In honor of Awkward Utopia’s being among the top 100 economics weblogs, I deign to redact some recent offerings of the economics blogosphere.
- Over Marginal Revolution Alex Tabarrok reminds his colleagues of the difference between logical sufficiency and necessity and throws into stark relief what the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics does and does not tell us;
- Also at Marginal Rev, Tyler Cowen links to a paper (which might partially reconcile Moderate to neoclassicism) examining the “market for lemmas” in economics, sparking a discussion that produces some thoughtful comments on issues in empirical research;
- Free Exchange ponders the merits of a “North American Union” by way of comparison with the European Union (omitting the obvious historical example, the United States of America). It seems that even Ron Paul would have denied the virtues of Union espoused in the Federalist Papers;
- Certain ideas of Europe covers the case of “Greens for globalization,” and ‘though I personally want to belong to the “cigar puffing, top-hatted” class, I too welcome our granola friends to enlightened liberalism;
- Indulging, perhaps, in a bit of political-stereotyping, Shannon Love at ChicagoBoyz asks his readers if the political left cares about individual discretion in any area but sex;
- In what I hope is a joke of a post, Arnold Kling examines gas taxes and foreign policy, arguing that perhaps out-and-out seizure of oil by force might be a reasonable policy. Is it just me or do poor judgment and hypocrisy rule when it comes to petroleum?
- Bryan Caplan offers brief observations on the sociology of role-playing games. (It’s not Terra Nova, but there’s no accounting for generational differences in taste.)
Well… there it is.
As much as I’d like to concur, I don’t believe that listing was an explicit ranking. The blogs are merely grouped by category. Other language on the page suggests it is just a list. So we can only claim to be among the top 100 best, not the 26th best. The explicit numbering does indeed send a mixed signal however.
I feel that a claim to being 26th is not inconsistent with the data, and therefore warrants publication. Nevertheless, peer review being the garrot of creativity that it is, and having endured referee objections, I have changed the text. :)
Regarding the North American Union, I’d like to bring up this classic map: The post WW2 world.
Perhaps an update of this map is required? A future UES meeting might allocate modern day countries to respective unions as we see fit, à la ‘the list’ we made long ago. It would be easy to create a new map using GIS software.
As a side note, I especially enjoyed the 1st welfare theorem post (by Tabarrok, not Cowen). I didn’t have the stamina to endure the comments, however.
Thanks for catching that; that’s what happens when one has too many tabs open.