Independent Review articles from June 2007

Independent Review archives from June 2007

"Starve the beast" origins and development of a budgetary metaphor.
June 22, 2007... In recent years, one of the most common metaphors for using tax cuts to discipline government spending has been "starve the beast." The idea is that if revenues are unilaterally reduced, this reduction will lead to a higher budget deficit,...

A market like any other: against the double standard in judging the media.
June 22, 2007... On October 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya was shot to death at her Moscow I apartment building in an apparent contract killing. This Russian journalist, a sharp critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, protested openly against the violation of...

Hayek revisited: planning, diversity, and the vox populi.
June 22, 2007... By the end of the 1980s, many writers, both in scholarly literature and in the popular press, had come to the conclusion that the twentieth century's great experiment with socialist planning had produced economic results that were by and large...

Enterprise capital in emerging markets.(Table)
June 22, 2007... Economic growth in developing economies has long been considered dependent on trade, direct and portfolio investment, and foreign aid, including loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which were set up after World...

Marriage, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage.
June 22, 2007... In this article, I explore some important limits to freedom imposed by family law and contribute to the recent debate about cohabitation and marriage. In particular, I consider a very heated topic at present internationally: Does the extension...

Privately funded and built U.S. warships in the Quasi-War of 1797-1801.
June 22, 2007... Public goods are conventionally defined as both nonexcludable and nonrivalrous. These attributes create an incentive for consumers to act as "free riders," and therefore, according to mainstream neoclassical economics, production of such goods...

Milton Friedman, 1912-2006.(PREDECESSORS)
June 22, 2007... Let us now praise famous men. --Ecclesiasticus 44:1 Milton Friedman, who died in the early morning of November 16, 2006, was a world-famous economist and an ardent and effective advocate of the free-market economy. Much of his...

Nineteen public bads of empire, nation building, and the like.(REFLECTIONS)
June 22, 2007... Although some writers have advanced the idea that imperialism can supply a "public good," such as enforcement of a secure property-rights regime, they have scarcely paused to consider the variety of "public bads" that tend to accompany this...

Law without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Law Without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States By Jeremy A. Rabkin Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. 350. $29.95 cloth. Since the end of the Cold War, the question of whether nation-states...

Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation: A Political Economy of Direct Foreign Investment.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation: A Political Economy of Direct Foreign Investment By Nathan M. Jensen Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 193. $35.00 cloth. How do a country's political institutions...

For All of These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Private-Public Welfare State.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... For All of These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Private-Public Welfare State By Jennifer Klein Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 354. $22.95 paperback. In For All of These Rights, Jennifer...

Political Power and Corporate Control: The New Global Politics of Corporate Governance.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Political Power and Corporate Control: The New Global Politics of Corporate Governance By Peter A. Gourevitch and James Shinn Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. 384. $35.00 cloth. Comparative corporate governance has...

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger By Marc Levinson Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. 376. $24.95 cloth. Several hundred books on globalization are now published each...

Results of still another fifty-year experiment in political economy.(Etceteras ...)(Table)
June 22, 2007... In a recent interview, Mart Laar, the former president of Estonia, made the following statement: In 1939, it was hard to find two more similar countries as Finland and Estonia. We were very similar in language, culture, and living...