The Loss of a Scholar: Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson

On April 12 the free-market tradition lost an important scholar with the death, in Málaga, Spain, of Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson. She was 93.

Although English-born she spent much of her life in Spain and made the study of that country’s history and intellectual tradition her life’s work. Her reconstruction of its liberal past was unparalleled.

Are People Pleased with the Efficient Amount of Pollution?

It is clear that zero pollution is not a reasonable goal once we recognize that polluting creates benefits as well as costs. Long before we reduced pollution to zero, there would be so much environmental quality and so few manufactured goods that the marginal value gained from increasing pollution would be greater than the marginal cost.

Economic Efficiency

Economic efficiency is the standard that economists use to evaluate a wide range of things. Economists who favor markets argue that they generate outcomes more efficient than do socialism or government regulation. As we shall see in the next few months, economists don’t like pollution because it is inefficient.

How Government Prevents Us from Buying Safety

There is a limit to how much people will voluntarily pay to reduce the risk of accidental injury or death. In other words, the marginal value people place on their lives is finite. We accept some risks to take advantage of opportunities to do things that, at the margin, provide more value than the expected sacrifice in health and life expectancy.

In Praise of Athletes’ High Salaries

While teaching in public schools many years ago, I found that almost all teachers believed they were underpaid and underappreciated. Things probably have not changed. My colleagues expressed their sentiments by hanging a newspaper editorial on a bulletin board in the teachers’ lounge that condemned the high salaries of professional athletes. “Americans do not value [...]

Running Out of Agricultural Land

Fear that we are running out of important resources is perpetual. Oil is a favorite thing to worry about; landfill space is another, and trees yet another. I could continue listing things (coal, copper, iron ore, even tin) that people have worried would soon be exhausted, and I plan to discuss the persistent fear of resource exhaustion in future columns. In most cases the fear is baseless—fueled by organized interests hoping to capture advantages by scaring the public, by sloppy journalism, and by a general lack of basic economic understanding.