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How to regulate the psychology of regulators My latest column in the Wall Street Journal is about the psychology of bureaucracy. just as we need to understand the human proclivities that give rise to booms and busts in markets, so we need to understand the human proclivities that motivate officials. Here are five identified by Slavisa […]

Plus other matters aired on the radio Here’s an hour long conversation I did on Econtalk with economist and novelist Russ Roberts about trade, prosperity and Adam Smith. It includes a discussion of why animals can manage reciprocity but not, apparently, exchange.

Political plurality allows innovations to flourish My latest Wall Street Journal column, Triumph of the Idea Smugglers, argues that from time to time in history good ideas need rescuing from bad regimes. If Thales of Miletus had not infected Greece with rationalism after travelling in Egypt, and if 1700 years later, Leonardo Fibonacci had not […]

What characteristics would extraterrestrial life have? Here’s a video of a discussion I had with Richard Dawkins about `life’ back in June: extra-terrestrial life, artificial life and synthetic life.  

Is modern growth a materialist or an ideological achievement? Continuing the debate about the industrial revolution with Deirdre McCloskey Here’s her reply to me …We agree at least that innovation is the key. That’s a very, very important agreement. Joel Mokyr, Jack Goldstone, and our own Greg Clark join Matt Ridley, Robert Allen, and me […]

Market innovation helped the miners; counselling was counter-productive Today I read two contrasting articles about the wonderful rescue of the Chilean miners that I strongly recommend, even though both are a few days old. The first, by Brendan O’Neill, in Spiked (hat tip: Frank Stott), reveals the degree to which the miners helped themselves to cope […]

Or rather, why did it not peter out? At Cato Unbound, there is a set of essays on the subject in response to Deirdre McCloskey, one of which is by me, others by Greg Clark and Jonathan Feinstein. I champion the theory that coal was crucial, because it showed increasing rather than diminshing returns (the more people […]

My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal On the failed promise of genomics. Is it because common ailments are caused by many different rare genetic variants?

GM crops benefit non-GM crops nearby Do you remember how, back in the days when genetically modified crops were as vilifed as climate sceptics were until recently, one of the arguments deployed against them was that they would `contaminate’ neighbouring farms with their genetically modified pollen? This was one justification for a total ban, as […]

Remember how vilifed were the IVF pioneers Robin Marantz Henig hits the nail on the head in the New York Times today: The history of in vitro fertilization demonstrates not only how easily the public will accept new technology once it’s demonstrated to be safe, but also that the nightmares predicted during its development almost never […]