University of Chicago economist, and Nobel Laureate, Gary Becker, has died at the age of 83. A brief summary of his work is here, and a more complete picture given by his Nobel address, here. He is one of the most influential economists of the contemporary era. His innovations stemmed from the idea that the basic methods of traditional economics - the study of how individuals and firms make choices given the constraints and prices they face - could be applied to many, many aspects of human life: choices about investments in education and … [Read more...]

At Guardian Books, Will Self, for a forthcoming lecture, writes: I believe the serious novel will continue to be written and read, but it will be an art form on a par with easel painting or classical music: confined to a defined social and demographic group, requiring a degree of subsidy, a subject for historical scholarship rather than public discourse. He fails to convince me, but mine might be a minority view. However, I will pick up on one point. He writes: This is not to say that everyone walked the streets [in the twentieth century] … [Read more...]

I would say I'm not sure anyone will ever top this, but who can predict? Press Progress reports on a document produced by Kinder Morgan, on the beneficial economic impact of ... oil spills. The report reads: Words fail. H/T Charles Pierce @ESQPolitics … [Read more...]

Scotland has a policy of free university tuition. Today The Guardian reports: The research by Lucy Hunter Blackburn, a former civil servant with the Scottish government, estimates that free university tuition and the cuts in grants to lower-earning students means middle-class families and students will be £20m a year better. She estimates that the overall costs to lower-income families, including thousands of students at further education colleges, have gone up by at least £32m a year after the grant cuts forced them to take out larger … [Read more...]

At Salon, Laura Miller writes about literary scholar Franco Moretti, and his efforts to analyze texts in order to discover what makes a success: Miller: One of the aspects of your work that’s the most counterintuitive at first glance is that you’re not that interested in studying literary masterpieces. You study literary works in large masses, regardless of whether they’re good or not. You’re not looking at “Middlemarch”; you’re looking at 7,000 mostly mediocre Victorian novels. Why is that interesting to you? Moretti: First of all, those … [Read more...]

I was recently interviewed by Nancy Fowler of St. Louis Public radio on the recent controversies surrounding the ethics policies of the Zoo-Museum District. I won't repeat the whole story here, which is best covered in Ms Fowler's piece. This is a more general observation: Public and nonprofit arts organizations rely on public support. For public agencies, that comes in terms of voter support for earmarked tax funding programs, or through the budget allocations of local, state and federal government. Nonprofits rely on public support … [Read more...]

Slate reports on the success of Cups, an app that allows people unlimited (sort of) cups of coffee from independent cafes in New York: For $45 a month, you can use the app to order as much tea and basic hot coffee as you want at any of Cups’ 28-and-counting member locations; for $85 you can add lattes, iced coffee, and other espresso-based beverages into the mix. And as part of the soft-launch, everything is free if you download the app. Everything. Until early next week. ... The genius of Cups is the notion that the best aspects of big chains … [Read more...]

About six weeks ago the Times reported on museum directors' wages, finding something of a gender gap: Women run just a quarter of the biggest art museums in the United States and Canada, and they earn about a third less than their male counterparts, according to a report released on Friday by the Association of Art Museum Directors, a professional organization. The group examined salary data on the 217 members it had last year through the prism of gender, for the first time. The report noted strides made by women at small and midsize … [Read more...]

What are the effects of an increased concentration of wealth on the art market? Writing in the New York Times, Scott Reyburn looks for a link between the theories in most newsworthy economics book of the year, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and what we are seeing at the top end of the art market: Although art is one of the few subjects not mentioned in the index of Mr. Piketty’s 685-page opus, it is worth considering how the unprecedented amounts of money the wealthy have recently been spending on trophy artworks might … [Read more...]