It’s hard to know what the appropriate penalties should be for any crime. But we can still take something from the economics of crime and apply it to the Paul Pelosi situation. Here’s what Lisa Mascaro, Stefanie Dazio, and Terry Chea write in “Paul Pelosi Attack: Suspect Faces State and Federal Charges,” NBC Bay Area, November 1, 2022: Additionally, DePape is charged federally with influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a federal official by threatening or injuring a family member. He also faces one count of attempted kidnapping of a United States official on account of the performance of official duties. In other words, because David DePape allegedly [I say “allegedly” to save myself from a lawsuit] attacked the husband of a politician, he faces charges in addition to the ones that he would have faced if he had attacked me. One of the path-breaking articles in the economics of crime was Gary Becker’s “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach,” published in the March/April 1968 edition of the Journal of Political Economy. I remember working my way through it in an intermediate microeconomics course that Kenneth Avio taught at the University of Western Ontario in the 1971-72 academic year. The bottom line that I took away from the article is that the higher the probability of catching a criminal, the lower should be the penalty the criminal faces. How is that relevant in the  DePape case? It pretty much has to be true that someone who assaults the husband of a woman who is second in line for the U.S. presidency (only after Vice-President Kamala Harris) has a high probability of being caught. This probability is much higher than the probability that the police would catch someone who assaulted me. So that means that the penalty for assaulting Paul Pelosi should be lower than the penalty for assaulting me, not higher as it is currently. Of course you could argue that it’s more important to protect relatives of politicians than to protect me because assaulting the relative could intimidate the politician and take her away from her useful work. The problem with that line of reasoning is that then we would have to make some judgment about the value of Speaker Pelosi’s work versus the value of mine. Hmmm. Postscript: My bio of Gary Becker in David R. Henderson, ed., The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics is here. The picture above is of him.     (0 COMMENTS)

It is possible to defend the nation-state, despite its history of oppression, persecution, tyranny, and war. Note that before this recent creation, life was not always a piece of cake for everybody either. For a more affirmative defense, suppose that all individuals and families on earth were offered an air ticket to move anywhere they want to live, no question asked. Those who like self-reliance and private guns could move to the United States. Those who like wine and sensuality could move to France. Those who like friendly, smiling people like in the Prisoner’s Village could move to the United Kingdom. Those who like wide uninhabited spaces with no guns and wall-to-wall Medicare could move to Canada. Those who like strict social norms and a sense of belonging might choose India or Afghanistan. Those who like the environment and poverty could move to Bhutan or Burundi. Those who like to be liberated from choice (except about where to queue and how to survive) would move to Venezuela or North Korea. These are just illustrations; please choose your own according to your preferences and values. (I take values to mean preferences for states of the world, as opposed to preferences for personal consumption and activities.) Once the new borders are drawn, the world would be composed of nation-states based on real common preferences and values as nationalists now imagine them, as opposed to the current reality of largely artificial assemblages in which coercive authorities impose arbitrary identities on most of their subjects. If one of these new nation-states did impose a common identity, it would correspond to what all its subjects want anyway. Even the woke could arguably carve out their own nation-state where they would live among themselves under a secular theocracy. The uniformity of individual preferences and values would prevent the voting irrationality predicated on the Condorcet paradox and Arrow’s theorem. Instead, the median voter would rule all the time but, all individuals being similar, every voter would the median voter and everybody would revel in the resulting mediocrity. They are however many problems with this simple model of perfect nation-states. The self-selection of individuals according to their own preferences would be difficult to start, for how would current rulers and their clienteles find in their interests to dismantle their exploitation playgrounds? But let’s disregard this obstacle. As the relocations proceed and new nation-state configurations emerge, many individuals would need to relocate again. Before reaching an equilibrium, where all individuals or a large proportion of them are satisfied and stop moving, assuming such an equilibrium exista, the process would need many rounds. This can be seen with simple computer simulations built on the famous Thomas Schelling model of segregation. Perhaps a very large number of plane tickets would be required—conceivably consuming all GDP. A mechanism would have to be devised to solve the problem of individuals attracted mainly by the welfare states of the (forecasted) richest countries, because parasites without hosts is not a stable solution. Still, if we respect “national sovereignty,” many individuals are bound to remain discontented. There are only about 200 countries in the word and barely two individuals among the billions alive have exactly the same preferences and values. Ultimately, every individual or family would need its own country, but the jury is still out on whether anarchy, even if desirable, is feasible. Even in our ideal self-selected nations, then, there would still be majorities exploiting minorities. The latter may be smaller, but this can make them more exploitable. The only solution for perfect “nationalism,” it seems, is that each country has some form of minimal or classical liberal state. The whole exercise of segregation would have only demonstrated that the peaceful coexistence of different individuals requires either subjection of some individual to others or else minimal states. As I indicated before, the president of Syldavia can only be president of all Syldavians if he drastically limits his interventions in Syldavians’ lives. If the foregoing is correct, the practical goal to pursue would be for each of us under his own more or less tyrannical nation-state,  to try to push it toward a minimal state. This is, together with independent moving (when possible) and a cosmopolitan outlook, the only way to increase the number of individuals whose preferences are not constantly overruled. The possibility of creating and maintaining geographical spaces in which to pursue this goal without foreign tyrants’ interference appears to be the only good defense of the nation-state system, although both “nation” and “state” then require scare quotes. (0 COMMENTS)

Richard Hanania recently suggested to Tyler Cowen that we might have been better off with a libertarian response to Covid. Tyler responded: Tyler: I have more sympathies for the libertarian solution than most people would. But I think in this case, it’s not time consistent. So one issue is simply how do you deal with legal liability? Now the FDA process, for all of its flaws, does give manufacturers the ability to bring the thing to market in a way consistent with corporate law and their other fiduciary responsibilities. So no FDA means everything is fair game in the court system. That is much worse even than the FDA. It’s a bigger constraint. But also, government won’t let them keep the prices high.Governments confiscate resources ex post. We know that, so you need to reward them upfront, even if in principle you think the higher price would be a better incentive. I would also point out that when there’s an externality through contagion, you don’t want the price of a vaccine to be very high. I have two thoughts on this response: 1. From one perspective, Tyler is actually showing the advantage of the libertarian approach to Covid.  It would be better if governments were not able to put price controls on vaccines.  It would be better if vaccine sellers could insist that customers sign contracts promising not to sue if there were bad side effects, and if those waivers were legally enforceable. 2.  Given that we do not live under that sort of libertarian regime, there may be a case for subsidizing vaccine development, or providing an FDA stamp of approval to reduce the risk of lawsuits. Similar examples occur in many contexts.  In an unregulated free market banking system with NGDP targeting, it probably makes no sense to have minimum capital requirements for banks.  But in a regime where FDIC creates moral hazard and Fed policy creates cycles in NGDP growth, there may be an argument for regulations that make the banking system a bit safer.  (Whether those regulations work in practice is another question, but it’s at least possible that some regulations are beneficial in terms of offsetting the negative effects of other regulations.) PS.  The interview also includes an interesting discussion of why Tyler believes that (at the margin) the developing world needs to become more woke. (0 COMMENTS)

It’s funny how certain ideas you encounter early in life can stick inside your head, regardless of where they came from. As a young child, I immensely enjoyed reading cheesy horror stories aimed at kids and teens. One book (I’ve long since forgotten the title or author) had a scene that lodged an idea in my head ever since. The book told the story of a vampire who lived in an old, abandoned house. One evening, a group of high schoolers snuck into the house (because…reasons?) and were trapped inside by the vampire. He explains that he only needs to take one victim and will let the rest of the group go. However, he insists that the teens themselves must decide who he will take. At one point, one of the teens volunteers herself to spare her friends. The vampire announces she is free to leave – he operates according to certain rules, and by those rules, volunteering has spared her. Immediately after this, another teen volunteers herself to the vampire, and he promptly accepts her offer. When she protests that the vampire is contradicting himself over the rules, he responds that it only seems that way to her because she doesn’t understand what the rules are. She was under the mistaken impression that the rule was “anyone who volunteers will be freed.” But the actual rule was that acts of genuine self-sacrifice would set someone free. Volunteering as a roundabout act of self-preservation didn’t confer the same result. To my young self, this was a fantastic twist in the story, and it lodged an idea into my young brain. If someone’s behavior seems inconsistent or contradictory to you, that probably just means you don’t really understand what’s animating their behavior in the first place. (If only a certain breed of behavioral economist on a mission to “correct” certain peoples “irrationally inconsistent” behavior had read cheesy vampire stories in their childhood – but that’s a rant for another day!) I was reminded of all of this when reading a remark by frequent commenter PhilH, where he suggests there is a contradiction in different metaphors economic liberals use to describe the market. One the one hand, classical liberals describe freedom in the market as “just freedom to do what you want,” but also describe the market itself as “an ‘invisible hand’ and a powerful force.” Is that a contradiction? How does one reconcile believing that market freedom is the freedom to do what you want, while also believing the market acts as an invisible hand powerfully directing people’s behavior? Whether this seems like a contradiction depends on what one means when they speak of force. To economic and classical liberals, “force” is narrowly defined to describe actual (or believably threatened) acts of violence. By contrast, adjusting your behavior in response to market signals does not qualify as “force” or a restriction on freedom. We don’t deny that the market can provide constraints on one’s behavior – which is why we frequently employ terms like “budget constraints” or “constrained maximization.” But when we speak of the freedom to act as you wish in the market, that does not mean “the positive ability to achieve anything you desire, free of constraint.” It simply means that you may do whatever is in your budget set, with a willing trading partner, and nobody may use force (as defined above) to stop you. Suppose I wanted to import a custom Lamborghini. Unfortunately, I look at the cost of doing so, and look at my bank account, and notice the massive gulf between the two. I end up with no Lamborghini in this case. Now imagine that my bank account was significantly bigger, so there was no budgetary constraint preventing me from importing that Lamborghini. However, suppose a law had been passed outlawing such imports. Here, too, I end up with no Lamborghini. In the first case, the invisible hand of the market is saying “If you attempt to get a Lamborghini, your trading partner will decline due to lack of payment, so no Lamborghini for you!” In the second case, the state is saying “If you and a trading partner voluntarily agree to exchange for a Lamborghini, it will be seized and you will be fined/arrested/subject to legal sanction, so no Lamborghini for you!” The result in both cases is the same, but economic liberals insist there is an important difference between the two. And given how different these situations are, we should not use the same word to describe them – doing that would be bad lexicography and would only muddle our thinking. So only situations involving threats or acts of violence or state sanction are called “force.” A good description of this issue (and a quippy response) can be found in Thomas Sowell’s book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy: The cosmic perspective of course extends beyond the law. But, in whatever field it appears, its adherents are quick to say that people did not really have a “free choice” in what they did. Thus to Noam Chomsky, “freedom is illusion and mockery when conditions for the exercise of free choice do not exist” – and these conditions do not exist for “the person compelled to sell his labor power to survive,” i.e., for anyone who works for a living. Any circumstantial constraints or potential consequences hanging over people’s decisions makes their choices not “really” free. But this conception of a free choice requires an unconstrained universe. Only God could have a free choice – and only on the first day of creation, since He would be confronted on the second day by what He had already done on the first. Someone might agree with Chomsky and disagree with Sowell about freedoms and constraints. But even if Chomsky and his fellow thinkers are correct, the perspective of Sowell and economic liberals would merely be wrong – but it would not be contradictory. The seeming contradiction rests on a misunderstanding of what is meant by the terms.   Kevin Corcoran is a Marine Corps veteran and a consultant in healthcare economics and analytics and holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from George Mason University.  (0 COMMENTS)

Economist and political scientist Michael Munger of Duke University talks about industrial policy with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Munger argues that in a democracy, the default outcome for industrial policy is crony capitalism–attempts to improve on that outcome either by appointing experts or eliminating cronyism are going to fail for political reasons. The conversation concludes with a […] The post Michael Munger on Industrial Policy appeared first on Econlib.

There are an increasing number of reports that Russia’s attempt to use gas exports as a geopolitical weapon have backfired.  Here’s Bloomberg: Worse, Russia also tried to scare Ukraine’s friends out of the fight by wielding its brass energy knuckles, causing oil and gas prices to soar. But the West is now prying that weapon out of Russia’s hands, Clara Ferreira Marques writes, and will soon start bodying Russia with it. We’ve found workarounds for Russian energy; Europe is now swimming in so much gas it costs less than zero. Plus we’ve hurried up our embrace of renewables that will make Russia’s fossil fuels obsolete. And being deprived of foreign dollars and expertise will mean more of those fuels stay in the ground. Another Bloomberg article discusses the long run implications for Russia: Russia will never go back to fossil fuel exports at levels seen in 2021. Its share of internationally traded gas is seen shrinking from 30% last year to half of that by 2030. The country exported over 7 million barrels per day of oil last year, but the IEA estimates that falls by a quarter by 2030, even in the least-demanding scenario. By the mid-2020s, North America is exporting more oil than Russia. I see two important lessons from this fiasco: 1. Most pundits (including some economists) underestimate the ability of markets to do a “work around” when the supply of a key good is restricted.  We often read that it is technologically impossible to do without X, and that it will take many years to ramp up the production of alternatives.  Recall that during Covid we were assured that it would take a long time to produce various quantities of vaccines, masks, Paxlovid, etc., and then production easily blew right by the pessimistic forecasts.  I am not suggesting that supply constraints are never a problem (Europe still faces some problems this winter), rather that we should be skeptical about claims of how hard it will take to circumvent those restrictions. 2.  Related to the first point, attempts to use trade restraints as a geopolitical weapon often backfire.  I’m certainly not an expert on high tech products, but we need to be careful that attempts to embargo China don’t result in China doing a Sputnik-type project to develop its own production of cutting edge technologies.  In a future crisis, what gives the US more leverage, a situation where the Chinese economy depends on sophisticated computer chips from Taiwan and the US, or a situation where China has developed its own industries (even if a bit less “first generation”) and has become mostly self-sufficient? (1 COMMENTS)

Economist Roland Fryer worried about the fate of students in America’s inner-city schools, and he had a crazy idea- could monetary incentives affect student, teacher, and parent behavior? A natural enough question to be posed by an economist, but Fryer was shocked at how many people found financial incentives in education repulsive. What gives, he asked? Don’t middle class parents do this all the time??? Fryer and a dedicated team set out to see how they might improve outcomes for some of the nation’s most vulnerable students, and in this episode, he discusses what they did and what they found with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Over the course of his research, Fryer has identified the five characteristics of successful schools- what he calls “the basic physics of education. These include 1) more time in school, 2) changed human capital strategy, 3) using data to inform instruction, 4) high dosage tutoring in small groups, and 5) a culture of high expectations. On of the most charming parts of the conversation is when Fryer describes his grandmother’s reaction to his findings. As she exclaimed, “Why aren’t they [all] doing it? Why is this revolutionary?” Do you think this is revolutionary? Can it be replicated? Why isn’t every school doing it? Let’s hear your thoughts. Use the prompts below to reply in the comments, or start your own conversation offline.     1- Fryer and his colleagues found that generally, paying students for output didn’t work, but paying for inputs did. What does this mean in practice? How were Fryer and his colleagues able to measure the price elasticity of the incentives they offered students? Again, what does this mean in practice? And perhaps most importantly, why did these results make Fryer less concerned about fostering “a love of learning” among these students? How do you feel about this claim?   2- Though Roberts reminds us all that implementing findings such as Fryer’s is never simple, why can’t we create a McDonalds-like template (or a “popcorn” button) for education reform? Or in other words, how would you answer Fryer’s Grandma?   3- Roberts asks Fryer what is the ONE thing he would suggest to the principal of a failing school? What is the “one-two punch” Fryer suggests, and to what extent do you find this a reasonable suggestion?   4- Fryer notes the tremendous variance in charter school success, which makes them interesting research subjects. That is, while on average charter schools perform only marginally better than traditional public schools, some fare much better, and others much worse. Roberts askes Fryer, should charter schools be expanded? How would you evaluate Fryer’s answer? How would you answer?   5- Both Roberts and Fryer admit to frustration in the way we typically talk about parents and schooling in poorer neighborhoods. What sort of inherent prejudices do such conversations reveal? What does Fryer mean when he says what we observe about the way poorer parents make choices about schools is more an information problem than a preference problem? How might changing the way we vies such decisions change the way we approach education reform?   (0 COMMENTS)

It rarely happens that politicians explicitly acknowledge that they failed to understand what they thought they could design. Unfortunately, that they acknowledge this this does not mean that they stop designing. Being a German citizen currently offers a splendid chance to study directly what can happen when governments take charge of things. German governments, perhaps with the best intentions you can imagine, went ahead and revolutionized the energy market. They wanted to get rid of these dirty fossil fuels we all dislike and instead make Germany a green economy. Lots of solar energy, lots of wind power. However, the sun does not shine 24/7, and neither does the wind blow whenever you might need to charge your phone, fry your schnitzel, or do the laundry. What you need is dispatchable generation of energy. In light of the famed German angst, German politicians forbade the use of the (actually incredibly safe and climate-friendly) nuclear power plants, but also technologies like fracking. This led to a certain dependence on gas. Russian gas. And now, as the Russians no more are the friendly trade partner they have always promised to be, the German society is in dire straits. So, what to do? Perhaps the government should intervene to remedy the situation. This is at least what many politicians think, and it already translated into action. German minister for economic affairs Robert Habeck developed a scheme of government aids for energy companies. This in order to save those companies from bankruptcy which are essential for the German energy supply. However, it soon transpired that the scheme wasn’t well thought out. Taxpayer money would also go to companies which currently make bank. In a curious concession of the knowledge problem, Habeck explained that “we honestly did not know how intertwined the gas market is.” Acknowledging one’s shortcomings is laudable. Even more so if you’re a politician. For honesty and admitting mistakes will put you as a politician in a strenuous situation when journalists, intellectuals, and political rivals joyously stress those failures you yourself admitted. What worries the political economist, however, is the conclusion drawn from these acknowledged shortcomings. Looking at the debacle that is the German energy market and the perils of regulating it (to quote Israel Kirzner who generally analyzed regulation) the conclusion should be humility. Politicians should be much humbler about the things they believe they can design. And they should honestly ask themselves: “Maybe it is better not to intervene? For I do not understand what’s going on here.” Looking at German and European politics, this seems not to be what the politicians conclude. Instead, there are cries for price controls, for excess (or perhaps windfall) profit taxes. The maxim seems to be: if your intervention failed, you must intervene again, and this time harder. This is the recipe for the dynamics of the mixed economy which Sanford Ikeda described so astutely. Politicians suffer from ‘policy myopia’: they rarely see that it’s them who are causing most of the problems. And then they resolutely go ahead – and cause even more problems. It may be the case that in some situations (often those produced by previous government intervention) governments need to act. This may apply in the case of the German energy market and the recent nationalization of Uniper. But even if true, the general lesson must be that in the future governments ought to refrain from undertaking such bold things like the ‘Energiewende’ (energy transition). What they should focus on is what the (German) ordoliberals called setting the rules of the game. Not interfering with the play.   Max Molden is a PhD student at the University of Hamburg. He has worked with European Students for Liberty, the Prometheus Institute, and the Austrian Institute. (0 COMMENTS)

What is fascism? In 1968, the historian S.J. Woolf wrote: Perhaps the word fascism should be banned, at least temporarily, from our political vocabulary. For like other large words – democracy, reactionary, radical, anarchy – it has been so misused that it has lost its original meaning; or, at least, it has been so overlaid with newer and broader connotations that the narrower, historical sense almost seems to require apologetic inverted commas. This remains true in 2022. Fascists themselves are partly responsible for this. “[W]e do not believe in dogmatic programmes,” Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, explained: …we permit ourselves the luxury of being aristocratic and democratic, conservative and progressive, reactionary and revolutionary, legalists and illegalists, according to the circumstances of the moment, the place and the environment. At one time he claimed “We are libertarians above all, loving liberty for everyone, even for our enemies,” at another, that: …the individual exists only insofar as he is subordinated to the interests of the state, and as civilisation becomes more complex, so the liberty of the individual must be increasingly restricted. If we cannot find fascism in the fascist’s words, we can find it in their deeds. What did they do?   Corporatism – Economic fascism Political scientist Andrew Heywood wrote that the “distinguishing feature” of “Fascist economic thought, …is the idea of corporatism, which Mussolini proclaimed to be the ‘third way’ between capitalism and socialism…Corporatism opposes both the free market and central planning: the former leads to the unrestrained pursuit of profit by individuals, while the latter is linked to the divisive idea of class war. In contrast corporatism is based upon the belief that business and labour are bound together in an organic and socially unified whole. To this end, 1926 saw what the historian Denis Mack Smith calls “a limited number of ‘fascist strikes’ [which] were permitted to pressurise the captains of industry into accepting state control.” In July that year: Mussolini created a special ministry of corporations and explained that a new cooperative machinery, as well as fixing wages and conditions of work, would eventually regulate the whole economy. He thought it possible that one day the corporations would effect what would amount to compulsory recruitment of all Italian citizens for civilian work. The following year saw the establishment of 22 corporations which represented employers, workers, and government, and were charged with overseeing the development of all the major industries in Italy. Political scientist Roger Eatwell describes how: In 1930 a National Council of Corporations was set up, which comprised seven large worker and employer organizations. It had no legislative power, but could issue binding orders in matters concerning wages and conditions. By 1934 this had been expanded to include twenty-two sectors of the economy and social life. In 1939, a chamber of Fasces and corporations was created to replace parliament.   Fascism in deeds, not words. This is what fascism did. That the program substantially failed reflects more the impossibility of the goal than of any lack of will. Corporatism was essential to Italian fascism, which “In almost every sense,” according to the historian R.J.B. Bosworth, “constituted the first and truest fascism…”. Mussolini wrote that “the fascist state is corporative or it is nothing” and called the corporations “the fascist institution par excellence”. Corporatism was embraced by the fascists in Britain and France. We should treat anything Mussolini said with skepticism, but his deeds show that he was no libertarian and was sincere when, by contrast, he argued that: …the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State… The fascist’s frequently contradictory statements have enabled others to pin the label on almost anyone. And, as fascists are beyond the pale of polite politics, it has enabled almost anyone to be pushed beyond the pale. Understanding what fascism really is matters and its deeds reveal this. It is the ideology of the all-encompassing state, seen, in economic policy, in corporatism. Not all who believe in massive state intervention in the economy are fascists, but all fascists believe in massive state intervention in the economy. You cannot be a fascist if you don’t believe in that.   John Phelan is an Economist at Center of the American Experiment. (1 COMMENTS)

I learned on Wednesday that my fellow UCLA Ph.D. grad Shirley Svorny died on October 20. Health economist Michael F. Cannon wrote a very thoughtful obituary and summary of some of the highlights of Shirley’s excellent work. I’ll mention a few, focusing on things I didn’t know or knew only vaguely. Her Dissertation Her dissertation sought to “explain why U.S. policy makers diverged from their usual policy to allow unrestricted migration [of foreign‐​trained physicians] from 1965 to 1980.” Without liberalization, “the unprecedented expansion in health care expenditures” that followed the creation of Medicare and Medicaid “may have led to severe queues or price hikes” that would have angered consumers. Shirley found evidence that liberalizing migration increased the supply of physicians and reduced prices for physician services. She argued that domestic physicians temporarily yielded to liberalization because “in order for physicians to maximize their long‐​run earnings, they must avoid actions that would cause consumers to put pressure on the government to repeal some of the legislation that currently protects physicians from competition.” Regulatory Barriers to Telehealth Two years before anyone had heard of Covid‐​19, Shirley authored a studyarguing for removing regulatory barriers to telehealth and made the case for liberalizing telehealth alongside U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz (D‑HI) at a briefing on Capitol Hill. After Covid hit, she and I [Michael Cannon] coauthored a study arguing that Covid‐​19 demonstrates that clinician licensing reduces access to medical care; we presented alternatives to monopolistic certification of clinician categories and quality. Shirley’s Disease and Kaiser Permanente Care Shirley fought multiple myeloma for more than seven years, even participating in a clinical trial. I was glad to hear she was happy with the care she received; she loved to surprise managed‐​care skeptics by sharing her positive experiences with Kaiser Permanente. My Own Recollection In late December 1977 a number of us UCLAers got together at the American Economics Association meetings in New York and went to an Italian restaurant afterwards. There was a guy singing songs and playing his guitar during our meal and I got up the nerve to ask if I could sing a song. He said yes. So I started with an easy one, “King of the Road.” That went well and so I sang Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” A friend at our table told me that a mutual friend had expressed his embarrassment but that Shirley had said words to the effect, “That was wonderful.” I know that I made this about me, but it’s one of my fondest memories of the person Shirley was. By the way, I have a picture of a few of us with our professor Jack Hirshleifer before we went to dinner. Unfortunately, Shirley isn’t in it. (0 COMMENTS)