Advise to the Young Economist

For those of you who have yet to encounter Gordon's scholarship, I urge you to purchase and to read, cover to cover, the 10 volume Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, that I recently edited for Liberty Fund. There is no better education for a young economist aspiring to contribute in the tradition of Virginia Political Economy, no better introduction into the ways of truly creative Renaissance Scholarship.

-Gordon Tullock is Retiring (an alternative title could be Gordon Tulllock is becoming more polite)

Dictators and binding revolution constraints

The dictator’s approach to electoral patterns;

Democracies rarely repress their own citizens but authoritarian and totalitarian regimes do. According to one estimate (See Table 1), of the 110 million persons repressed by Marxist-Leninist regimes in the twentieth century, more than 90% were their own citizens. In democracies, less than 0.5% of victims were own citizens. It is statistics, such as these, that suggest some "generality" in Stalin's behaviour. Empirical studies also suggest that totalitarian regimes generate more "violence" than democracies (Mulligan, Gil, Sala-I-Martin, 2004)...

Our model suggests that the number of eliminations depends on the probability of correctly identifying enemies, the number of enemies, and the “threat” that the enemy poses. Although we are unable to “prove” our model based on the stylised facts of the three repressions, we can show that the model is consistent with these facts. The model makes one prediction that is consistent with Stalin’s observed behaviour that is far from intuitively obvious. A rational dictator will deliberately eliminate innocent citizens and will eliminate more innocents when enemies are difficult to identify. Stalin’s slaughter of innocents is cited by historians as a sign of his mental derangement, but in our model it is the predicted behaviour of a dictator facing a binding revolution constraint.

Public Choice quote of the Day

...as a general rule states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals. These are the sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws, who want to get their own way in every general discussion because they feel that they cannot show off their intelligence in matters of greater importance, and who, as result, very often bring ruin on their country. But the other kind - the people who are not so confident in their own intelligence - are prepared to admit that the laws are wiser than they are...

-Thucydides,History of the Peloponnesian War, Speech of Cleon

Came across the quote in Buchanan's Better than Plowing and Other Personal Essays

Great Talks

Some interesting forums from Miller Center for Public Affairs;

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

Does Emotion or Rational Interest Motivate Voters?

The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm

President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman

Globalization and Civilization

The Most Noble Adventure: The Marshall Plan and the Time When America Helped Save Europe

American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century

Are Western Leadership Concepts Appropriate in Islamic Cultures? Implications for Global Business Affairs

The Art of Government Relations: When the Co-Equal Branches are Locked in a Power Struggle

Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell

The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008

Is Our National Security Bureaucracy Up to the Challenge?

Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Mapping the Global Future

The Social Security Reform Debacle: Were Lessons Learned, or Does This Foretell the Future of Other Bush Reform Initiatives?

Room for Growth: President Lincoln's Early Stumbles

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

Fighting World Hunger

The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

Managing the Financial War against Terrorists

Martin Van Buren: The Original Party Boss

Marriage: A History

Twilight in the Desert:The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times

What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa

Looking at China

Exporting Reconstruction: Lessons Learned and Lessons Not Learned

Eliot Spitzer and the War Against White Collar Crime

Of Love and War: Roosevelt, Churchill and the Way We Live Now

Faith of Our Fathers: What America's Founders Really Believed

Free Journals

Public Choice available for free to everyone via the WWW until the end of April, as a promotional exercise.

via Chris Blattman