A property right is the right to exclude others’ access to something. It is the right to infringe on others’ freedom. These rights are socially determined and vary greatly across different societies. For example, do you think you should own…
Blog Archives
Money can’t buy you love, but can it buy you life?
Raj Chetty et al. published a study of the correlation of class and life expectancy that got a lot of press, but I hadn’t actually looked at the original publication until this week. Here is the correlation between life expectancy…
Bad stories lead to bad healthcare policies
US Representive Phil Roe is considered an expert on healthcare by his peers. He co-chairs the Republican Doctors Caucus and the Republican Study Committee asked him to come up with a plan to replace Obamacare. In a recent interview about his…
Posted in Health
A new indicator of economic development: How many years would you work to buy your life?
Although most people find it distasteful to put a dollar value on human life, people have been doing it for centuries and these judgements have always had a big impact on people. Before the 1960s, the motivation for putting an…
The math behind whether condoms cause teen pregnancy
Via Sarah Kliff, I see that a new research paper found that schools giving out free condoms had a 10 percent increase in teen births. This is contrary to the past studies I have seen which show that free birth control led to fewer pregnancies…
Posted in Health, Managerial Micro
The most important medical advance of the past century
Antibiotics revolutionized medicine, but it is likely that no single antibiotic caused as big of a drop in deaths as a simple over-the-counter medicine that you have probably taken it at some point without appreciating how revolutionary it is. It…
The freaky economics of socialist healthcare in Britain
Below is an excerpt from Think Like A Freak, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Shortly after the publication of Superfreakonomics [2009], while on a book tour in England, we were invited to meet David Cameron, [the Leader of the Conservative Party] who would…
Medianism 