Not too long ago, Peter Leeson published a paper, 'An-arggh-chy', on the internal governance structures of pirate societies in the 17th & 18th centuries.  I recently presented the paper to my PhD class 'Institutions of the Capitalism' with Professor Sam Bowles. You can download my presentation here.   Leeson produced a great piece of economic history, combining good discursive writing with high quality institutional analysis.  Leeson provides evidence...

So here's a summary of books that I have recently read or listened to.  I am trying out a new thing - star ratings here.  I cross-post these reviews to amazon.co.uk under my account details there (SD Halliday "Economics Grad Student").  I thought I may as well give the star ratings here too. Non-fictionE.B. White - Essays of E.B. White - I have seldom come across a book of essays that I want to read, re-read and read yet again.  E.B. White's collection...

David Warsh has an interesting new column out at Economic Principals.  In it he discusses the growing role of 'Market Design' a relatively new field in economics that focuses on auctions, the underlying structures of markets, and more.  The champion of this new field is Al Roth of Harvard, from whose blog, Market Design, I got the tip about the article.  Take a look at Warsh's summary to read a review of some of the latest ideas in market design and auction...

Yesterday evening, Pranab Bardhan, of UC Berkeley and currently the Fulbright Visiting Professor here at Siena, presented a seminar on a working paper written by him and Dilip Mookherjee.  The work is based on previous research of theirs with 89 villages in West Bengal, India. Previously, their research was about village-level variables and the dynamics that affected the villages.  Recently though, they undertook a household survey in the villages looking...

'Perfectly happy', the title of the Boston Globe article on happiness, is a bit of a misnomer because 'happiness' research still has not defined way to make people 'perfectly happy', but just probably 'happier than you'd think'. Nevertheless, many of the comments that the journalist makes about happiness are valid.  For example, "what we're learning should make us reconsider some of the basic rules by which government regulates behavior: how we litigate lawsuits...

Bob Rowthorn is presenting a series of lectures at Siena, which he began on Wednesday with a lecture introducing the basics of genes, altruism, and the co-evolution of culture and genes. Today's lecture (where I currently am live-blogging from, joy!) concerns altruism in families.  He's presenting his model, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology (2006) called the 'Sibling Model' - the article is 'The Evolution of altruism between siblings: Hamilton's...