Testimonials

" Econ Journal Watch has been remarkably successful at attracting top-quality commentary on economic journal articles, and on the economics discipline more generally.  The journals themselves are publishing less commentary -- as an article in Econ Journal Watch noted -- and are often reluctant to criticize the research that they publish, so Econ Journal Watch provides a valuable service.  The material Econ Journal Watch publishes is relevant, interesting, and fun to read, and Econ Journal Watch has developed a following as a result. I have been an academic economist for more than three decades and have published well over 100 articles in academic journals, and rarely do I get much feedback from what I've written.  However, I have had one piece published in Econ Journal Watch, and on the day it was published four of my colleagues commented to me about it in casual conversation in the hallway, and I also received several e-mail comments on it.  That was first-hand evidence to me that not only is the material in Econ Journal Watch good, economists read it! Econ Journal Watch has already had a significant impact on the profession, and I expect its significance to grow over time. "

Randall G. Holcombe
DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics, Florida State University


Econ Journal Watch
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KennedyKennedy

“Of course liberty was an important part of Smith’s legacy, but to imply or assert that modern constructions on Smith’s use of the invisible hand tagged to liberty is, in my humble view, tenuously stretching the connection between Smith’s use of the invisible hand metaphor and what some, but not Smith, called laissez-faire, a concept which Smith never used.”

Economic Notes from Underground

HakesHakes

“The preference falsification in which I engaged was to intentionally take a simple clear research paper and make it so complex and obscure that it successfully impressed referees. That is, I wrote a paper to impress rather than inform—a violation of my most closely held beliefs regarding the proper intent of research. I often suspected that many papers I read were intentionally complex and obscure, and now I am part of the conspiracy.”

KinsellaKinsella

“Preference falsification can occur in teaching when a personal intellectual compromise takes place with respect to the content of a class being taught. The professor publicly espouses a theory or mode of storytelling whose policy prescriptions are, in some cases, orthogonal to their private and professional views or attitudes.”

LeonardLeonard

“I can not say that my role as an economics instructor has informed my administrative decisions. Operating costs, salaries, benefits, services and supplies increase predictably each year. As an academic administrator I have unconsciously relied upon two of the least internally controversial, least combative means of bringing revenue in-line with probable operating costs. I have consistently taken operating costs as a given. More often than not, I have sought to increase enrollment or tuition, usually both, rather than rigorously controlling expenses With the few exceptions of painfully easing out moribund services and programs, I have ignored the academy’s traditional production function—the mix of faculty, curriculum and infrastructure—that drives our operating costs increases each year. Yet as an instructor, I have consistently demanded my students demonstrate in their responses to trivial case problems their ability to recognize inefficient and ineffective use of scarce resources and to propose alternatives.”

BensonBenson

“It took more than 25 years for me to suppress my destructive economic personalities so the narrative political economist could finally be free. I suppose I could relapse if I fail to take my meds (anti-depressants supplemented with beer and Jack Daniels), miss too many sessions with my therapists (Jim Gwartney, participants in Liberty Fund Colloquia), or lose touch with my support groups (APEE members, EJW editors and supporters, my wife and daughters).”
 

Quote of the Day

...It is too clearly indefensible to treat “happiness” or the “good life” for the individual as a definable end to be achieved by a definite technique....

[ Full Quote ]

"My own view of the social-economic policy is not greatly concerned with the notion of treating the individual satisfaction-function as a welfare-function and proceeding to the notion of a social maximum in terms of some relation between individual maxima. It is too clearly indefensible to treat “happiness” or the “good life” for the individual as a definable end to be achieved by a definite technique; and even more indefensible to view the objective of social-economic policy in terms of the amount and distribution of measurable impersonal goods and services. Wealth and poverty are terribly important things, but that view of their significance seems to me an absurd over-simplication. Freedom itself, as a value per se, if far more important."

Frank H. Knight. The Role of Principles in Economics and Politics. Presidential Address delivered at the 62nd annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Chicago, 1950, published in American Economic Review 41(1), March 1951: 1-29; quote on p. 17-18.