Tyler Cowen

Archive for Tyler Cowen

Potpourri

Yikes I’ve been traveling lately and am way behind with some of these… ==> Niels van der Linden replies to my comment on his critique of Rothbard. ==> Richard Ebeling (my teacher in undergrad) reflects on the Great Society. ==> Megan McArdle on health insurance bailout. Joe Salerno provides more details on this interesting story […]

A Bit of Silliness

Something is really screwy with all of this cryptocurrency discussion. I feel as if a bunch of academics are “proving” that spaceflight is impossible. To take but one example, Tyler Cowen has a long post saying that Bitcoin will collapse in price, where his argument seems to rely on one (or both) of the following […]

Tyler Cowen on Treasury Default

This is my favorite Tyler post of all time, with the only possible exception being his unwitting out-of-sample defense of Austrian business cycle theory. First, Tyler uses his extraordinarily powerful mind to concoct a scenario in which the economy collapses from the debt standoff: As the evening of October 16th approaches, John Boehner is preparing […]

Bryan Caplan Values His Body Far Too Cheaply

I was very much enjoying the latest skirmish between Tyler Cowen and Bryan Caplan–no matter who loses, I win–when I was astounded by this argument from Bryan, to drive home his point about how awful immigration restrictions are: The obvious moral objection is that comparing slavery and immigration restrictions is absurd hyperbole. But it’s absurd […]

Sumner Turns His Interest Rate Liability Into an Asset

I have long said that I would be much more confident debating Paul Krugman than Scott Sumner. I disagree with Krugman on economics, you see, but with Sumner our disagreement is almost metaphysical. For example, Austrians like me think that the 1929 stock market crash was (partially) due to expansionary Fed policy during the 1920s, […]

Questions for Keynesians

1) When it comes to the “zero lower bound,” what’s the relevant maturity? Scott Sumner and Tyler Cowen are celebrating the end of the liquidity trap, but their argument makes no sense to me: Short-term Treasury yields are still basically zero, and long-term yields were never near zero. But then, if the Keynesian answer is […]

Applying Krugmanian Lessons to the 1990s

Poor Alex Tabarrok. He makes a simple blog post, pointing out the hilarious heads-we-win-tails-you-lose stance of Krugman et al., and the targets of his critique focus on something completely incidental. I will probably muddy the waters myself by focusing on the “incidental” part of his post, but so be it. First, though, let’s review: 1) […]

Potpourri

==> Whether North Korean officials actually said this, or whether it is US propaganda to get Americans mad, either way it’s hilarious: They allegedly called the US mainland a “boiled pumpkin.” Who can drop bombs after such a funny insult? ==> Robert Higgs looks around at today’s libertarians, and he’s none too impressed. His op […]