EJW Audio

Roland Vaubel on the Euro: A Political Narrative

Roland Vaubel discusses the Euro as a creature of politics. He explains the particular political machinations behind its history, current state, and likely future. The interview builds on his contribution to EJW’s 2010 symposium on the Euro.

James Tooley on Education in Developing Countries

James Tooley discusses the treatment of schooling in Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. He argues, as in his EJW article, that Banerjee and Duflo do not do justice to low-cost private schools in developing countries.

Robin Lindsey on the Economics of Road Pricing

Robin Lindsey discusses the economics of road pricing, in theory and practice. The discussion is based on his EJW article showing that economists agree on using road pricing to alleviate congestion but not on other issues surrounding road pricing.

Pierre Desrochers on Freedom Versus Coercion in Industrial Ecology

In this podcast, Pierre Desrochers discusses his research on the tendencies in free enterprise to make wealth from waste. In May 2012, EJW published a piece by Desrochers that replies to a 2008 criticism by Frank Boons and critically treats work by Christine Meisner Rosen. The same issue of EJW features responses by Boons and by Rosen.

Daniel Sutter on the Near Absence of Math-free Economics Articles

In an EJW article, Daniel Sutter and Rex Pjesky asked “Where Would Adam Smith Publish Today?” Their research shows that an overwhelming share of papers appearing in six leading general journals and four leading field journals are mathematical, with 6% of the papers qualifying as ‘math-free’ by the weakest criterion and only 1.5% by the strongest criterion. Here Sutter talks about the findings, noting that Smith, Keynes, Hayek, and Coase might never have broken through had such conditions held in their time. He suggests that perhaps economics has fallen into a homophily among mathematical researchers, resulting in a narrowing of discourse and methods.

Clifford Thies on the AEA and Richard T. Ely

The American Economic Association takes pride in celebrating its founder Richard T. Ely. This pride is strange, given the character of Ely’s thought, which is revealed in the EJW article “Richard T. Ely: The Confederate Flag of the AEA?” by Clifford F. Thies and Ryan Daza. In this podcast, Thies explores Ely’s ideas, values, and impact.

Henry E. Smith on Property

Henry E. Smith is one of the premier critics of the bundle-of-rights view of property. In this podcast he discusses the nature of property, highlighting the core feature: a presumptive exclusion. He discusses some of the problems with the bundle-of-rights view, highlighting information costs and the forsaking of the core feature of exclusion. Smith is one of nine scholars who contribute to the EJW symposium on the “bundle” view. (Link to his contribution)

Phil Coelho and Jim McClure on the Market for Lemmas

Phil Coelho and Jim McClure discuss their research published in EJW and elsewhere showing that top journal papers containing lemmas—intermediate steps in a lengthy proof—are rarely cited by other economists and almost never yield testable propositions. Following Alfred Marshall and Donald F. Gordon, Coelho and McClure argue that longer chains of mathematical reasoning generally have less relevance to understanding real-world economic phenomena.

Christopher Martin on Adam Smith and Liberal Economics

Drawing on his EJW article, Christopher Martin discusses Emma Rothschild’s influential article “Adam Smith and Conservative Economics,” which treats of a parliamentary debate in 1795–96 as giving rise to two contrasting images of Adam Smith. Martin questions the contrast that Rothschild draws, and recurs to the original debate between William Pitt and Samuel Whitbread, as well as to Smith’s own texts.

Shirley Svorny on Medical Licensing

Shirley Svorny explains how regulations on the practice of medicine raise costs and restrict access to care. The podcast starts with a discussion of economists’ views on licensing, as summarized in the paper Svorny wrote for EJW, “Licensing Doctors: Do Economists Agree?”