The subtitle is The Collapse of the Honeybee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis and the author is Rowan Jacobsen.  Many books on biodiversity have bad economics but this book has very good economics: Sometimes the fraud is chemical, as when rice syrup is doctored to resemble honey, and sometimes it's ontological.  For instance, what is honey?  If you answered something like "a syrup made entirely

The US embargo of Cuba began in 1960, a year after Fidel Castro turned this island toward communism. It was extended to food and medicines in 1962, the same year as the showdown with Russia over the installation of missiles there. The embargo has prevented American companies from doing business with Cuba, and discouraged tourism to Cuba. The American government also tried with quite limited succes

Greg Mankiw's Blog Random Observations for Students of Economics I rarely read books for a second time, mainly because I am a slow reader and there are so many good books I haven't yet read. But recently I decided to reread Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. It had been about 30 years since I first read it. I did not remember it well, but I did remember liking it very much. After the second re

IT & Economics拙著のサポートページでも補足したが、大恐慌の最中にハイエクとケインズが行なった論争は、今日でも重要な意味がある。テクニカルな話なので、経済学に興味のない人は無視してください。 ハイエクのケインズ批判はきわめて難解で、その資本理論は混乱しており、『一般理論』が大成功を収めたため、この論争はケインズの勝利に終わったと思われているが、いま読み直してみると、別の見方も可能だ。ハイエクの主要な論点は、失業の原因はケインズの考えていたような集計的な過少消費ではなく、個々の産業で労働供給と需要の一致しない状態が続く市場の歪みだということだった。 当時はミクロ的な調整メカニズムを実証的に分析するツールがなかったため、ハイエクの理論は無視されたが、こうしたコーディネーションの問題はのちにClower-Leijonhufvudの不均衡理論や、Lilienのsectoral sh