Archive for Russell Shannon
Free-Market Economics in a Phone Booth
Dr. Shannon is professor of economics at Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. In The Wealth of Nations, published 220 years ago, Adam Smith argued that the interests of consumers would be better served by an open system of free markets than by the regulated regime of mercantilism that prevailed. Competition, Smith maintained, was more efficient [...]
1Dec1996 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedCreating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England
Dr. Shannon is professor of economics at Clemson University. Some 90 years have now passed since the German sociologist Max Weber published his famous study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In it Weber argued that the areas of the Western world inhabited by people whose religious beliefs caused them to consider ordinary [...]
1Nov1996 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedJapan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Development State
“Trade between the United States and Japan can be fair only if we level the playing field.” So say countless politicians and others who decry the obstacles Japan erects to sales of American products in Japanese markets. Threats last year to impose 100 percent tariffs on Japanese luxury car imports are just one of many [...]
1Feb1996 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Trouble with Keynes
“In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.” —John Maynard Keynes (1923)1 Keynes’ remark about the inevitability of death is now famous. It is, however, [...]
1Jul1995 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Liberty Of Conscience: Roger Williams In America by Edwin S. Gaustad
William B. Eerdmans Company, 225 Jefferson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503 • 1991 • 229 pages • $14.95 paper By and large, immigrants to the United States have been attracted by economic opportunities. Yet, in the early colonial days, North America was primarily a refuge from religious oppression. In fact, many who came to [...]
1Feb1992 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: If Youre So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise by Donald N. McCloskey
The University of Chicago Press, 11030 S. Langley Avenue, Chicago, IL 60628 • 180 pages • 1990 • $17.95 cloth One can almost predict it. It usually happens whenever I give a talk to a civic club or some other group. It’s almost sure to occur at a social gathering when people discover that I [...]
1Aug1991 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Inside Perestroika: The Future of the Soviet Economy by Abel Aganbegyan
Harper & Row, Keystone Industrial Park, Scranton, PA 18512 • 1989 241 pages * $19.95 cloth Abel Aganbegyan has been one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s chief economic advisers. In his book, which is written for general audiences, Aganbegyan indicates clearly that he has had ample opportunities to observe the operation of a centrally controlled economy and [...]
1Oct1990 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Economic Wisdom of A Connecticut Yankee
Professor Shannon teaches in the Economics Department, Clemson University. While Mark Twain’s fame rests largely on his tales of youths growing up in mid-19th century America, he also wrote an incisive demonstration of the superiority of free market economics over the regulated and hierarchical society of English manorialism. This fact may be less surprising when [...]
1Jun1990 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Opening Up The Soviet Union by Jerry F. Hough
The Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW. Washington. DC 20036-2188 • 1988 • 100 pages * $8.95 paper During the “blockbuster” film summer of 1989, there was one particularly astonishing film shown on American screens called Little Vera. Unlike such mythical and adventurous films as Batman and Indiana Jones, this film showed the stark reality [...]
1Feb1990 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Protectionism by Jagdish Bhagwati
The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street. Cambridge, MA 02142 • 1988 168 pages • $16.95 cloth In recent years, some economists have been lured away from the profession% traditional attachment to the principles of free trade. Instead, they advocate “strategic trade policies” in which governments subsidize favored domestic firms to help them gain an international [...]
1Jan1990 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedHurricane Hugo: Price Controls Hinder Recovery
Professor Shannon teaches in the Economics Department, Clemson University. Editors’ Note: The Foundation for Economic Education sent this Freeman op-ed to the nation’s press shortly after Hurricane Hugo struck Charleston, South Carolina, in September. In Charleston, South Carolina, many people struggling to recover from the havoc wrought by Hurricane Hugo discovered to their dismay something [...]
1Dec1989 | Russell Shannon | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Review: Hong Kong byJan Morris
Random House, 400 Hahn Road, Westminster, MD 21157 • 1988 • 359 pages • $19.95 doth “Hong Kong,” says British writer Jan Morris in her new book, “has always been the brazen embodiment of free enterprise.” Although Hong Kong has existed on the principle of laissez faire as a British colony for 150 years, it [...]
1Oct1989 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: The Fords: An American Epic by Peter Collier and David Horowitz
Summit Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.- 1987 • 496 pages • $22,95 Perhaps a more fitting subtitle for Peter Collier and David Horowitz’s new account of the Ford family would be the title Winston Churchill chose for the final volume of his World War II memoirs: Triumph and Tragedy. Surely, [...]
1Aug1988 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Senseless Slander of Services
Professor Shannon teaches in the Economics Department, Clemson University. People who urge an expanded role for government in our economy certainly deserve an award for persistence! When one of their arguments collapses, they relentlessly erect another. Over the past few years, for example, there has been much ado about our emerging “rust belt.” Often due [...]
1Jul1988 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedTear Down This Wall
Professor Shannon teaches in the Economics Department, Clemson University. Last June, after his conference at Venice with the leaders of Japan, Canada, and Western Europe, President Reagan made a brief but significant visit to Berlin. There, in front of the Brandenburg Gate, he issued a striking and much-publicized challenge to the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. [...]
1Jan1988 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedTrade Barriers
Professor Shannon teaches in the Economics Department, Clemson University. When he wrote Wealth of Nations in 1776, Adam Smith referred to “a certain propensity in human nature . . . to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.”[1] Even children are known to be prone to swap such items as stamps, bubblegum cards, marbles, [...]
1Feb1985 | Russell Shannon | 1 comment | ContinuedLeave the Pricing to the Market
Professor Shannon teaches in the Economics Department, Clemson University. Last fall a friend of mine working as a ticket agent for Greyhound in Atlanta told me a strike was likely. The bus company, he said, felt the workers’ wages were too high and, contrary to long-standing tradition, sought to reduce them. On both accounts, my [...]
1Aug1984 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | Continued-
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