Capitalism

U.S. Consumer Spending Rose 0.5 Percent in August

Updated: 2012-09-28 01:55:56

Americans boosted their spending in August even though their income barely grew.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/timeblogs/curious_capitalist/~4/nNn0Pvy2CF4" height="1" width="1"/

Does Strong Alumni Participation Make US Universities Stronger?

Updated: 2012-09-24 04:22:51

| Peter Klein | What explains the dominance of the US in elite higher education? Shailendra Mehta offers a novel explanation: the role of alumni. Graduates of US colleges and universities tend to identify strongly with their institutions and care deeply about their school’s reputation and ranking. Only in the US do alumni play such a [...]

Arruñada’s Institutional Foundations of Impersonal Exchange

Updated: 2012-09-18 18:04:34

| Peter Klein | Former O&M guest blogger Benito Arruñada has a new book, Institutional Foundations of Impersonal Exchange: Theory and Policy of Contractual Registries (University of Chicago Press, 2012), presenting his influential and important work on the measurement of property rights and transaction costs. Here’s the blurb: Governments and development agencies spend considerable resources [...]

First, They Ignore You. . . .

Updated: 2012-09-17 21:21:44

| Peter Klein | Paul Krugman writes a typically silly column on the Austrian school’s approach to defining the money supply. As usual, his purpose is not to inform, or analyze, or explore, but to ridicule anyone who disagrees with The Paul. A few reactions: The substantive question, do Austrians consider money-market mutual funds as [...]

Interesting Paper on Entrepreneurship and Growth

Updated: 2012-09-12 21:58:45

| Peter Klein | Does entrepreneurship cause economic growth, or do high growth rates stimulate entrepreneurship? Ed Glaeser, Sari Pekkala Kerr, and William Kerr have an interesting new paper that uses the presence of heavy industry to instrument for the population of potential entrepreneurs (using startups as the proxy for entrepreneurship). Entrepreneurship and Urban Growth: [...]

Conference in Honor of Oliver Williamson

Updated: 2012-09-03 22:05:37

| Peter Klein | The University Paris-Dauphine is awarding an honorary doctorate to Oliver Williamson Friday, 19 October 2012, and organizing a one-day conference to honor his work. The conference is co-sponsored by the European School on New Institutional Economics (ESNIE). Speakers include Carmine Guerriero (U. of Amsterdam), Roger Guesnerie (Collège de France), David Martimort (EHESS [...]