Peter L. Berger is one of the most influential social scientists of the 20th century. A citation study of his work published in 1986 that studied the decade between the early 1970s to early 1980s demonstrated that his citation count during this time (1052) put him in the company of other...

Adam Smith's moral theory considered a number of sources of moral approval and at each turn he invoked an accompanying spectator, however sketchy. In judging an action, at each turn we consult our sympathy with a spectator that is natural or proper to the occasion. In this paper I suggest that...

The logic of economic inquiry requires two distinct research programs. One program treats economic life in terms of invariant formal categories across time and place. The other program treats the continual of novelty and turbulence through time through human interaction. These programs are not...

Economics is too often taught poorly in college and universities. We too often present the material both in a boring and too complicated a fashion. Economics is counter-intuitive, but it can be, and should be, taught in an entertaining and simple manner -- stressing the basic principles of the...

Differences in worker skill cause modest differences in wages within a country, but are associated with massive differences in productivity across countries (Hanushek and Kimko, 2000). I build upon Kremer’s (1993) O-ring theory of production to explain this stylized fact. I posit that there...

This paper addresses three questions: (1) When deciding on whether to reward or punish someone, how does how you think others expect you to behave affect your decision? (2) Does it depend upon whether others expect you to reward them vs. punish them? (3) What is the interpretation of such a...

Articulate knowledge entails the triad: information, interpretation, and judgment. Information is the reading of the facts through a working interpretation. Much of modern political economy has miscarried by discoursing as though interpretation were symmetric and final. This move has the effect...

In games with multiple, Pareto-rankable equilibria and repeated play, does a history of playing an inefficient equilibrium make it harder for the players to reach the efficient equilibrium? In other words, can people 'get stuck' in bad equilibria? Previous studies have found support for this,...

A recent line of research demonstrates that cognitive skills - IQ scores, math skills, and the like -have only modest influence on individual wages, but are strongly correlated with national outcomes. It this largely due to human capital spillovers? This paper argues that the answer is yes. It...