Coordination Problem

The Terrorism Index

Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress recently released their Terrorism Index.  The Index surveys 100 of America's leading policy experts on a range of topics.  Some key results:

• 86% believe the world today is more dangerous than it was before 9/11.
• 84% believe the U.S. is not winning the war on terror.
• 8 out of 10 respondents believe that the U.S. is likely to face a terrorist attack within the next 10 years that is of the same magnitude of 9/11.

I recently had the opportunity to see Michael Scheuer comment on the Index at the Center for American Progress.  For those that haven't read Scheuer's Imperial Hubris, one of his core arguments is that U.S. foreign policy (i.e., continual interventions in a wide range of areas abroad) is a key driver behind the 9/11 attacks as well as the current terrorist threat.  In his comments on the Index, Scheuer argued that the U.S. should disengage from the Middle East (Afghanistan, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) because these interventions are not in the "national interest."

While I agree with Scheuer's conclusion, the "national interest" motivation is ultimately unsatisfying because an argument can (as has been) be made that these endeavors are in America's national interest.  I prefer pursuing the line of argument that the means available to U.S. policymakers and military forces are not suitable to engineer the desired, or at least stated, ends.  In short, even if establishing liberal democracy in the Middle East is in our national interest, we lack the necessary means to accomplish this end.

As a side note I will be giving a talk, open to the public, on my forthcoming book on the topic of exporting liberal democracy this Thursday at the Mercatus Center (5:00pm, 4th floor).

An Interview of Israel Kirzner

Pete Boettke and I were in New York last week to interview Israel Kirzner. We talked to him for more than three hours. The reason why we met with Kirzner and had a long discussion about his work is that we are editing his complete works in 10 volumes. This will be published by Liberty Fund and the first volume should hopefully be available before the end of the year. The full interview will be included later on.

We discussed many of the fundamental issues in his work. Professor Kirzner was very insightful and was comfortable discussing the most controversial aspects of his work. For instance, he explained why he does not believe there is an entrepreneurial process at work with regard to institutions, but this doesn’t mean there is no entrepreneurship. The distinction between the two concepts (entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial process) is one that he has made in his work. However, it became clearer in mind as we spoke to him, even though I was already familiar with his paper on the limits of the market.

The interview, along with that done by Stephen Boehm and the one published in the AEN (see here), will be a very good source of information for those who want to deepen their knowledge of Kirzner’s work.

Some Recent Papers

Co-authored with Pete Boettke:

1. This review essay of The Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy appears in the current issue of The Economic Journal.

2. "The Political Economy of Forgiveness" will appear in Society.  Here is Pete's earlier post on this topic.

Single authored:

4. This piece, forthcoming in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, argues that reconstructing weak and failed states is not merely a technical issue.

and translated:

5. "High Priests and Lowly Philosophers," co-authored with Pete Boettke and Pete Leeson, which will appear in the Case Western Reserve Law Review, was translated into Spanish and published in the current issue of Revista de Economia y Derecho.

Small(er) Government in NJ?

Well, at least for a few days.  For the first time in the history of New Jersey - my home state - the governor has ordered a shutdown of the state government (see here, here and here). 

An ongoing debate of how to close the budget shortfall failed to be resolved by the constitutional deadline of midnight Friday.  As such, "non-essential" state functions - state lottery, road construction, motor vehicles and vehicle inspection stations and some courts - have been order closed until the budget gap is resolved.

Fortunately I have not heard of any outbreaks of violence in the absence of the government shutdown.  Hmmmm....perhaps it is the case that NJ residents don't need these "non-essential" employees on the state's payroll in the first place.  I support cutting them completely to cover the shortfall.

RAE - Issue 19(2-3) - Robust Political Economy

The current issue of The Review of Austrian Economics is a special double issue co-edited by our very own Pete Leeson along with Bob Subrick.  The theme of the issue is "robust political economy."

In introducing the special issue Leeson and Subrick write:

It is "easy" for a political economy populated by perfectly omniscient and benevolent individuals to perform well.  But what if individuals have cognitive limitations or are self interested?  In this case, reasonable political economic performance becomes more difficult.  While a robust political economy can handle these imperfections, a fragile political economy cannot....Examining the robust of political economies therefore requires researchers to relax "best case" assumptions about actor benevolence and information.  Only by doing this can we determine the relative robustness or fragility of various political economic arrangements.

Contributors include David Levy, Richard Wagner, Bruce Benson and Randy Holcombe among others.

Questions for Israel Kirzner

Pete Boettke and I are going to meet with Professor Israel Kirzner on Monday (July 3rd) to talk about his work. If there are people familiar with Kirznerian economics reading these lines, I’d be interested in what type of questions they would have for him. Comments are open (I know it is short notice but I only thought about it this morning).