November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Here’s a link to my recently published letter to the editor, which I posted here first.

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November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Family Guy is the best entertainment on TV, I believe. Sure, “the series is often accused of being unreasonably stupid, pointlessly irreverent or unnecessarily offensive”, but that’s precisely why it’s so entertaining. Here is a review.

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November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Here is research (20 pages in PDF format) from Cato on the benefits of free trade, written by Daniel Griswold last week.

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November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Here’s an excellect article on the benefits of free trade.

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November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

I see Becker won the Presidential Medal of Freedom and still took the time to blog the next day. Go Gary!

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November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

George W. had a good year in 2006. Dick Cheney had an even better year. Relatively speaking, however, the VP had a bad year in 2006. Consider his income in 2000.

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November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

I’m currently reviewing Mankiw’s latest edition (2007) of his microeconomics textbook. I have noticed some changes throughout the text, such as his changes to the section on the Laffer Curve, which I welcome. I also do not recall reading this before on page 425 of chapter 19:

In a 1986 article in the Journal of Economic History, economic historian Jennifer Roback looked at these questions. Roback found that the segregation of races on streetcars was the result of laws that required such segregation. Before these laws were passed, racial discrimination in seating was rare. It was far more common to segregate smokers and nonsmokers.

Moreover, the firms that ran the streetcars often opposed the laws requiring racial segregation. Providing separate seating for different races raised the firms’ costs and reduced their profit. One railroad company manager complained to the city council that, under the segregation laws, “the company has to haul around a good deal of empty space.”

Here is how Roback describes the situation in one southern city:

The railroad company did not initiate the segregation policy and was not at all eager to abide by it. State legislation, public agitation, and a threat to arrest the president of the railroad were all required to induce them to separate the races on their cars….There is no indication that the management was motivated by belief in civil rights or racial equality. The evidence indicates their primary motives were economic; separation was costly….Officials of the company may or may not have disliked blacks, but they were not willing to forgo the profits necessary to indulge such prejudice.

Splendid.

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November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has this research on the declining U.S. personal saving rate.

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November 7, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

This is a non-gated version of The Impact of Milton Friedman on Modern Monetary Economics: Setting the Record Straight on Paul Krugman’s “Who Was Milton Friedman?”

For those that dislike quasi-technical papers, here is the conclusion:

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