Our former professor, Charles K. Rowley , passed away this weekend after a long and prolific career as a scholar and teacher. Professor Rowley was a passionate teacher, as anyone who sat in his classroom will attest. He was also a deep scholar of public choice, and he worked tirelessly to shape the contours of the field, to advance those frontiers, and to stake claims to this work in the name of Virginia School scholars, particularly Jim Buchanan…
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The Freeman has just published “A Place of Learning for Reformers,” an essay on the Antigua Forum . The Antigua Forum is a project of Universidad Francisco Marroquín, designed to help reformers and others who are transforming existing institutions to improve human well-being through liberty. The secret to this project’s success is the careful mix of highly-leveraged participants and a very effective learning environment. As this brief essay explains: “The most thrilling conversation on reform is meaningless if it doesn’t yield…
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Dani Rodrik has a new paper on “ The Past, Present, and Future of Economic Growth .” Rodrik distinguishes between growth that is a function of  “fundamental capabilities” (human capital and institutions) and growth from “structural transformation” (the move to higher-productivity industries). He argues that periods of extraordinarily high growth are the result of structural transformations. Increases in fundamental capabilities exhibit important complementarities, but they are slower in developing. What are the implications for political change? Rodrik’s other great work in this area…
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It’s too big a stretch to call this a review, but Madmen has been recommended by Bloomberg’s Richard Yamarone on his summer reading list . Sandwiched between The Battle of Bretton Woods by Benjamin Steill and Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman by Jeremy Adelman, page two of the brief reads: A somewhat related book, Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (Stanford University Press) by Wayne A. Leighton and Edward J. Lopez, looks at the systematic causes of political change, with influences by such “academic scribblers”…
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Today I discovered a book the old fashioned way: while browsing the stacks at a brick-and-mortar library . Published in 2010, Better Living Through Economics is a collection of essays that documents the impact of basic economic research on improving public policies. The collection is edited by John J. Siegfried, who is Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University and the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Economic Association. All the contributors to the volume are top economists in the profession. Better Living has a…
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Now in my second of two years as president of the Public Choice Society, I’m happy to draw attention to the call for conference papers for the 2014 conference, which will be at the Francis Marion Hotel, March 6-9, in Charleston, South Carolina. The website opens for submissions on October 17. Spread the word!

The May 16, 2013 edition of the John Stossel show, featuring an interview with your Madmen co-authors, is now available online and can be seen here  (around minute 30:45 in the program). Bemoaning the seemingly undending array of rules and regulations that stifle small businesses and often hurt consumers, Stossel asks: “Is there no hope.” He quickly adds, “There is!” And thus starts our interview. As we say in the book, on this blog, and wherever we…
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Lajos Bokros, former Minister of Finance of Hungary and current Member of the European Parliament, has published an overview of the main elements of reform in post-Soviet states,  Accidental Occidental : Economics and Culture of Transition in Mitteleuropa, the Baltic and the Balkan Area. For students of political change, the book draws links between nine different elements of reform. Below, some highlights. On liberalization of the business sector: The key was liberalization of entry and exit for private…
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Competitive sport is a microcosm for understanding human affairs. Both in life and in sports, the rules of the game largely shape the incentives that people have for how to play the game. When the rules change (either formally as through legislation, or informally as through common practice) peoples’ incentives also change, and a different outcome will be observed–for better or worse. Chapter 1 of Madmen opens with the story of college basketball being saved by adopting…
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As Ed reported, John Stossel interviewed us for his show titled “The War Against the Little Guy” (airing May 16 and replaying through May 19). The current link for Stossel  has only a short video clip that doesn’t include our interview, which appears later in the hour. But the link does have a short summary of the show, which ends with a nice summary of the main argument in Madmen (emphasis added):  Is there any hope for…
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