One of the great insights of modern growth theory -- Paul Romer's Nobel Prize -- is that ideas are the foundation of economic growth. Ideas are also "nonrivial." If you use my car, I can't use it, but if you use our family recipe for road-oil chocolate cake (yum), we can still enjoy it as much as ever. Once an idea has been had, economics says it should be used as widely as possible as soon as possible
Last month, I was invited to appear on Goodfellows, a podcast hosted by economist John H. Cochrane, former White House National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and historian Niall Ferguson. It was a penetrating discussion of race, culture, and economics that delved into some personal matters as well.
Does Middle East security really revolve around oil? According to this policy practitioner, doubts are accumulating about the “petrocentric” theory of the region's geopolitics, with anomalies that cannot be easily explained away by the conventional fixation on oil production. This essay draws on parallels from historical astronomy to suggest the time is ripe for a strategic revolution in the minds of American policy makers.
When schools across California closed in mid-March of last year, parents saw the decision for what it was: a sensible precaution in the face of a novel threat. At the time, they couldn’t have imagined it would be a year or more before their children would see the inside of a classroom again.
Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson discusses his latest book on disasters, natural and man-made, and why so many governments got Covid-19 so wrong.
(58:50) Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson explains why people we are tired of seeing mediocre athletes become activists to achieve the notoriety that they cannot get through their athletic achievements.
Amid fierce public debates about the size of the Biden administration’s coronavirus protection and stimulus package, the Initiative on Global Markets Forum (the University of Chicago Booth School of Business) invited a panel of US experts to express their views on the likelihood of the economy ‘overheating’ and causing inflation as a result. Romesh Vaitilingam writes that the survey indicates considerable uncertainty and differences in views.
