In a fantastic display of the power of availability of substitutes, we're witnessing the opposition to legalization of marijuana in California by California Beer and Beverage Distributors.  Proposition 19, which proposes the legalization of marijuana in California, has various groups lobbying against it.  The main group funding the opposition to the proposition is the California Police Chiefs Association.  That makes sense to me for political economy...

Stephen Kinsella sends us to a post on economics education by Paul Gregory, author of an Economic Principles text since the 80s, which is now in its seventh edition.  Gregory tells us in the post that "There is no need for a new Economics 101. What we have experienced over the past two years is nothing new. There is nothing unexpected that has happened. Events however should serve as “teachable moments." I think that he's right about some stuff,...

On Thursday I gave a presentation at the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town about incorporating pop culture and better use of technology into your teaching.  I've been trying to experiment with various things in my teaching recently and I plan to experiment more in the future. Technology and Pop Culture in Teaching Economics from Simon Halliday on Vimeo. The talk began with a discussion of whether I think we should use slides or not.  I...

Jonah Lehrer recently wrote about the identifiable victim effect. In the piece he talks about the work of Paul Slovic and identifiable victims. I appreciate the work that Slovic has done. I have met and interacted with some of Slovic's co-authors and think the work is great. The idea behind identifiable victim bias is that people respond differently when they see one 'identifiable' victim rather than a bunch of statistics indicating the 'true' depths of poverty....