EBay and the Illegal Looting of Antiquities
Archaeologists worry a lot about looting. Artifacts stolen from historical sites fetch high prices on the black market, which gives looters strong incentives to steal these items. The emergence of eBay, therefore, was a nightmare for those who hated looting. Reducing transaction costs and making the market more liquid would certainly lead to more looting. Read More »
Geography Rising?
Most people don’t consider geography a controversial field, but that perception may change in the wake of the Iraq war and the ensuing shift toward pragmatism and realism in international affairs. Robert Kaplan argues that, “of all the unsavory truths in which realism is rooted, the bluntest, most uncomfortable, and most deterministic of all is Read More »
Japan’s Weird Unemployment Solution
When Japanese unemployment edged up to a three-year high of 4.4 percent in February, the government started looking for creative ways to lower it. One solution: get the unemployed out of the country by offering citizenship buyouts. The program applies only to unemployed people of Japanese descent who were born abroad but now live in Read More »
Real Commitment at the OMB
Catherine Rampell had a nice post last week over at Economix (“Do It Or Pay”) telling of NPR’s recent interview with Peter Orszag, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, in which Orszag talks about writing an exercise contract exactly like what my beloved stickK.com offers: Read More »
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