In this issue:
Great apprehensions, prolonged Depression. Writing in 2008 in the American Economic Review, Gauti Eggertsson claims that Hoover instantiated three policy dogmas, and that, by overcoming Hoover’s dogmas, Roosevelt shifted expectations and brought recovery by the end of his first term. A thoroughgoing critique is offered here by Steven Horwitz. (Professor Eggertsson is invited to reply in a future issue.)
EJW Audio with Lawrence H. White. Inaugural interview with Steven Horwitz
The policy views of American Economic Association members. Robert Whaples shares the results of a new survey that includes many new policy-opinion questions.
Economic Notes from Underground.
Four confessions:
- Bruce Benson tells his troubled story—afflicted for 25 years with economic dissociative identity disorder—but it ends happily.
- David Hakes tells how he complicated the math to get a paper published.
- Stephen Kinsella tells of having to teach what you don’t believe in.
- William P. Leonard tells how he teaches one thing in economics courses but, as college administrator, practices unconscionably to the contrary.
Invisible hand—metaphor of moment? Gavin Kennedy replies to Daniel Klein over Smith’s famous phrase.
The Scottish tradition in economic thought This 1955 lecture by Alec L. Macfie (1898–1980) richly treats two centuries of Scottish economic thinkers and suggests distinctiveness in the line.