Various articles of interest from an old blog post

Plenty of good material from the most recent issue of the eminently readable Journal of Economic Perspectives.

"The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer" by Greg Mankiw is a good survey.

Also a must-read is a pretty tough critique of residential recycling by Thomas C. Kinnaman.

And a very scholarly look at "What Has Mattered to Economics Since 1970" in which the authors E. Han Kim, Adair Morse and Luigi Zingales compile a very impressive list of the most cited journal articles in the field.

Meanwhile over at Cato, I had the opportunity to spend a train ride home reading Sallie James's new policy brief, "Milking the Customers: The High Cost of U.S. Dairy Policies." The paper confirms what every free trader knows U.S price supports and other farm subsidies are a crime against the poor.

The new Cato Journal has two great articles (scroll halfway down). William Niskanen casts doubt on Milton Friedman's "starve the beast approach" to limiting Leviathan (government)while Jerry H. Tempelman is less pessimistic. 

Niskanen also has a review of James Buchanan's new book, Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative: The Normative Vision of Classical Liberalism.
And who knew? Naples as a fashion capital! Michael Ledeen reports.