CV/Resume
Books
Econ Journal
Watch
Lost Language, Lost Liberalism
Academia Survey of Policy Views
Papers etc. by Dan Klein and collaborators
- Toward a Public and Professional Identity for Our Economics
- Come Together in Adam Smith
- Ought as an Is: On the Positive-Normative Distinction
- Three Frank Questions to Discipline Your Theorizing
Papers on coordination, invisible hand:
- Concatenate Coordination and Mutual Coordination
- (accompanying Excel file)
- Unfolding the Allegory behind Market Communication and Social Error and Correction
- Convention, Social Order, and the Two Coordinations
- Israel Kirzner on Coordination and Discovery
- Planning and the Two Coordinations, With Illustration in Urban Transit
- In Adam Smith's Invisible Hands: Comment on Gavin Kennedy
- In a Word or Two, Placed in the Middle: The Invisible Hand in Smith's Tomes
- The Music of Social Intercourse: Synchrony in Adam Smith
- (accompanying Excel file)
- Smith's Attitude toward Rousseau
Short Papers for the General Reader
Videos and podcasts
- Youtube: Interview on Adam Smith (11 min)
- Podcast on knowledge, coordination, and allegory
- Podcast on the two coordinations and the people's romance
- Theory of Moral Sentiments book club
- Video: Adam Smith:An Overview of His Ethical Vision (47 min)
- Youtube: Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation (30 min)
- Youtube: How Adam Smith and Other Scots Originated a Political Meaning for "Liberal" and Launched Liberalism (main presentation is the first 38 min)
Articulate knowledge entails information, interpretation, and judgment. Discovery of opportunity:
- Knowledge Flat-talk: A Conceit of Supposed Experts and a Seduction to All
- Discovery Factors of Economic Freedom: Respondence, Epiphany, and Serendipity
- Discovery and the Deepself
- Experiment on Entrepreneurial Discovery: An Attempt to Demonstrate the Conjecture of Hayek and Kirzner
- Salute to Schelling: Keeping It Human
- Quality-and-Safety Assurance: How Voluntary Processes Remedy Their Own Shortcomings
- Asymmetric Interpretations
- The Improprieties of the Pretense of Knowledge
Short Paper for the General Reader
Video
Papers on how private, voluntary practices and institutions achieve assurance and trust:
- The Demand for and Supply of Assurance (and in Swedish)
- Quality and Safety Assurance: How Voluntary Social Processes Remedy Their Own Shortcomings
- Credit Information Reporting: Why Free Speech is Vital to Social Accountability and Consumer Opportunity
- Good Conduct in a Great Society: Adam Smith and the Role of Reputation (large file, requires patience)
- Was Occupational Licensing Good for Minorities? A Critique of Marc Law and Mindy Marks
Short Papers for the General Reader
Writings on the FDA:
- Colleagues, Where Is The Market Failure? Economists on the FDA
- Do Off-Label Drug Practices Argue Against FDA Efficacy Requirements? A Critical Analysis of Physicians' Argumentation for Initial Efficacy Requirements
- Who Certifies Off-Label?
- Drug Approval Denationalization
- 305 Economists Called to Answer Questionnaire on the Pre-Market Approval of Drugs and Devices
YouTube Video on the FDA
Extensive Website on the FDA
Technical game-theory paper on credit reporting and reputation:
Liberty, liberalism, libertarianism: Affirmations and analysis:
- Video: The Semantic History of Liberalism (20 min)
- Youtube: Ten Thousand Commandments: Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments as an Esoteric Critque of Interventionism (46 min) (PPT file here)
- Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard
- Direct and Overall Liberty: Areas and Extent of Disagreement
- Direct and Overall Liberty: Replies to Walter Block and Claudia Williamson
- Youtube: Five Uses for the Distinction between Direct and Overall Liberty (46 min)
- Liberty, Dignity and Responsibility: The Moral Triad of a Good Society
- Liberty between the Lines in a Statist and Modernist Age: Unfolding the Adam Smith in Friedrich HayeK
- Economics and the Distinction between Voluntary and Coercive Action
- Property: A Bundle of Rights?
- Assume the Positional: Comment on Robert Frank
- Book review of Andrew Gamble, Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty
- The Ways of John Gray
- Critique of Thaler/Sunstein "Libertarian Paternalism"
- Conservative Magazines and the Presumption of Liberty: A Content Analysis on Sex, Gambling, and Drugs
- Lost Language, Lost Liberalism (4L)
Short Papers for the General Reader
- "Libertarianism" -- encyclopedia entry
- The Origin of "Liberalism"
- Book review of Holmes and Sunstein, The Cost of Rights
- Book review of Sprading, Liberty and the Great Libertarians
- Economical Cogitations
- Book review of Szasz, Our Right to Drugs
- Book review of Ronald Hamowy The Political Sociology of Freedom: Adam Ferguson and F. A. Hayek
- 14 Bull__t Tactics used against Libertarians
- Libertarianism as Communitarianism
- The Moral Consequences of Paternalism
- Crusade Against Drugs Is Testing Our Sensibilities
- The Fatal Conceit Revisited
- Virtual Barbed Wire
- What Should Liberals Liberalize?
- Youtube: Mere Libertarianism (25 min)
- Video: Challenging, Bargaining, and Royalty: An Analysis of Libertarian Argumentation (36 min)
- Youtube: Jeffrey Tucker interviews me on "liberal" (38 min)
- Liberalism Unrelinquished
Diagnosing statism:
- Resorting to Statism to Find Meaning: Conservatism and Leftism
- The People's Romance: Why People Love Government (as Much as They Do)
- A Demand for Encompassment: A Hayekian Experimental Parable about Political Psychology
- Against Overlordship
- Cultural Trends as Seen in Ngrams: Karl Polanyi with a Hayekian Twist
- From Weight Watchers to State Watchers: Towards a Narrative of Liberalism (A review essay of Alan Kahan Mind Vs. Money)
- If Government Is So Villainous, How Come Government Offiicials Don't Seem Like Villains?
- Left Out: A Critique of Paul Krugman Based on a Comprehensive Account of His New York Times Columns, 1997 through 2006
- Conservative Magazines and the Presumption of Liberty: A Content Analysis on Sex, Gambling, and Drugs
Papers on current transportation issues:
- How to Franchise Highways
- Curb Rights: Eliciting Competition and Entrepreneurship in Urban Transit (large file, please be patient)
- High Occupancy/Toll Lanes: Phasing in Congestion Pricing a Lane at a Time
- Fencing the Airshed: Using Remote Sensing to Police Auto Emissions
- Free Parking Versus Free Markets
Short Papers for the General Reader
Papers on the private toll road companies of 19th century America:
- The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods? The Turnpike Companies of Early America
- Economy, Community and Law: The Turnpike Movement in New York, 1797-1845
- Responding to Relative Decline: The Plank Road Boom of Antebellum New York
- Use, Esteem, and Profit in Voluntary Provision: Toll Roads in California, 1850-1902
- Plank Road Fever in Antebellum America: New York State Origins
- From Trunk to Branch: Toll Roads in New York, 1800-1860
- Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth Century America
Short Papers for the General Reader
Papers on the economics profession:
- What Do Economists Contribute?: Introduction
- A Plea to Economists Who Favour Liberty: Assist the Everyman [a symposium]
- Economists on the Welfare State and the Regulatory State: Why Don't Any Argue in Favor of One and Against the Other? [a symposium]
- Institutional Ties of Journal of Economic Development Authors and Editors
- The PhD Circle in Academic Economics
- Sense and Sensibilities: Myrdal’s Plea for Self-Disclosure and Some Disclosures About AEA Members
- The Forsaken-Liberty Syndrome: Looking at Published Judgments to Say Whether Economists Reach a Conclusion
- A Little More Liberty:What the JEL Omits in Its Account of What the Economic Report of the President Omits
- Is There a Free-Market Economist in the House? The Policy Views of American Economic Association Members
- Economists' Policy Views and Voting
- Model Building versus Theorizing: The Paucity of Theory in the Journal of Economics Theory
- Reasons for Supporting the Minimum Wage: Asking Signatories of the 'Raise the Minimum Wage' Statement
- Economist Petitions: Ideology Revealed
- Economics Professors' Favorite Economic Thinkers, Journals, and Blogs (along with Party and Policy Views)
- Characteristics of the Members of Twelve Economic Associations: Voting, Policy Views, and Favorite Economists
- Most Economists Welcome Ideological Openness, a Survey Indicates
- Economics Professors' Voting, Policy Views, Favorite Economists, and Frequent Lack of Consensus
- The Ideological Migration of the Economics Laureates
Short Papers for the General Reader
- The Smith-Hayek Economist: From Character to Identity
- Who Is the Practitioner of Political Economy?
- Economists' Misplaced Faith in an Invisible Hand
- Ideology Revealed in Economist Petitions
- An Amazing Consensus Among Economists: Not
- Krugman Falsehood about 1985-2007 Consensus against Fiscal Policy
- Where Right, Left and Center Agree
Papers on academia
- Professors and Their Politics: The Policy Views of Social Scientists
- Partisan Faculty Affiliations in All Disciplines: A Voter-Registration Study
- The Social Science Citation Index: A Black Box--with an Ideological Bias?
- Sociology and Classical Liberalism
- Liberal versus Conservative Stinks (a reply to Zipp and Fenwick}
- Groupthink in Academia: Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid -- This piece adapts groupthink theory to the setting of academia. Focusing especially on the micro mechanism of majoritarian departmental politics and the more macro cultural mechanism of the disciplinary pyramid, it offers a theory of how a bad worldview, once it reached a tipping point, could tend toward domination of the academic discipline and get locked-in. It was written for the 2009 AEI volume The Politically Correct University and reprinted in The Independent Review.
- By the Numbers: The Ideological Profile of Professors, in the 2009 AEI volume The Politically Correct University. The paper reviews all the data up to 2008 about professoriate ideology.
- Intellectual Hazard: A Liberal Selection of Quotations
- Embarrassed as a Non-Left Professor?
- Review of Rothman, Woessner, and Kelly-Woessner book
Audio on academia
- Podcast with Russ Roberts on groupthink in academia
- Podcast with Stephen Gibson on groupthink in academia
- Public Radio interview (also featuring Bruce Smith)
Short Papers for the General Reader
Technical papers on commitment and time consistency:
- Commitment and Time Consistency: A Game-Theoretic Discussion
- A Game-Theoretic Rendering of Promises and Threats
- The Microfoundations of Rules vs. Discretion
- Time Consistency and Related Concepts [highly technical]
- Contingent
Plans, Time Consistency and Paretian Rulers [highly technical]
Miscellaneous papers:
- Deductive Economic Methodology in the French Enlightenment: Condillac and Destutt de Tracy
- The Half-life of Policy Rationales: How New Technology Affects Old Policy Issues
- In Defense of Dwelling in Great Minds: A Few Quotations from Michael Polanyi's The Study of Man
- I Was Wrong, and So Are You
Elaborate lecture handouts/Notes/Videos
- Occupational Licensing (ppt)
- The Demand for and Supply of Assurance (ppt)
- School Vouchers (ppt)
- Urban Transit (ppt)
- Mere Libertarianism (ppt)
- Challenging, Bargaining, and Royalty: An Analysis of Libertarian Argumentation (ppt)
- Video (36 min)
- Groupthink in Academia (ppt)
- Why Do Government Officials Believe in the Goodness of Bad Policy? (ppt)
- Concatenate Coordination and Mutual Coordination (ppt)
- Unfolding the Allegory behind Market Communication and Social Error and Correction (ppt)
- Allegory and Political Economy (ppt)
- Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation (the text of a speech)
- The Origins of the Use of "Liberal" in a Political Sense of the Term: William Robertson and Adam Smith (ppt)
- Liberal Remarks on the "Austrian" Identity and Project (the text of an opening statement)
- Band-man: Red on the Inside (ppt)
- Virtues Project for a Youngster
- David Hume on Reason as a Passion
- Liberal Anti-Imperialism
- Critique of Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter
- Bryan Caplan and Adam Smith on Surprise
- Apprehensions over Designer Babies (Bryan Caplan's reply here; David Henderson here)
- Vocabulary aphorism
- A Milton Friedman on the Horizon? (blog post)
- Open Letter on Adam Smith
- Adam Smith presumption-of-liberty passages
- On Amartya Sen on Adam Smith (blog post)
- Critique of critique of The Phantom Menace