Author Archives: William Easterly

Now abundant coverage of Pakistan flood, is it making up for previous non-story?

Sorry, Karzai, Aid workers do want to keep their own guards in Afghanistan, as compared to corrupt and incompetent offical Afghan forces.

I always argue that comparative advantage is surprising, but even so was caught off guard by newly fashionable North Korean jeans.

Provocative case for “yes” in today’s Wall Street Journal (gated link), by Kimberley Dennis,  President of Searle Freedom Trust:

Wealthy businessmen often feel obligated to ‘give back.’ Who says they’ve taken anything?

Full disclosure: DRI benefits from post-docs indirectly funded by the Searle Foundation.

Found this  mysterious transmission on a robot named R2D2 Twitter from  joshuafoust: ”National Review Online endorses authoritarian capitalism. Help us, Obi Wan @bill_easterly, you’re our only hope!”

I won’t let you down, Leia&Luke AKA @joshuafoust…  The bizarre article in question is titled China Teaches the U.S. Lessons about Economic Freedom. The argument seems roughly to be that China’s rapid growth is explained by its positive change in economic freedom after 1978. Throw in…

Update: see end of post

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. (

…

Tyler Cowen has a great NYT column today about the harmful distortions caused by “free” parking.

Manhattan offers plenty more ammunition to his case. Both sides of most crosstown numbered streets (17th, 18th, etc.) are devoted to “free” parking, which adds to traffic gridlock by creating one-lane streets, frequently blocked by delivery vans or by stopped taxis. Those using those “free” slots have to expend a lot of effort to keep moving their cars…

The Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. was the playground of the old Planter Class in the Old South, going all the way back to Robert E. Lee. The NYT travel section describes how it has fallen on hard times, just as the Old White Elite in the South is not quite what it once was.

The Greenbrier’s aristocratic visitors, waited upon hand and foot by liveried Negro waiters, were never that popular with…

HT (i.e. stolen from) Chris Blattman