Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'economics'

September 01, 2010

Distributism is not Free-Market

Forgive the blunt title of this blog post, but the point needs to be made in no uncertain terms. The Zenit News Agency has interviewed John Medaille, author of Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More, which calls for a direct if brief (more later, perhaps – I have yet to read the book) response from this Catholic defender of the market economy. Continue Reading...
August 18, 2010

Fair Trade and Good Intentions

A constant theme here at the Acton Institute is the idea that good intentions are not enough…they need to be connected to sound practice. In a reflection on fair trade at WORLDmag.com, Continue Reading...
August 05, 2010

Re: Broken Windows – University Funding Edition

As Kishore Jayabalan noted yesterday, the fallacy of “broken windows” is, unfortunately, ubiquitous in discussions of public finance and macroeconomics. Though we are told that government spending and public works have a stimulating effect on economic activity, rarely are the costs of such projects discussed. Continue Reading...
July 26, 2010

Re: Gregg on Gold

In a recent post Dr. Sam Gregg outlined several arguments in the case for returning to some kind of gold or commodity-based monetary system.  One of the advantages to a commodity standard, Dr. Continue Reading...
July 23, 2010

Humans are not Economic Automata

Courtesy Evangelical Outpost and the always-interesting 33 Things, here’s a video on the strangeness of the economics of incentives and punishments: The lesson here is that people in real life, body and soul, are not simple rational economic actors who respond only to material realities. Continue Reading...
July 13, 2010

Still not Beyond Petroleum

Here’s OpenMarket: Plain and simple economics — not the alleged machinations of Big Oil or Congress’s unwillingness to put a price on carbon – explains why America remains dependent on petroleum. Continue Reading...
July 08, 2010

Reflections on Christianity and Economic Research

Judith Dean, currently an international economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission, has a worthwhile exploration of the relationship between Christian faith and economic research (HT). It’s up at the InterVarsity site for the Following Christ conference and is titled, “Being a Good Physician: Reflections on Christianity and Economic Research.” Continue Reading...
July 07, 2010

Keynes vs. Hayek: Still the Main Event

Via the Volokh Conspiracy: Mario Rizzo and Gerald O’Driscoll point to dueling letters to the editor from 1932 in The London Times by John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek on whether government spending can help cure contemporary economic woes. Continue Reading...