Peter Gordon's Blog

Organizing my materials in my office has always been a problem.  This was true in the paper age, the PC age and even in the Internet age.  S...

I frustrate many students when I warn them about using the four letter f-word.  "Fair" inspires much serious work (and fun) by phi...

The end-of-year double-issue of The Economist is usually worth waiting for.  The one that came this week includes several very nice essays....

The various end-of-year best-books lists are out there.  But of many good 2012 reads, I keep coming back to Jonathan Haidt's The Righteo...

Matt Ridley (in the Dec 19 WSJ ) wrote about " Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change ... Evidence points to a further rise of just ...

I recently cited Alain Bertaud's new paper ("The costs of Utopia, Brasilia, Johannesburg, Moscow").  It's provocative and...

Mass murders terrify us; when kindergartners are slaughtered we sink into despair or beyond.  Many scramble to be on the side of the angel...

Do we live to work or do we work to live?  When I press students, they quickly agree it is the latter.  (This usually introduces the questio...

Economist Joel Waldfogel has demonstrated that most gifting is a waste.  There would be no deadweight losses if we give cash.  But non-cash...

"Fiscal cliff" talk is everywhere and most views are necessarily about generalities.  This is because the details are almost impos...

Two related posts came my way quite concidentally within a few minutes.  They are worth considering as a pair because of the concerns they i...

About a hundred years ago, privately owned and operated streetcars plied the streets of major U.S. urban thoroughfares.  Then they declined ...

"Equity-efficiency trade-offs" are a staple of textbooks.  Best to keep it in quotes because "equity" and "efficien...

The Journal of Economic Perspectives is my all-time favorite journal.  Much of the good stuff is at the back with Timothy Taylor's ...

JK Galbraith introduced the idea of "planned obsolescence" many years ago.  Competition and an eye to profits, one would think, c...

Matt Ridley praises Taleb's Antifragile in today's WSJ . What about cities?  I have mentioned before that churn is great, but w...

In " Tax Time ... Why we pay", Jill Lepore ( New Yorker , Nov 26) starts with Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Taxes are what we ...

Our brains are conditioned by our evolutionary past and we often jump to conclusions.  This was once a pretty good survival tactic.  But we ...

It's unlikely that earthquake prediction will soon advance to the point where it can limit our earthquake exposure risk.  So it is best ...

This morning's LA Times ' Travel section includes the umpteenth piece on how "interesting" it is to see Cuba .  We are of...