New ideas in economics and the social sciences
The US military is the most expensive armed force on the planet. But what exactly does this spending buy? The post The Business of War and the Mismeasurement of Military Might appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
I look at the decline in US high-school reading scores, and discuss why the cause might have less to do with smartphones and more to do with dubious elementary school pedagogy. The post Why Kids Are Getting Worse at Reading: The Case Against Whole-Language Teaching appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
Techno-optimists think that humans might be able to one day live forever. I think they’re almost certainly wrong. Here’s a deep dive into the science of our finite human lifespans. The post The Human Lifespan Probably has an Upper Limit … and Why That’s Good appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
The US is in the midst of an oil boom. How long will it last? The post US Oil-and-Gas Production: Signs of an Impending Bust appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
I take a break from political economy and discuss what I see as the unfolding revolution in our understanding of the universe. The post An Unfolding Scientific Revolution in Cosmology appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
In a recent paper called Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters” , Roger Pielke Jr. published a chart that's so bad I've devoted a whole essay to debunking it. The post Roger Pielke Jr.’s Appallingly Bad Analysis of Billion Dollar Disasters appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
The Lotka-Volterra equations are a toy model of predator-prey dynamics. But despite its simplicity, the Lotka-Volterra model has a lot to say about how humans exploit resources. The post Insights from the Lotka-Volterra Model appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
I chart the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, as measured by its share of world energy consumption. The post The Soviet Experiment with Empire appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
I look at the rise and fall of the British and US empires, measured in terms of their share of world energy consumption. The post The Half Life of Empire appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .
Now seems like a good time to talk about fascism. In this post, I use linguistic data to probe the deep origins of fascist thought. And I gaze at the rising tide of fascist sentiment in anglophone writing. The post The Deep Roots of Fascist Thought appeared first on Economics from the Top Down .