Indeed. (Let me add that the idea of explaining the US current account deficit as imperial tribute is an idea which occurs to many bright, cynical 19 year olds, but just does not work when you think it through.)

I have never properly appreciated "I don't write the headlines" complaints before this.

Further self-justifying whining: http://bactra.org/weblog/838.html

"Przeworski and Teune ... called for comparativists to ‘replace country names with variables.’ In other words, they wanted political scientists to stop maundering on about the differences arising from the ineffable national characters of Germany, France and Italy, and instead to formulate hypotheses about the relationship between variables that might be seen or not seen in different national cases (e.g.... a trivial and obvious example, to test the hypothesis that states with powerful left parties are more likely to have extensive welfare states). I’d like to see people who study the ‘Internet’ and ‘social media’ stop studying them, and instead start focusing on the role of causal mechanisms that might (or might not) be associated with specific technologies in explaining political outcomes, i.e. to start replacing technology names with mechanisms. This would, of course, require Real Research. But it seems to me more promising than the likely alternatives."

Henry on _The City and the City_, which I still haven't gotten to.

"So what does this predict? Like Blinder’s aphorism, it suggests that we will observe a broad empirical correlation between the extent of disagreement among economists, and the involvement of economists in political disputes. ‘Eat your greens’ propositions that are popular among economists, but more or less equally uncongenial to all political actors in a given system will, as in Blinder’s formulation, be systematically ignored. But economists’ influence will not be particularly high when they disagree with each other, since different economists arguing for different sides of the political debate will at least partially cancel each other out. It will be far higher on those rare and fleeting occasions when economists unite in favor of the one or the other side actively participating in a political debate. I note as a postscript that this toy model contains a simple public choice explanation for the emergence of public choice. Drawing this out is left as an exercise for the reader."

"The bit that is most striking is the 'papers with 1,328 different co-authors.' My inner Diego Gambetta ... suggests that this may in part be a signalling phenomenon. If you are doing research in a field where someone has convincingly demonstrated that the emperor has no clothes, you want to signal as convincingly as possible that you (in contrast to those losers down the hall/in the department across the river/the country/wherever) have results that really stand up. One obvious way to do this is to get the little boy who pointed out the emperor's sartorial shortcomings to co-author a paper with you. Hence, I suspect, lots and lots of people who are eager to co-author something with Ioannidis (and plausibly, many, many more than he might be comfortable co-authoring with).... (NB that I am not suggesting that Iannidis was motivated by such an opportunity; I would be startled and amazed if he had been)."

Henry Farrell appreciation of Elinor Ostrom.

Shorter Henry Farrell: risk means _risk_, you morons.

Ans.: No, unless you by 'ruining' you mean "making obvious to non-economists that the debate exists".

Henry Farrell attempts to _explain_ why oh why we don't have a better press corps.

Often, the only things more annoying than the products of the French Disease are idiotic attempts to make fun of them. Here, Henry shows the _proper_ way of doing this; it's really much more effective.

Evisceration, but in a friendly way. (I am so out of it that hadn't heard about the whole airline inspection thing before this.)

Emerson is in fine form in the comments.

Please stop making revealed preferences arguments when peoples' choices interact. _Thank_ you.

"Sometimes, formal knowledge will indeed enhance the power of the central observer, the authority gazing down on its society. But there is no necessary reason why this should be so."

Special issue of _Public Choice_ on blogging and politics

Henry Farrell on Brad DeLong on Timothy Burke on Dick Cheney, as viewed through John Padgett and Christopher Ansell on Cosimo de Medici.

Henry Farrell on Brad De Long on James Scott on, in part, F. A. Hayek.