Bryan Caplan | |
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Born | Bryan Douglas Caplan April 8, 1971 Northridge, California, U.S. |
Education | |
Academic career | |
Field | Economics |
School or tradition | Anarcho-capitalism Libertarianism Public choice |
Influences | Ben Bernanke, [1] James M. Buchanan, Michael Huemer, Ludwig von Mises, [2] Philip Tetlock [3] |
Contributions | Rational irrationality |
Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Website | bcaplan |
This article is part of a series on |
Libertarianism in the United States |
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Bryan Douglas Caplan (born April 8, 1971) is an American economist and author. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University, [4] a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and a former contributor to the Freakonomics blog and EconLog. [5] He currently publishes his own blog, Bet on It. [6] Caplan is a self-described "economic libertarian". [7] [8] The bulk of Caplan's academic work is in behavioral economics and public economics, especially public choice theory. [9]
Caplan was born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, [10] [11] in Northridge, California, on April 8, 1971. [12] He obtained a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993 and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 1997. [13]
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, published in 2007, further develops the "rational irrationality" concept from Caplan's earlier academic writing. It draws heavily from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy in making the argument that voters have systematically biased beliefs about many important economic topics. Caplan writes that rational irrationality is an explanation for the failure of democracy. [14] The book was reviewed in the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal , [15] The New York Times , [16] and The New Yorker , [9] as well as in academic publications such as the Journal of Libertarian Studies , [17] Public Choice , [18] Libertarian Papers, [19] and The Independent Review . [20] It received a disparaging critique by Rupert Read in the European Review . [21]
In 2011, Caplan published his second book, titled Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, arguing that people often work too hard in child-rearing, and as a result, they are scared of the idea of having children. Caplan's book urged parents to relax with respect to child-rearing. The book argues that as the perceived costs (in terms of child-rearing expense and effort) of having children fell, it made sense to have more children based on the basic theory of supply and demand. [22] The book was reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, [23] The Guardian , [24] RealClearMarkets, [25] and The Washington Times . [26] It also led to debates sponsored by The Wall Street Journal [27] and The Guardian. [28] The Guardian had Caplan debating "Tiger Mom" Amy Chua on the merits of strict parenting style. [28] The book was also featured in a story on National Public Radio. [29] Kirkus Reviews described it as "inconsistent and unpersuasive." [30]
In a June 2011 blog post titled "The Ideological Turing Test" contesting Paul Krugman's claim that political liberals can accurately state conservatives' views but not vice versa, Caplan proposed a test analogous to a kind of Turing test: instead of judging whether a chatbot had accurately imitated a person, the test would judge whether a person had accurately stated the views of ideological opponents to the opponents' satisfaction. [31] [32] Other writers have since said of someone that they can (or can't) "pass an ideological Turing test" if they are deemed to be capable (or incapable) of understanding and accurately stating an adversary's arguments. [32] [33] [34]
The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money was published in 2018 by Princeton University Press. Drawing on the economic concept of job market signaling and research in educational psychology, the book argues that much of higher education is very inefficient and has only a small effect in improving human capital, contrary to much of the conventional consensus in labor economics that Caplan claims takes the human capital theory for granted. [35] [36]
Caplan and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoonist Zach Weinersmith created the graphic non-fiction book Open Borders: the Science and Ethics of Immigration , which was released on October 29, 2019. [37]
Tyler Cowen called it "a landmark in economic education, how to present economic ideas, and the integration of economic analysis and graphic visuals." [38] The Economist praised it as "a model of respectful, persuasive argument". [39] Kevin D. Williamson, writing in National Review , concluded a review of the book with "Professor Caplan's argument is multifaceted, energetically presented, fun to read, and worth giving some real attention to if only as an exercise in clarifying one's own thinking about the question". [40] Williamson said that the book was "fun to read" and well-presented but that Caplan did not address some obvious counterarguments against open borders and suggested that he oversimplified the issue. [41]
In 2022, Caplan published Labor Econ Versus the World: Essays on the World's Greatest Market, a collection of his essays from the publication EconLog edited by Jack Pfefferkorn. In it, Caplan argues against minimum wage laws, immigration bans, government spending on education, and Keynesianism.
Tyler Cowen wrote a reaction to the book, stating that his disagreement with Caplan is "that most of the inequity occurs upstream of labor markets, through the medium of culture." [42]
Caplan was cited as one of the leading proponents of the open borders position in articles in The Atlantic and Vox . [43] [44] He has also been quoted on the topic of immigration in outlets such as the Huffington Post [45] and Time magazine. [46]
Caplan's anarcho-capitalist views were discussed by Brian Doherty in his book Radicals for Capitalism and in Reason magazine. [47] Caplan has argued that anarcho-capitalists have a better claim on the history of anarchist thought than "mainstream anarchists", or "left-anarchists", as he refers to them.[ citation needed ] This argument has been disputed by other anarchists. [48] [49]
Caplan is married to Corina Caplan, with four children, and resides in Oakton, Virginia. [50] [51]
David Director Friedman is an American economist, physicist, legal scholar, and anarcho-capitalist theorist. Although his academic training was in chemistry and physics and not law or economics, he is known for his textbook writings on microeconomics and the libertarian theory of anarcho-capitalism, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom. Described by Walter Block as a "free-market anarchist" theorist, Friedman has also authored several other books and articles, including Price Theory: An Intermediate Text (1986), Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters (2000), Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (1996), and Future Imperfect (2008).
The economic calculation problem (ECP) is a criticism of using central economic planning as a substitute for market-based allocation of the factors of production. It was first proposed by Ludwig von Mises in his 1920 article "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" and later expanded upon by Friedrich Hayek.
Milton Friedman was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, and Robert Lucas Jr.
Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science." It includes the study of political behavior. In political science, it is the subset of positive political theory that studies self-interested agents and their interactions, which can be represented in a number of ways—using standard constrained utility maximization, game theory, or decision theory. It is the origin and intellectual foundation of contemporary work in political economy.
The Political Compass is a website soliciting responses to a set of 62 propositions in order to rate political ideology in a spectrum with two axes: one about economic policy (left–right) and another about social policy (authoritarian–libertarian).
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a German-American academic associated with Austrian School economics, anarcho-capitalism, right-wing libertarianism, and opposition to democracy. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), senior fellow of the Mises Institute think tank, and the founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society.
Robin Dale Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a former research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known for his work on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute's Foresight Exchange and DARPA's FutureMAP project. He invented market scoring rules like LMSR used by prediction markets such as Consensus Point, and has conducted research on signalling. He also proposed the Great Filter hypothesis.
Robert Higgs is an American economic historian and economist combining material from Public Choice, the New institutional economics, and the Austrian school of economics; and describes himself as a "libertarian anarchist" in political and legal theory and public policy. His writings in economics and economic history have most often focused on the causes, means, and effects of government power and growth.
Libertarian paternalism is the idea that it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior while also respecting freedom of choice, as well as the implementation of that idea. The term was coined by behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein in a 2003 article in the American Economic Review. The authors further elaborated upon their ideas in a more in-depth article published in the University of Chicago Law Review that same year. They propose that libertarian paternalism is paternalism in the sense that "it tries to influence choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves" ; note and consider, the concept paternalism specifically requires a restriction of choice. It is libertarian in the sense that it aims to ensure that "people should be free to opt out of specified arrangements if they choose to do so". The possibility to opt out is said to "preserve freedom of choice". Thaler and Sunstein published Nudge, a book-length defense of this political doctrine, in 2008.
Econ Journal Watch is a semiannual peer-reviewed electronic journal established in 2004. It is published by the Fraser Institute. According its website, the journal publishes comments on articles appearing in other economics journals, essays, reflections, investigations, and classic critiques. As of 2017, the Journal maintained a podcast, voiced by Lawrence H. White.
EconTalk is a weekly economics podcast hosted by Russ Roberts. Roberts, formerly an economics professor at George Mason University, is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. On the podcast, Roberts typically interviews a single guest—often professional economists—on topics in economics. The podcast is hosted by the Library of Economics and Liberty, an online library sponsored by Liberty Fund. On EconTalk Roberts has interviewed more than a dozen Nobel Prize laureates including Nobel Prize in Economics recipients Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and Joseph Stiglitz as well as Nobel Prize in Physics recipient Robert Laughlin.
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies is a 2007 book by the economist Bryan Caplan, in which the author challenges the idea that voters are reasonable people whom society can trust to make laws. Rather, Caplan contends that voters are irrational in the political sphere and have systematically biased ideas concerning economics.
Arnold Kling is an American economist, scholar, and blogger known for his writings on EconLog, an economics blog, along with Bryan Caplan and David R. Henderson. Kling also has his own blog, askblog, which carries the motto: "taking the most charitable views of those who disagree." The "ask" in askblog stands for "Arnold S. Kling." He is an Adjunct Scholar for the Cato Institute and is affiliated with the Mercatus Center.
The concept known as rational irrationality was popularized by economist Bryan Caplan in 2001 to reconcile the widespread existence of irrational behavior with the assumption of rationality made by mainstream economics and game theory. The theory, along with its implications for democracy, was expanded upon by Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter.
David Gordon is an American libertarian philosopher and intellectual historian influenced by Murray Rothbard's views of economics. He is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and is the editor of The Mises Review.
The altruism theory of voting is a model of voter behavior which states that if citizens in a democracy have "social" preferences for the welfare of others, the extremely low probability of a single vote determining an election will be outweighed by the large cumulative benefits society will receive from the voter's preferred policy being enacted, such that it is rational for an “altruistic” citizen, who receives utility from helping others, to vote. Altruistic voting has been compared to purchasing a lottery ticket, in which the probability of winning is extremely low but the payoff is large enough that the expected benefit outweighs the cost.
Jason F. Brennan is an American philosopher and business professor. He is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.
Ilya Somin is a law professor at George Mason University, B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, a blogger for the Volokh Conspiracy, and a former co-editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review (2006–2013). His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, migration rights, and the study of popular political participation and its implications for constitutional democracy.
Neoclassical liberalism is a tradition of the liberal thought that, with the premises of John Locke's classical liberalism applied to industrialized societies, stands in opposition to the welfare state and social liberalism. In the United States, the Arizona School of liberalism, also referred to as "bleeding-heart libertarianism", adopted the term neoclassical liberal to advance certain ideas of Chicago School economist Milton Friedman within the American libertarian movement, including the school voucher system and the negative income tax.
The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money is a book written by libertarian economist Bryan Caplan and published in 2018 by Princeton University Press. Drawing on the economic concept of job market signaling and research in educational psychology, the book argues that much of higher education is very inefficient and has only a small effect in improving human capital, contrary to the conventional consensus in labor economics.
Bryan Caplan, a George Mason University economics professor and a former Ph.D student of Mr. Bernanke's.
Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies has been received by rave reviews. These reviews appear to have failed to note that Caplan's book celebrates the market and denigrates democracy at the very time when markets worldwide have failed and democracies have ridden to the rescue. It thus appears to have been undermined fatally by events that occurred as it was published (and which Caplan artfully omits to mention in the more recent paperback edition). Caplan's book in fact stands in the long tradition of anti-democratic writings that argue that an elite must rule. An elite of free-market economists. An elite no longer in good odour, since the financial crisis (and the climate crisis) occurred and became starkly evident to all. This Critical Notice also points out that numerous of Caplan's key claims, such as that individual voters have zero effect on election results, are empirically false.
A useful heuristic is what Bryan Caplan (2011) calls the 'political turing test'. Caplan actually calls this the 'ideological turing test', but I prefer my label in the context of this paper.
I treat the ideological Turing test as a kind of 'North Star', an ideal to guide my thinking ... I once saw someone talk about how important it is to be able to pass an ideological Turing test and then add, 'Of course, people often don't want to do this, because they're afraid they'll change their minds.'
That characterization of progressives and conservatives would not pass an ideological Turing test.
I wanted to do a sort of performance art to do three things: first, ... pass the partisan Turing test; second, to do my own Sokal experiment; and third, to demonstrate why the Right is good at propaganda.