Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Volume 19, Issue 2, September 2022

In this issue (.pdf):

Hemma bäst—or, English versus native language: Illustrating with Sweden and economics, Eva Forslund and Magnus Henrekson question the English-language pull where English is not the native language. Commentary essays are provided by Lars Engwall and by Alberto Mingardi.

What are your most underappreciated works? Responding to an open invitation, 18 scholars with 4k+ Google Scholar cites point to a decade-or-more old paper with cite count below his or her h-index. The contributors are Doug Allen, Niclas Berggren, Christian Bjørnskov, Peter Boettke, Nick Bostrom, Bryan Caplan, Joshua Gans, Terri Griffith, Zoe Hilton, Dan Klein, Douglas Noonan, Michael Ostrovsky, Sam Peltzman, Eric Rasmusen, Paul Rubin, Steve Sheffrin, Stefan Voigt, and Richard Wagner.

Cooked: Higher temperatures decrease the rate of economic growth in the United States, according to Riccardo Colacito, Bridget Hoffmann, and Toan Phan. David Barker criticizes their JMCB article on two counts, makes the improvements, dissolves the results, and uses alternate data yielding a sign reversal though also not statistically significant.

Erroneous Erratum: Previously, Stephen Walker criticized an article in Journal of Accounting Research (here and here). Now the authors, Yang Bao, Bin Ke, Bin Li, Y. Julia Yu, and Jie Zhang, have issued an Erratum in JAR, citing Walker’s critiques. Walker takes a hard look and calls on JAR to do an investigation into research misconduct.

Justice to Hutt: Phil Magness and Art Carden appreciate W. H. Hutt, in rebutting William Darity, M’Balou Camara, and Nancy MacLean.

Film incentive programs revisited: Picking up on an earlier exchange (Bradbury’s critique, O’Brien and Lane’s reply), Bruce Bird, Hilde Patron, and William Smith bring scrutiny to the reply, new data to bear, and renewed doubts about the original paper, which was published in Regional Studies.

Not being tread upon: Ryan Murphy rejoins to Jan Ott on the understanding of freedom in the Fraser economic freedom index, and Ott supplies a second reply.

Classical liberalism in Finland, 1900–2022: Previously, Jens Grandell told of liberalism in Finland to about 1900. Now Grandell completes the story. The essays contribute to the Classical Liberalism in Econ, by Country series.

Adam Smith’s View of Man: “Smith would not have thought it sensible to treat man as a rational utility-maximiser.” The University of Chicago professor Ronald Coase’s Journal of Law and Economics essay from 1976, republished here by permission, focuses especially on Smith’s Moral Sentiments.

Scattered Hints Concerning Philosophy and Learning: In this little-known essay from the 1750s, Edmund Burke warns against “confined” learning: “The End of learning is not knowledge but virtue; as the End of all speculation should be practice of one sort or another.”

EJW Audio:

Eva Forslund and Magnus Henrekson on English vs. the Native Language

Phil Magness on Quinn Slobodian on Mises

Michael Weissman on GREs in Physical Education Research

Call for papers:

What are your most underappreciated works?

Who should get the Nobel Prize in economics, and why?

EJW invites ‘journal watch’ submissions beyond Econ.

EJW fosters open exchange. We welcome proposals and submissions of diverse viewpoints.

Read the September 2022 issue in full (.pdf)

Table of contents (.pdf) with links to articles