My colleague and fellow UCLA alumnus Thomas Hazlett and I have published an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune proposing a partial solution, partially inspired by the early exit of Kevin Love from our beloved Bruin basketball squad, to the problem of early exit by potential NBA draftees.  We note that the problem is the NCAA cartel, which restricts payments to college players while attempting to maintain the charade of amateurism.  While this restriction on cash payments is not likely to be lifted any time soon, we proposed that universities extend insurance coverage that will allow interested potential draftees to stay in school and insure the risk of draft slippage.   Here’s an excerpt:

So the answer, given that universities cannot pay athletes market wages, is to at least insure them. Were underclassmen to be appraised, via draft rankings, and then offered compensation in the event—post-graduation—they slipped by some increment, they could hedge this very considerable exposure. The NCAA allows players to insure, but the player pays even though it is largely the university (and its fans) that benefits. Moreover, policies can only insure against career-ending injuries, leaving the more common outcomes—less serious injuries and performance-related changes in draft status—terrifying prospects.

The schools should extend broader coverage. The contracts we propose do not fully compensate college athletes for their valuable service, and would thus retain only some of the talent now jumping early to the pros. Yet, the approach would preserve the NCAA’s “amateur” wink, while allowing student-athletes to play college ball until their 21st birthday without risking the family jewels. A slam dunk, really.

Check out the whole thing.

I wrote this brief post awhile back, and forgot to post it on April 12th, Armen’s 94th birthday.  I’m late.  But better late then never they say.

On Armen Alchian’s 94th birthday, it seems appropriate to reflect on some of his contributions to economics and economic analysis of the law.  Armen has been described as “the Armenian Adam Smith,” and his name is frequently mentioned on the “short list” of Nobel candidates every year (at least it is on this blog).  Armen’s influence on economics and law and economics is difficult to overstate.  Armen’s classic paper with Harold Demsetz (AER, 1972) remains influential in the theory of the firm literature and is listed as the 12th most important paper in economics since 1970 by Kim et al.  Klein, Crawford and Alchian’s seminal analysis of vertical integration and the holdup problem (JLE, 1978) ranks #30 on this list.  Of course, though a sign of his significant intellectual contributions, citations to scholarly articles do not begin to measure the mark Armen left on the fields he touched.  More generally, and harder to measure, is Armen’s general influence on the economics of property rights and the development of what has been called the “UCLA School” of economics.

In addition to his scholarly contributions, Armen’s teaching style is the stuff of legend.  By the time I arrived in Westwood Armen was done teaching the graduate microeconomics class, so I missed out on that.  But I was lucky enough to have him on my dissertation committee at UCLA and experience some of Armen’s approach first hand.  Tales are abound of the careers of economists-in-the-making that Armen influenced in one way or another.  Nobel Laureate William F. Sharpe captures some of this in his autobiographical exposition explaining Alchian’s influence on his own career:

Armen Alchian, a professor of economics, was my role model at UCLA. He taught his students to question everything; to always begin an analysis with first principles; to concentrate on essential elements and abstract from secondary ones; and to play devil’s advocate with one’s own ideas. In his classes we were able to watch a first-rate mind work on a host of fascinating problems. I have attempted to emulate his approach to research ever since. When I returned to pursue the PhD degree, I took a field in microeconomics with Armen and he also served as chairman of my dissertation committee.

Any Alchian student or fan knows that Armen also had a heavy influence in the training of judges and lawyers through the George Mason Law and Economics Center Program started by Henry Manne.  In an important antitrust policy speech, former FTC Chairman Timothy Muris articulates a sentiment I’ve heard repeatedly from those who went through the program or watched Armen teach:

Armen Alchian was unexcelled in teaching economics to lawyers. He often presented economics socratically - a technique familiar to lawyers. For years Armen was one of the most popular instructors in Henry Manne’s programs for teaching economics to lawyers. In short courses, he taught literally hundreds of federal judges and law professors.

Of course, I suspect Armen’s socratic approach may have differed in style when delivered to graduate students rather than judges and lawyers.  In many ways, Armen is as much a founder of the law and economics movement, and deserving of credit for its spread, as the those traditionally credited with the origination of that movement: Coase, Manne, Becker, and Calabresi.

Here are some Alchian links for interested readers:

• A Biography  and another profile hosted at David Levine’s website
• Uncertainty and Economic Evolution: Essays in Honor of Armen A. Alchian (edited by John R. Lott, Jr.)
• A 2000 Liberty Fund interview by Daniel K. Benjamin in the Intellectual Portrait series
• Alchian’s collected works in two volumes
• Alchian’s “Property Rights” entry to the Concise Enyclopedia of Economics
• A profile of Alchian in the UCLA Daily Bruin in 2006
• My blog post making the case for a “UCLA School” Nobel Prize in honor of the contributions of Alchian, Demsetz & Klein

Happy 94th Birthday Armen.

• James Pethokoukis at US News reports on interviews with chief economic advisers Austan Goolsbee and Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
• Brian Leiter is pleased to point out a study showing that while both groups are in the top 3, Philosophy majors outperform Economics majors on the LSAT.  Leiter also gets in a playful dig, noting that the study “corresponds exactly to the natural intellectual hierarchy evident throughout the legal academy.” Ouch. Hmmm. We’ll see Brian’s study and raise him this one suggesting that economics, unlike some other high performing undergraduate majors, actually translates beyond LSAT performance into higher earnings.
• The Federal Trade Commission has announced its First Annual Microeconomics Conference
• Gary Becker on why the airlines are so bad
• Quantifying the Colbert Bump (HT: Tyler Cowen)

The Financial Times reported yesterday that an embarrassed GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt had to tell GE shareholders that the 10% growth in earnings for 2008 that he had promised analysts in March was not going to be possible.  GE missed its quarterly forecasts and halved its 2008 forecast to 5% growth in earnings (as opposed to the 10% growth promised).  The Financial Times article mentioned a “sense of shock among the investor community” and noted that one analyst, after Immelt’s downward revision, “compared GE’s promise of long-term improvements to the Chicago Cubs, the US baseball club that hasn’t won a championship in 100 years.” 

Upon reading this FT article this morning, I thought “oh, dear God.  Do we remember none of the lessons learned just a few years ago about the perils of over-promising results to analysts?”  Why, exactly, does Immelt feel the need to promise a 5% increase in earnings for 2008 when (a) we are in a credit crunch, (b) GE is likely going to have to do more write-downs this year, (c) the cost of inputs is increasing, if not skyrocketing, (d) inflation is high, and (e) the economy is weak (among other things)?  Why is Immelt promising *growth* in earnings when the reality is that just achieving positive earnings for 2008 is likely to be good thing?  Why is Immelt putting pressure on himself and his officers to produce growth? 

Memo to Immelt:  Earnings do not have to grow each year.  In some markets, in some economies, in some industries, in some “downturns,” simply having earnings – any positive earnings – is a good thing.  Matter of fact, sometimes earnings should NOT be growing each year.   Were I a GE investor, I would not want Immelt promising 5% growth for 2008 because I would figure that the only way he can promise to hit that number in such an uncertain market and gloomy economy is by commiting to fudge year-end 2008 numbers if needed.  And, as we learned several years ago, fudging year-end numbers tends to catch up with companies, and, when it does catch up, the valuation fall-out is worse than if the forthright disclosure (e.g. “2008 earnings might be flat”) had been made initially. Am I the only one who remembers back to the not-so-distant past, when unrealistic promises made to analysts by corporate officers led to companies cooking their books at year end to make the numbers?  As I recall, things did not always work out so well in those cases.  Enron, anyone? 

Surely it is enough for a company in some years to produce returns that are merely equal to the prior year’s, as opposed to “besting” the prior year’s earnings. Didn’t we learn this lesson several years ago?  Investors are supposed to invest for the long term and diversify.According to the FT, one of the reasons why GE missed its quarterly numbers recently is because GE was unable to close “$900m-worth of real estate asset sales,” which the FT referred to as “a traditional way for GE to boost quarterly returns.”  If I were a GE investor, I would be peeved to read this.  I would rather GE just do the real estate deals when they make the most sense, when the market is most favorable for the deals at issue, regardless of when the gain/loss woulbe be booked.  If that means GE misses its numbers sometiemes due to the lack of a crystal ball regarding the best time to sell the assets, and I take a short-term valuation hit (on paper) as a GE investor, so be it.   It doesn’t create long-term value for shareholders if GE rushes through real-estate transactions just to make the numbers if the timing is not sensible for the transactions and waiting a little bit of time would garner value for shareholders.(The FT reports that “GE slashed its 2008 earnings forecast from $2.42 per share to $2.20-$2.30 – still an increase of as much as 5 per cent from last year.”  Slashed?  Slashed?  Are you KIDDING me?  “Slashed” implies something negative.  Earnings of $2.20-$2.30 per share for a year that is not likely to shape up particularly well  would be good.)

That is where TOTM lands on Race to the Bottom’s list of the Top 50 Most Influential Law Faculty Blogs for 2007 based upon traffic, links, and citations.

UPDATE: Or #68 amongst economics blogs…

Not as an economist of course! There is no doubt that Goolsbee is one of the world’s premier economists. But another brilliant economist, Jagdish Bhagwati, argues that voters should (HT: Mankiw) favor Barack Obama’s free trade credentials over Hillary Clinton’s based, at least partially, on Austan Goolsbee’s credentials as an advocate of free trade and as an economist. This argument begs a number of interesting questions: how important are economic advisers anyway? More specifically, is Bhagwati right that free traders should feel more comfortable with Obama than Clinton because of the formers choice of advisers? And how much weight should we assign this choice relative to say, voting patterns?

As a general matter, I think it is perfectly appropriate to give credit to the principal for the quality of the agents he or she is able to attract. And I’m tempted by the notion that an economist could actually constrain some of the protectionist rhetoric coming from a few of the candidates these days from amounting to policy. In fact, I was more optimistic about Goolsbee’s potential free trade influence on Obama several months ago. But I’m starting to doubt that there is any reason to be optimistic with statements like this out of the Obama camp (or this one) which suggest to me that Goolsbee has not had significant influence (though I may be wrong about that):

It’s a game where trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart.

Of course, one I suppose one can interpret the evidence in a more negative light. Perhaps without Goolsbee, Obama’s anti-trade rhetoric would be much worse. Perhaps the primary value of a prominent free trade advisor for a candidate with an anti-trade record and platform is to provide some assurance against extreme protectionism. But I don’t think that is Bhagwati’s argument. As an aside, I also believe most of the buzz about the link between behavioral economics and Obama’s economic policies is largely a mischaracterization.

I’m certain that economic advisers like Goolsbee, Mankiw, and other economists in simimlar roles provide significant and valuable services to their candidates. There is also little doubt that economic advisers can play a valuable role in helping to form sound economic policy once a candidate is in office. I don’t want to be misunderstood as saying that economic advisers in general, or Goolsbee in particular, are not valuable. What I am saying is that I don’t think Bhagwati’s argument that we should consider high quality economic advisers as a free trade credential is persuasive. In the case of Goolsbee-Obama, I find the link particularly weak given the strong protectionist talk from Obama in recent weeks. Though I hope I’m wrong, I’m significantly discounting the possibility that Goolsbee is exhibiting much of a constraining effect on Obama or that his presence should be relevant to the free trade credentials of the candidates.

Voting records, as opposed to speeches and selection of advisers, are a bit more informative. Luke Froeb, who is another excellent economist supporting a candidate (Luke is an Economic Policy Adviser for the McCain campaign), reports that McCain voted against trade barriers 88% of the time as opposed to Obama’s 36% and Clinton’s 31%.

Thats the opening line of my colleague and Green Bag Editor Ross Davies’ announcement (posted here) that The Green Bag is ready to enter the law school rankings game.  The Deadwood Report (see also Inside Higher Ed) has law school puffery and false advertising in its sights.  The basic idea is that the available information on the relative quality of law schools and faculties is poor and generally not improving (with at least one notable exception).  The methodology is as follows: 

First, download the law school’s web pages containing all pertinent information about the law school’s “faculty,” course schedules and catologs, and individual faculty member pages with vitas and publications.

Second, compile and analyze the data by assigning weights to various types of scholarship or teaching.  For example, Davies notes that publications in the home school’s journal and op-eds will not be weighted.  Also, the weights will favor “well-rounded” faculty members that are active as both scholars and teachers.  This seems to be a bit of a tax on specialization, but that doesn’t bother too much.  The rankings should be easy to reconfigure with alternative weights.  I, for one, would be interested in something like a crude concentration index for publications, e.g. what percentage of scholarship is produced by the top 4, top 8? 

Third, send the preliminary results to the school’s dean, ask for corrections, and provide an opportunity to fix any errors in the school’s website before re-visiting the websites and incorporating modifications.

Leiter is quoted in the Inside Higher Ed piece as warning that “the editors are setting themselves up for a world of grief from the faculties deemed to have lots of ‘deadwood’ and the individual faculty so classified.”  No doubt the grief is coming.  There will obviously be some expected grumbling about The Deadwood Report, its methodology, how different forms of scholarship and teaching are weighted, and even the name!  But like Leiter’s rankings, The Deadwood Report should be a valuable service to consumers of legal education (and law professors).  The Deadwood Report promises to source all data so that those who are not pleased with the way that they weight certain activities or classify faculty members can offer an alternative set of rankings.

Law schools may not like to be held accountable for what is on their websites and in their law porn, but it strikes me as a bit disingenuine to complain too loudly when they are.  If a law school would like to specialize by having some faculty who do research and others who bear the brunt of the teaching load, or have a team of all-stars who can do it all, either of these strategies is fine.  But it strikes me as perfectly reasonable for the law school to communicate truthfully about what it is doing or else be held accountable for its public statements to consumers.  Time to update those websites …

I thought I would be safe in church. I thought I could avoid her there. But no, the minister had to mention Britney Spears during the sermon Sunday morning. I think the reference had something to do with keeping perspective and the ridiculousness of a motorcade escort to UCLA medical center. I’m not really sure. My mind immediately began to wander.

The question I was pondering was: Why is everyone so obsessed with her??? In case you haven’t noticed, her latest work sucks, and (much more importantly for purposes of media coverage) she’s looking pretty plain these days. Now, I don’t mean to be rude. She’s not hideous or anything. She looks, well, sort of average. But she’s just not hot, or even interesting. So why do gazillions of paparazzi follow her every move?

I was still mulling over The Britney Obsession as I continued reading William Page and John Lopatka’s fantastic new book, The Microsoft Case: Antitrust, High Technology, and Consumer Welfare. As many TOTM readers will recall, a primary theory underlying the government’s high-profile monopolization case against Microsoft was that the company had achieved its success because of “network effects” and was making efforts to protect the “applications barrier to entry” that preserved those effects and precluded the emergence of a serious rival (in particular, the Netscape Navigator/Java combination). Page and Lopatka explain network effects as follows (pp. 24-25):

[N]etwork effects are scale economies on the demand side. They arise when the user of the product receives not only the product’s inherent benefit, but also a network benefit that increases with the number of other users of the product. A telephone network, for example, is more attractive if it is larger and thus allows a member of the network to communicate with more people. … [A] computer operating system is used with various complementary goods, especially applications. Software vendors tend to write applications for the most popular operating system to reach the largest market, and the greater availability of applications in turn induces new users to choose that operating system. This positive feedback loop may cause the market to standardize on the product that gets the early lead in competition among incompatible standards. The theory even suggests that consumers may be locked in to a durable good with inferior qualities, simply because of its enormous network benefits.

Does this explain The Britney Obsession, at least in part? People follow Britney not because she’s that interesting but because they know tons of other people follow Britney, and they’ll therefore have lots of good fodder for the water-cooler. The media follow Britney because they know she has this “installed base” of followers. The abundance of media reports and photos makes Britney that much more interesting to follow. After all, everyone loves an unflattering candid shot, and when there are paparazzi everywhere, there are bound to be many such shots. We therefore end up with a positive feedback loop: Britney’s crazy because the paparazzi have essentially turned her into a caged animal, and she’s become a caged animal because she’s crazy.

Do you see what’s happening here? We’ve settled on a “standard” that, judged by its intrinsic merits alone, is probably not the best thing out there. But when we take account of how many people use that standard, it becomes most desirable. It’s like the QWERTY keyboard or VHS tape.

So is there any hope for Britney? In The Antitrust Enterprise, Herbert Hovenkamp explains that “when equipment based on a particular network standard is marketed and acquires a significant installed base, resistance to change becomes considerable and only a very large technological improvement will succeed in displacing the existing format.” The DVD standard, for example, was so superior that it eventually dethroned VHS.

Here’s hoping that a new pop idol emerges as the standard before Britney destroys herself.

UPDATE: Over at Organizations and Markets, my colleague Peter Klein analyzes this a bit further. Some nice points. (Be sure to check out the link to Paul David on Path Dependence.) Peter also notes that there’s a Wikipedia entry, Famous for Bring Famous, that gets at the phenomenon I’m discussing. The list of people falling into that category is pretty amusing.

First is was smoking in private places (even when the smoking has obviously expressive value). Then it was trans fats. Now it’s swearing, drinking contests, and “profane music.”

If you don’t like what an establishment is selling, don’t go there.

Michael McCann of Sports Law Blog fame discusses Roger Clemens’ recently filed defamation suit against his former personal trainer Brian McNamee over at CNNSI.

Many TOTM readers are students or professors, so it’s likely that there are a number of examination horror stories out there among the readership. As we professors finish up earning our pay grading exams, I thought I’d share a couple of my own horror stories — one as a professor and another as a student — and see if I can get others to contribute theirs.

First, the professor story.

Last semester was pretty rough for me (I took a new administrative position, which has greatly reduced my blogging time — New Year’s resolution: Blog more!). To celebrate the end of the semester, I decided to spend a few days in my favorite European city, Amsterdam. I was to leave on December 26 from Knoxville, Tennessee, where my family lives. Since I didn’t have time to finish my grading before heading to my parents’ house, I had to take with me a small suitcase full of Contracts exams. When I arrived at the Knoxville airport on December 26, my flight to Detroit (from which I would connect to Amsterdam) was delayed. Realizing that my window for making a connection in Detroit would be mighty short, I decided to check only my clothes suitcase and take the exam suitcase as a carry-on. Prudent, I thought.

When I reached Detroit, I had to race to catch the Amsterdam flight. I barely made the flight and was told as I was entering the plane that the overhead compartments were full and that I would have to gate-check my carry-on bag (the exams). No problem, I thought, as I could see the gate-checked bags being loaded onto the plane.

When I arrived in Amsterdam, I went to baggage claim and was surprised but pleased to see my larger clothes suitcase on the carousel. Wow, I thought. Northwest Airlines is amazing. They managed to transfer my luggage from the Knoxville-Detroit flight in about 10 minutes. Within a few minutes, though, my enthusiasm for Northwest waned, as I realized my gate-checked exam suitcase was not in the offloaded luggage. It waned even further when I took my claim check to the baggage office and was told there was no record of my missing bag in Northwest’s system.

At that point, I started to panic, but the nice Dutch man behind the counter assured me that the bag must have been left on the steps in Detroit and would be on the next flight to Amsterdam, which was to arrive at 5:55 AM the following morning.

After a fitful night’s sleep, I called the baggage office at the Amsterdam airport to check on my bag. I was disheartened to learn that the bag was not on the morning flight from Detroit and had not been scanned into the Northwest Airlines system. Still no record of the bag’s existence.

I had to do something, so I grabbed a train to Schiphol Airport and convinced the security folks to let me into the bowels of the airport, where unclaimed bags reside. I searched through all the unclaimed luggage, but mine was nowhere to be seen. I also waited around for the next flight from Detroit. No bag.

At that point, I began preparing for the worst. As I wandered through the city for the rest of the afternoon, I composed in my head an email to the dean and associate dean explaining that I had lost all of my Contracts exams. It was not going to be pretty.

When I finally returned to my hotel room at around 4:30 PM, I had a letter from the front desk: “Dear Mr. Lambert, Your luggage has been found and will be returned to the hotel between 16:00 and 20:00 this evening.” I immediately ordered champagne.

Around 6:00 PM, my luggage and I were reunited (and it felt so good!).

Next, the student story.

The exam for my own Contracts course (taught by Larry Lessig) was a four-hour take-home exam. At that time, the University of Chicago Law School allowed students taking take-home exams to state in advance what their travel time would be to and from the law school. That amount of time was added to one’s allotted exam-taking time. Since I was taking my exam in the law school library, I gave myself only 10 minutes to get to and from my study carrel. This meant I’d turn in my exam earlier than most students, who drove home to take their exams.

About halfway through the exam, I realized I was running woefully short on time. I therefore flew through the remainder of the exam and rushed to the registrar’s office to turn in my diskette. When I arrived, no students were around, but that didn’t strike me as odd, since I figured most were in transit.

As I handed the diskette to the registrar, she said, “Wow. An hour early. Impressive.” I looked at the clock on the wall and freaked out as I realized I was wearing a watch set on Eastern time. I retrieved the diskette from the registrar, ran back to the library, and tried to do a little more work on the thing. I was so flustered, though, that nothing in the exam or my answer made any sense. I ultimately ejected the disk, turned the thing in, and drove home.

As it turns out, Contracts was my highest first-year grade. Perhaps I should’ve spent less time on the other exams!

Anyone else got an examination horror story to share?

I’ve been inspired by Lynne’s music favorites post (mainly so I can share my disagreement with her–and one big agreement).  It’s a bit off-topic for this blog, but some of you must be music fans.  And in the spirit of taking advantage of a platform while you have it, I thought I’d share my picks for best music of 2007.  Have at it in the comments. 

25.  Ha Ha Tonka, Buckle in the Bible Belt

24.  Great Lake Swimmers, Ongiara

23.  Dr. Dog, We All Belong

22.  Rogue Wave, Asleep at Heaven’s Gate

21.  Levon Helm, Dirt Farmer

20.  Sunset Rubdown, Random Spirit Lover

19.  Over the Rhine, The Trumpet Child

18.  The Apples in Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder

17.  Band of Horses, Cease to Begin

16.  WIlco, Sky Blue Sky

15.  Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga 

14.  Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Baby 81

13.  Josh Ritter, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter

12.  Deadstring Brothers, Silver Mountain

11.  White Stripes, Icky Thump 

10.  Cloud Cult, The Meaning of 8  

9.  The Bees, Octopus

8.  I’m Not There (Soundtrack)

7.  Blitzen Trapper, Wild Mountain Nation

6.  Shearwater, Palo Santo (Expanded Edition (ok, slightly cheating, but well worth it))

5.  The Broken West, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On 

4.  The Avett Brothers, Emotionalism

3.  Okkervil River, The Stage Names

2.  Menomena, Friend and Foe

1.  The National, Boxer

Well, obviously, not, of course, but he sure sounds like a thoughtless hack once in a while.

In a cafeteria near my office on the Microsoft campus, there is a sign near the door.  It’s a testament to something or other that I have no recollection at all what the sign is actually about.  But it shows a sepia-tone picture of a bridge being built from both sides of some body of water.  The traverse is almost complete, except that the the two sides don’t quite line up.  Oops.  In big letters above the picture is a quote from Einstein.  It says, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”  I’ve never read a word of Deepak Chopra, but this is about what I imagine he or others like him would sound like.  Trite.  Persuasive to the relatively thoughtless.  And, well, idiotic.

But perhaps precisely because of its triteness and persuasiveness, this sort of thinking underlies an unfortunate amount of policy analysis and actual policy implementation.  Much to our detriment. 

Here’s the problem:  The statement doesn’t account for decision-making in uncertainty.  It doesn’t acknowledge that trade-offs are inherent in any planning.  It presumes that errors or bad results were caused by defective decision-making.  It doesn’t account for ex ante optimizing.  It thus fetishizes ex post consequences without considering that the very “best” level of thinking might still lead ex post to “bad” results. 

This defect is inherent in so much that is so awful in politics and government.  Enron went bankrupt?  Corporate governance is out of control! Pass Sarbanes-Oxley, quick!  Microsoft has a dominant position in the browser market?  The free market has failed!  Regulate the crap out of ‘em!  Neoclassical economics doesn’t have a perfect explanation for why college students hoard coffee mugs?  Send in the behavioralists!  It’s all about positional goods!  Or availability cascades!  Or something!

Most antitrust enforcement–most regulation, full stop–has this post hoc ergo propter hoc sort of character.  Analysis of decisions requires analysis of institutions.  It requires an understanding of the economics of information and of uncertainty.  And most of all it requires a sense of humility.  Unfortunately, post hoc rationalization seems to be extremely persuasive with your average voter and I’ve never heard of a humble politician.

Ah, well.  Another year begins, and an election year, at that.  The news and the blogs will be full of calls for reform, calls to “do something,” assignments of blame, examples of alleged market evils, and examples of post hoc rationalization.  There will be a deficit of sensible institutional analysis and restraint.  It should be quite fun, actually.

 UPDATE:  John Tierney seems to have had a similar concern.

If traffic and number of comments are any indication, this one from Geoff on the antitrust analysis of the Whole Foods/ Wild Oats merger certainly attracted the most attention.

Its been a fun year of of blogging.  Thanks to all of the TOTM bloggers, guests, commenters, and readers for making it so interesting!  Happy New Year!  See you in 2008.