Independent Review articles from March 1998

Independent Review archives from March 1998

Is macroeconomics believable?
March 22, 1998... In January 1997, the annual convention of the American Economic Association included a session entitled "Is There a Core of Practical Macroeconomics That We Should All Believe?"(1) Macroeconomics, which is concerned with large-scale, or...

Constitutional engineering and the transition to democracy in post-Cold War Africa.
March 22, 1998... In the early 1990s, many of Africa's dictatorships (both military and civilian) collapsed, giving Africans the opportunity to establish more transparent, participatory, and accountable political and economic systems. In addition, the demise of...

Liberalism and the common good: a Hayekian perspective on communitarianism.
March 22, 1998... In the end, given liberty to learn, men will find out that freedom means community. --William Aylott Orton In recent years, a spirited exchange between certain critics and defenders of liberalism has engaged the interest of many North...

Quality-and-safety assurance: how voluntary social processes remedy their own shortcomings.
March 22, 1998... In the United States, governments at every level impose many restrictions on voluntary interaction in the name of protecting consumers from poor-quality or unsafe products and services. Examples of government quality-and-safety agencies and...

How Minnesota adopted workers' compensation.
March 22, 1998... The adoption of workers' compensation in the 1910s represents a significant event in the economic, legal, and political history of the United States. Workers' compensation legislation is one of the major tort reforms of this century, shifting...

Between Authority and Liberty: State Constitution Making in Revolutionary America.
March 22, 1998... Americans treat the Founders, those who created their constitutions, the way that junior-high-school boys treat girls. Just as the boys are obsessed by the girls, we are obsessed by the Founders. Even those who reject a strict Borkean...

The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America.
March 22, 1998... Americans treat the Founders, those who created their constitutions, the way that junior-high-school boys treat girls. Just as the boys are obsessed by the girls, we are obsessed by the Founders. Even those who reject a strict Borkean...

American Academia and the Survival of Marxist Ideas.
March 22, 1998... By Dario Fernandez-Morera New York: Praeger, 1996. Pp. 204. $71.95. It is a rare treat to review a book with which one is in nearly complete agreement. Dario Fernandez Morera writes about the prevalence of Marxist and sub-Marxist ideas in...

Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism.
March 22, 1998... By Sanford Ikeda London: Routledge, 1997. Pp. xiv, 296. $90.00 cloth. The Austrian school of economics, once barely visible at the fringe of academia, has been growing in strength in recent decades, and Sanford Ikeda's book is a good example of...

The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change.
March 22, 1998... By Hendrik Spruyt Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. 288. $16.95. Globalization, the "G" word of this decade, raises many challenges to the international system of nation-states. It opens the possibility--if not in...

Competition Policy in America, 1888-1992: History, Rhetoric, Law.
March 22, 1998... By Rudolph J. R, Peritz New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. x, 374. $67.50 cloth. Economics is not mentioned in the title of this book about the history of American competition policy. Score one for truth in advertising. From time to...

Policy Controversy in Biotechnology: An Insider's View.
March 22, 1998... By Henry I. Miller Austin, Tex.: R.G. Landes Company and Academic Press, 1997. Pp. x, 217. $88.95. In the mid-1980s TPA--tissue plasminogen activor--was being hailed as a major biotechnological breakthrough. It was so effective in dissolving...

Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations.
March 22, 1998... By Catherine Caufield New York: Henry Holt, 1996. Pp. xii, 432. $27.50. If an organization such as the World Bank could be put on trial for doing more harm than good while professing to do the opposite, and if investigative journalist...

Privatization and Political Change in Mexico.
March 22, 1998... By Judith Teichman Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv, 291. $54.00. As an author keenly aware of the time, effort, and personal sacrifice that go into the writing of a scholarly book, I am predisposed to review favorably...

A tale of two labor markets. (Western Europe and United States)
March 22, 1998... The post-World War II economic history of Western Europe and the United Sum Tune of divides neatly into two halves, winch we might call the Golden Age and the Troubles, respectively In the latter era Europe achieved only a small increase in...