Yesterday, the New York Times ran a feature on Willard, Ohio – a town of some 6,000 people about 30 miles southwest of my birthplace of Oberlin and about 15 miles northeast of Savannah, where my 90-plus year-old parents now live. Growing up, I called it “Celeryville”, after a smaller, nearby community. Then, as now, … Continue reading Celeryville, Revisited
Populism
Getting It Right But Still Not Getting It On Trade
Large among the benefits of my Foreign Affairs subscription are the “Subscriber Exclusives” – downloadable virtual issues that show FA has been attending for years to today’s hot button topics. A “Who Benefits from Trade?” compendium was made available last September. From oldest to newest the contributions range from G.B. Roorbach’s “Foreign Trade or Isolation”, … Continue reading Getting It Right But Still Not Getting It On Trade
Playing Smallball on Diversity: Dietrich Vollrath on Fractionalization
Dietrich Vollrath, in a Sgt. Joe Friday throwback, has put up something unusual for the day: a quiet, just-the-research-ma’am post exploring the theorized impact of diversity on economic performance. He provides examples of major studies, summarizes the findings, and points out some ways in which those findings, because of research design, might be suspect. In … Continue reading Playing Smallball on Diversity: Dietrich Vollrath on Fractionalization
Branko’s Law: Inequality is eating away at Democracy
The anonymous blogger Pseudoerasmus recently returned to activity after a hiatus (not counting Twitter) of several months. Though he describes himself as a “hopeless positivist”, I think of Pseudo as a sort of empirical volcano; his trademark style is to confront plausible-sounding (but often complacent) economic-historical theories with a veritable ash-storm of contradicting facts. These … Continue reading Branko’s Law: Inequality is eating away at Democracy
winter tomato 