Read of the week / Quote of the week

My read of the week is John Cochrane superbly answering to this... well, "protest letter" (the latter being the reason why one of the labels for this post is "pathetic"). Probably only Milton Friedman himself could have done a better job than Cochrane here... I actually choose the following paragraphy as quote of the week:

Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic. He realized that they are inextricably linked. If the government controls your job or your business, dissent is impossible. He favored, among other things, legalizing drugs, school choice, and volunteer army. To call him or his political legacy “right wing” is simply ignorant, and I mean that also as a technically accurate description rather than an insult.

Via Tyler Cowen, on MR.

And here's the website of the new Milton Friedman Institute (MFI), the object of controversy in the exchange above (you can also read the proposal to establish the MFI, signed by some of my idols within Economics)

Econlinks this week

• Enter Neuroeconomics...once again.

• An excellent obituary for Leo Hurwicz, by Eric Maskin. Turns out it was indeed great timing to award him the Nobel last year (Hurwicz is the oldest Nobelist to date).

• Apparently, the Harvard Society of Fellows are (were) not so great wine tasters :-)-- interesting story and excellent experiment by Steven Levitt, on Freakonomics

• New business idea: trading in soccer talent. Brazilian, for the moment.

• Ed Glaeser with a well done overview of Ehrlich & Ehrlichs' new book. And a conclusion that one can only hope will resonate with many: "Ironically, the very success of environmental alarmism has convinced many of us that the environment is too important to be left to the environmentalists."

• The Cowles Foundation Monographs online!

• The secret to a happy marriage is to be annoying. I sort of vaguely start to understand my parents...

• Greg Mankiw on "What if the US presidential candidates pandered to economists?" . And don't be too cynical.

The Big Apple and The Island. And some good Econ research in Boston

Yes, I admit: my blog has been somewhat neglected recently... And unfortunately it will still be in that situation for a while, since I'm in the middle of some conferences and workshops in the US (plus it is summer and awfully hot here). Tomorrow I'll be presenting in the SED '08 conference at MIT (you can see the precise session and download the paper from here- comments are very welcome!) and next week I'll be attending the NBER Summer Institute Workshop on "Macro Perspectives", which will feature some very very interesting papers. Meanwhile, luckily enough (wouldn't be able to make it to Chicago as well!), my co-author, Marco, will present another of my joint papers in the GAMES '08 conference at Northwestern Univ., Chicago (session and paper available for download here).

But equally important, I've spent the last couple of days in NYC--where it is horribly warm currently, I have to repeat that-- and among many other things, I've managed to see for the first time something I wanted to catch for quite a while now: Alex Balanescu and Ada Milea's performance of "The Island" (written by Gellu Naum). I've enjoyed this performance at Joe's Pub, on the 5th of July and I'll say it was nothing short of amazing. Don't miss it if you have the slightest chance to catch it! A/the line to retain (for current and future reference): "Temptation's still alive, temptation's still alive...".