Human Rights Are Not a Global Public Good

Does a civil war in Mozambique significantly affect my interests? I say no. Most of my students seem to think yes. On my intro IR final essay exam, I asked a question about what the theory of hegemonic stability would predict about future environmental and human rights politics. I wanted to see whether students could …

What Coase Might Say to Zoning Boards

The Coase Theorem, which tells us that the social optimum may be reached by exchange no matter how property rights are assigned if transaction costs are zero (and not if transaction costs are high enough), has relevance to the problem of zoning. In much of the U.S., zoning is excessively strict, pricing moderate-income households into …

Was the Interstate Highway System a Good Investment?

At the Economist's Democracy in America blog, R.A. makes some good points in favor of skepticism on the question, riffing on Robert Fogel's research on the economics of the railroad. Excerpt: Highway construction generated some positive effects and some negative effects. We tend to focus on the positive effects and remark on how constrained the …