Writing a good dissertation
I supervise a lot of dissertations and find myself giving the same advice over and over again. I don’t mind doing this, but I thought that s
Celebrating 200 years of a deeply unintuitive idea: Comparative advantage
This past week marked the 200th publication anniversary of David Ricardo’s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Despite...
Conjoining and disconjoining with another person
There was that strange moment again today when we said goodbye. He was with me, and then, a moment later, he was not. My boyfriend still...
Is science like manufacturing or like farming?
It is obvious why specialization improves productivity for manufactured goods (even if people seem to systematically underestimate just...
Why we under-appreciate the division of labor
Economists have long known that a key source of society's wealth is the division of labor. Robinson Crusoe was marvelously...