speech and opinion deemed ‘hateful’ even if spoken in the privacy of […] The post R.I.P. The Scottish Enlightenment 1697-2024 appeared...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: Marilynne Robinson is one of America’s best and best-known novelists and essayists, whose award-winning works like Housekeeping and Gilead explore themes of faith, grace, and the intricacies of human nature. Beyond her writing, Robinson’s 25-year tenure at the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop allowed her to shape and […] The post My excellent Conversation with Marilynne Robinson...

I am setting aside most of the cultural and “macro” issues, and just considering policy, in my latest Bloomberg column.  Excerpt: Consider agriculture. If you fly over Hispaniola, you can see a notable difference between the Haitian and Dominican sides of the border. The Dominican side has plenty of trees, whereas the Haitian side is denuded. Much […] The post Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic appeared...

Doug of course is one of the top trade economists.  Here is the audio, video, and transcript, from the same wonderful Mercatus team that brings you CWT.  Here is one excerpt: RAJAGOPALAN: I have a different question on Adam Smith. We’re all taught Adam Smith’s division of labor, specialization, economies of scale, the cliff notes […] The post Shruti Rajagopalan interviews Doug Irwin appeared...

T-Mobile’s takeover of Sprint was controversial among analysts. “If this merger is not anticompetitive,” Eleanor Fox, a trade regulation and antitrust law professor at New York University, told reporters in 2020, “it is hard to know what is.” Yale economist and antitrust scholar Fiona Scott Morton delivered her verdict on the deal in a co-authored 2021 article: “The era […] The post Revisiting the T-Mobile-Sprint Merger appeared first...

Here is the link, I am reviewing a bad book on the Clinton administration (A Fabulous Failure, by Lichtenstein and Stern).  Here is one excerpt: Clinton-era welfare reform is another area where many commentators go astray, and Lichtenstein and Stein are no exception. The Clinton pronouncement “I have a plan to end welfare as we […] The post My TLS essay on the Clinton...

No one’s family name was changed, altered, shortened, butchered, or “written down wrong” at Ellis Island or any American port. That idea is an urban legend. Many names did get changed as immigrants settled into their new American lives, but those changes were made several years after arrival and were done by choice of someone in […] The post No One’s Name Was Changed at...

Good Binyamin Appelbaum piece on the difficulties of building in NYC. The data will be familiar but I especially appreciate this vibe which we need more of: I hope someday I’ll be walking with my children on the Lower East Side or the Upper West Side or Brooklyn Heights. We’ll pass one of the places […] The post A City Not a Museum appeared...

The current Harvard disaster was clearly signaled by earlier events, most notably the 2019 firing of Dean Ronald Sullivan. Sullivan is a noted criminal defense attorney; he was the director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and he is the Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, he […] The post The Sullivan Signal: Harvard’s Failure to...