“That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air … Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”
For those of us who live by an academic calendar, September always feels like a new year. While this "new year" is certainly different from those past, we still feel the excitement and promise that the start of a new semester brings.
For readers in the classroom, we hope you've been able to use the resources to be found in our Guides section, or our EconTalk Extras. We also have a request. If you are using Econlib resources in your teaching, we would be grateful if you could send us your syllabi, reading lists, etc. During this year, we're building a new email list to share teaching ideas; stay tuned for more details. In the meantime, you might consider subscribing to our monthly QuickPicks list, if you've not already done so. Finally, we'd love to hear any other ideas or suggestions for how we can best support your interests.
Until next month, we wish you well, and look forward to seeing you online. Please share your suggestions and comments with us at econlib@libertyfund.org. We love to hear from you.
EconLib Feature Articles, September 2020
How the Collapse of Communism Has Undermined
Faith in American Capitalism
by Richard B. McKenzie
While acknowledging that economic history is the product of many interacting currents of events, I focus on a powerful but unheralded force shaping U.S. income and wealth patterns over the last five decades, the growth in global market competitiveness substantially boosted by the downfall of communist economies worldwide, but especially in China, since the late 1970s. Read More.
Love and Economics
By Liya Palagashvili
Chances are, either you or at someone you know met their significant other through an online dating platform. If you consider yourself a “picky person” who has trouble finding a potential partner, you likely benefit the most from the broader choice set provided by online dating sites. Read More.
What’s the Economist's
Point of View? By Adam Martin
Kirzner’s book surveys definitions of economics. He organizes these definitions into families, but there is a roughly chronological progression in the starting points of the chapters. The book reads as a sort of dialectic, with each successive definition offering an escape from the ambiguities and problems of the previous one. Kirzner is not trying to settle all of the disputes that crop up along the way but to trace why those who proposed new definitions find the older ones unsatisfactory. Read More.
Liberty's Discontents by Arnold Kling
Herman takes us on an extensive tour of pessimistic thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. He provides descriptions of Arthur de Gobineau (a mid-19th century French proponent of racial theories), Friedrich Nietzsche, W.E.B. Du Bois, Oswald Spengler, Sigmund Freud, Arnold Toynbee, and Herbert Marcuse, among many others. It struck me that because these disparate thinkers did not anticipate Herman’s distinction between historical and cultural pessimism, he sometimes has to strain to classify someone as falling on one side or the other. Read More.
Highlights from EconLog
Marginal Revolutionaries: Kirzner and the Modern Austrians
A three part review of Janek Wasserman's Marginal Revolutionaries. Through his career, and especially starting with Competition and Entrepreneurship, Kirzner attempted to engage the questions that the mainstream of the discipline thought were important. Although his contributions to professional journals were limited, his students and their students in the GMU wing have published widely in professional journals. They have incorporated ideas from related areas in economics, such as public choice, and the Bloomington school of political science associated with Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, to create an interdisciplinary approach to political economy. Read More.
In this 750th (!) episode, Duke University's Michael Munger talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about whether the pandemic might create an opportunity for colleges and universities to experiment and innovate, Listen Here.
