nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

focus on situation and policies for biomass power generation in china abstract nowadays china is faced with many issues such as increasing farmers income protecting environment and adjusting energy structure which may be solved by developing the biomass power generation industry however the lack of technical capability inadequate raw materials and challenges for grid feed in are all obstacles that prevent large scale production and industrialization in the biomass power generation industry therefore government should provide necessary policies to support and advance the biomass power generation industry this paper systematically analyzes the current laws regulations and policies implemented recently in china and provides a comprehensive review of the fiscal subsidies reduction and exemption of taxes tariff concessions the policies of investment and financing and the support of r d suggestions for relevant policies are proposed to address the existing problems

the demand for beer wine and spirits a survey of the literature the demand for alcohol literature is vast and much conflicting information about the nature of the demand for alcoholic beverages has been published this paper presents a survey of the literature and then uses the technique of meta regression analysis to establish insights into the nature of the demand for beer wine and spirits unlike previous meta studies of the demand for alcoholic beverages this study adjusts for the precision of each elasticity estimate the analysis presented suggests reported elasticity estimates will be influenced by such factors as estimation technique data frequency and time period under consideration with respect to time the findings suggest that the demand for alcoholic beverages has become less inelastic since the mid 1950s and that the income elasticity has been falling since the mid 1960s the analysis also found support for the idea that alcohol as a commodity group is a necessity and that consumers respond to price discounting with inventory behaviour rather than true substitution behaviour little support is found for the idea that the demand for alcoholic beverages varies fundamentally across most countries although wine may be an exception language en

alcohol related crashes and alcohol availability in grass roots communities this paper employs a unique panel data from 111 small non metropolitan incorporated cities in california during a 108 month period from january 1981 to december 1989 in order to analyse the effect of alcohol availability on highway safety negative binomial regression models are estimated which include alcohol licences per square mile as a measure of alcohol availability theoretically the sign of the alcohol licence density is indeterminate as it reflects a trade off of its effect on traffic exposure and on the time price alcohol among the findings increases in the density of general alcohol licences for off site on site alcohol consumption are beneficial detrimental to highway safety whereas increasing the density of beer wine licences have non uniform effects additional findings important to municipal policymakers are that dui arrests and increasing the price of alcohol reduce alcohol related crashes

the demand for alcoholic drink in the united kingdom 1963 78 1983 the demand for alcoholic drink in the united kingdom 1963 78 applied economics vol 15 no 1 pp 125 140

agon and ag ec styles of persuasion in agricultural economics it is a tradition that these addresses be given by an outsider i speak as an outsider in praise of agricultural economics an outsider presuming to praise could be accused of condescension but i assure you i come by a favorable opinion of the field honestly i am practically an insider maternal relations own farms in illinois near watseka the same roger gray of the food research institute whom president elect johnston mentions in his paper is my second cousin once removed in england i have worked as an agricultural laborer once in vermont i milked a cow ag econ is in my blood

the demand for domestic and imported alcoholic beverages in ontario canada a dynamic simultaneous equation approach the purpose of this paper is to estimate simultaneously dynamic demand functions and consequently income and price elasticities for domestic and imported alcoholic beverages for the province of ontario the methodology used is the almost ideal demand system originally developed by deaton and muellbauer 1980 augmented by pollak s 1970 habit formation hypothesis the empirical application uses time series 1958 1987 for imported and domestically produced spirits wine and beer the findings provide strong support favouring the dynamic version of the almost ideal demand system over its static alternative but little evidence of strong substitution between domestic and imported products

costly external finance corporate investment and the subprime mortgage credit crisis abstract we study the effect of the recent financial crisis on corporate investment the crisis represents an unexplored negative shock to the supply of external finance for non financial firms corporate investment declines significantly following the onset of the crisis controlling for firm fixed effects and time varying measures of investment opportunities consistent with a causal effect of a supply shock the decline is greatest for firms that have low cash reserves or high net short term debt are financially constrained or operate in industries dependent on external finance to address endogeneity concerns we measure firms financial positions as much as four years prior to the crisis and confirm that similar results do not follow placebo crises in the summers of 2003 2006 nor do similar results follow the negative demand shock caused by september 11 2001 the effects weaken considerably beginning in the third quarter of 2008 when the demand side effects of the crisis became apparent additional analysis suggests an important precautionary savings motive for seemingly excess cash that is generally overlooked in the literature

bank competition and credit standards this article offers an explanation for the substantial variation of credit standards and price competition among banks over the business cycle as the economic outlook improves the average default probabilities of borrowers decline this affects the profitability of screening and causes bank screening intensity to display an inverse u shape as a function of economic prospects low screening activity in expansions creates intense price competition among lenders and loans are extended to lower quality borrowers as the economic outlook worsens price competition diminishes and credit standards tighten significantly deposit insurance may contribute to the countercyclical variation of credit standards copyright 2004 oxford university press

cross section estimation of us demand for alcoholic beverage a flexible limited dependent variable model is used to examine us demand for alcoholic beverage parameterization and distributional assumptions of the double hurdle model cragg 1971 and tobit model tobin 1958 are rejected findings suggest that price income household composition and other characteristics have significant effects on alcohol consumption income and own price elasticities are significant but relatively small

how much intraregional exchange rate variability could a currency union remove the case of asean 3 abstract a multilateral currency union removes intraregional exchange rates but not the union rate the pre union intraregional exchange rate variability is thus latent a two step procedure is developed to measure this the measured variables are used to model inflation and intraregional trade growth of individual union members counterfactual simulations of the union impact are carried out using the resulting models application to asean 3 shows that the intraregional variability mainly consists of short run exchange rate shocks that the variability significantly affects inflation and intraregional trade of major asean 3 members and that a union would reduce inflation and promote trade regionwide

loan commitments and monetary policy abstract in this paper we examine the impact of loan commitment agreements on the way in which monetary policy affects the economy we estimate a vector autoregressive var model and find evidence of a smaller impact of monetary policy on loans made under commitment agreements than on loans not made under commitment our conclusion is that loan commitments effectively protect borrowers from quantity credit rationing and thus force monetary policy to work mainly through interest rate channels

the demand for alcohol in the united kingdom using the aids model we show that there exists for the uk a stable long run relationship between expenditure shares on beer cider spirits and wine alcohol prices total alcohol expenditure and a range of non economic variables relating to advertising licensing the employment social class and demographic characteristics of consumers and climate our estimates of key price and income elasticities generally lie between those found from other time series studies which exclude most of these non economic variables and those found from cross section studies which generally include them however the restrictions required for separability homegeneity and symmetry although not those for perfect price aggregation are decisively rejected

the plight of the biomass power generation industry in china a supply chain risk perspective abstract for the past several years the biomass power generation industry in china has witnessed notably rapid development however many biomass power generation manufacturers in china are currently making small profits or suffering losses and the entire biomass supply chain does not function well which not only poses a challenge for the stable operation of enterprises but also may impact the smooth development of the biomass power industry from the perspective of supply chain risk this paper explores the reasons for the current plight and the future obstacles that the chinese biomass power generation industry may face identifying such risks as market risk production risk technology risk economic risk and management risk in the upstream midstream and downstream of the biomass supply chain and ordering the degrees of risk controllability by the government and enterprises it is determined that joint effort by both the chinese government and the biomass power generation enterprises is an ideal choice for risk control coming out of the plight however at present more problems should go to the government for solutions than to the enterprises to guide the healthy development of the industry the chinese government should play a more prominent role in promulgating supporting policies in each stage of the supply chain and strengthening the supervision and control of biomass projects last specific measures taken by the chinese government and the enterprises are proposed

securitization and moral hazard evidence from credit score cutoff rules abstract a growing literature exploits credit score cutoff rules as a natural experiment to estimate the moral hazard effect of securitization on lender screening however these cutoff rules can be traced to underwriting guidelines for originators not for securitizers moreover loan level data reveal that lenders change their screening at credit score cutoffs in the absence of changes in the probability of securitization credit score cutoff rules thus cannot be used to learn about the moral hazard effect of securitization on underwriting by showing that this evidence has been misinterpreted our analysis should move beliefs away from the conclusion that securitization led to lax screening

got rejected real effects of not getting a loan using a lender cutoff rule that generates plausibly exogenous variation in credit supply i investigate a new channel through which funding shocks are transmitted to the real economy based on a sample of more than 15 000 loan applications from small and medium sized enterprises i find that precautionary savings motives can aggravate real effects low liquidity firms whose loan applications were rejected increase cash holdings and cut noncash assets in excess of the requested loan amount these results point to the amplifying effect of precautionary savings motives in the transmission of credit supply shocks received december 11 2016 editorial decision february 22 2018 by editor philip strahan

cross country alcohol consumption comparison an application of the rotterdam demand system this paper analyses the consumption patterns of the three beverages beer wine and spirits in nine countries australia canada finland japan new zealand norway sweden the uk and the us using the rotterdam demand system a cross country comparison of the results shows that in most countries i wine consumption has grown at a fasteer rate than beer and spirits ii the proportion of consumers expenditure on alcohol is declining iii beer is a necessity and spirits is a luxury iv the demand for the three beverages is price inelastic and iv all three beverages are pair wise substitutes we also investigated the hypothesis of identical parameters for all countries by pooling the data across countries and found that the data do not support the hypothesis

are frequency and intensity of participation decision bearing aspects of consumption an analysis of drinking behaviour analysing quantity consumed per period implies a restriction on decisions about how frequently and intensely to consume this quantity hypothesis is rejected based on estimated equations for the frequency and intensity of spirit consumption consequently a simultaneous equation system for frequency and intensity is estimated as they enter the budget constraint as a multiplicative term income and education levels are found to be negatively related to intensity but not frequency this may reflect differences in the shadow prices of frequency and intensity for different socioeconomic groups or heterogeneous preferences for intoxication and health distinguishing between these aspects of drinking patterns is important for the evaluation of the price responsiveness of harmful drinking restrictions on availability and the causes of inequalities in health

cyclicality of credit supply firm level evidence abstract we quantify fluctuations in bank loan supply in the time series by studying firms substitution between loans and bonds using firm level data any firm that raises new debt must have a positive demand for external funds conditional on the issuance of new debt we interpret firms switching from loans to bonds as a contraction in bank credit supply we find strong evidence of this substitution at times that are characterized by tight lending standards depressed aggregate lending poor bank performance and tight monetary policy we show that this substitution behavior has strong predictive power for bank borrowing and investments by small firms

present situation problems and solutions of china s biomass power generation industry abstract with the reduction of global oil reserves developing renewable energy has become an important issue for each country biomass power is an important kind of clean energy as it has abundant resource and is environmental friendly in the past few years china biomass power industry has developed rapidly accompanied with some problems this paper analyzes the current situation of china biomass power generation from several aspects such as power structure resource distribution investment strength and policy environment etc we focus on the problems existed in practical operation and analyze the outstanding problems at last this paper offers several suggestions for future development on the relevant fields such as cost strategic planning and policy

the demand for alcohol in the uk a comment in a recent article appearing in this journal mcguinness 3 explores the effects of income prices advertising and availability on the consumption of alcohol in the uk his conclusions regarding the effects of advertising on consumption have attracted considerable attention 1 5 from an economic viewpoint his findings regarding the relatively weak and uncertain influence of income on the growth of demand are equally notable the purpose of the present comment is to show that certain unusual features of mcguinness s analysis have important implications for his reported findings mcguinness s regression analysis is based on the first differences of 21 annual observations 1955 75 the general approach used is illustrated by the following representative equation

the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 1989 the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 applied economics vol 21 no 8 pp 1063 1086

the employment effects of credit market disruptions firm level evidence from the 2008 9 financial crisis this article investigates the effect of bank lending frictions on employment outcomes i construct a new data set that combines information on banking relationships and employment at 2 000 nonfinancial firms during the 2008 9 crisis the article first verifies empirically the importance of banking relationships which imply a cost to borrowers who switch lenders i then use the dispersion in lender health following the lehman crisis as a source of exogenous variation in the availability of credit to borrowers i find that credit matters firms that had precrisis relationships with less healthy lenders had a lower likelihood of obtaining a loan following the lehman bankruptcy paid a higher interest rate if they did borrow and reduced employment by more compared to precrisis clients of healthier lenders consistent with frictions deriving from asymmetric information the effects vary by firm type lender health has an economically and statistically significant effect on employment at small and medium firms but the data cannot reject the hypothesis of no effect at the largest or most transparent firms abstracting from general equilibrium effects i find that the withdrawal of credit accounts for between one third and one half of the employment decline at small and medium firms in the sample in the year

possibilities and challenges of china s forestry biomass resource utilization abstract forestry biomass resource has many advantages which makes it a significant new energy to substitute fossil energy as an important role of biomass resources for the utilization of china s forestry biomass resources this paper analyzed the possibilities of its development from the aspect of policy resource endowment market and technology and discussed its development challenges from the aspect of policy economy society technology and resource endowment forestry biomass resources are very abundant in china it has made a significant breakthrough in forest biomass resource utilization with great prospects although there are still some difficulties and challenges in the policy resource endowment and other aspects these challenges are not insurmountable therefore forestry biomass resources should develop in a way with chinese characteristics considering the national condition

supply chain and logistics issues of bio energy production abstract within the concert of renewable energy technologies bio energy can play a decisive role during the next decades when smartly designed and applied under favorable conditions in this respect efficient and effective supply chain and logistics management represent one key parameter this paper presents a literature review of articles published in english speaking peer reviewed journals from 2000 to 2009 which cover the interface of bio energy production and issues of logistics and supply chain management first the articles are assessed according to descriptive criteria such as journal year of publication and research design applied then issues and challenges of designing and operating biomass chains that secure stable and competitively priced feedstock supply for bio energy plants have been classified 1 into the operations harvesting and collection storage transport and pre treatment techniques as well as 2 into overall supply system design although biomass supply chains for energy use are manifold in terms of size design and functioning most relevant issues regarding supply chain management and logistics of bio energy production are identified the findings are discussed against the backdrop of bio energy as sustainable renewable energy option

does food safety information impact u s meat demand a theoretical model of consumer response to publicized food safety information on meat demand is developed with an empirical application to u s meat consumption evidence is found for the existence of pre committed levels of consumption seasonal factors time trends and contemporaneous own and cross commodity food safety concerns the average demand response to food safety concerns is small especially in comparison to price effects and to previous estimates of health related issues this small average effect masks periods of significantly larger responses corresponding with prominent food safety events but these larger impacts are short lived with no apparent food safety lagged effects on food safety concerns in the united states have dramatically increased in the past decade with regard to incidences of contaminated meat products concerns have arisen because contaminated meat products can result in serious risk to the well being and health of consumers contamination comes from a myriad of sources including but not limited to outbreaks of listeria monocytogenes escherichia coli e coli and salmonella centers for disease control and prevention food safety problems are not isolated to the united states as other unsafe contaminates in meats have emerged across the world including highly publicized outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy bse in europe the potential impacts of publicized food safety events on consumer s demand for meat products in the united states include own effects on the demand for the contaminated meat involved as well as cross effects impacting the demand for other meats the objective of this article is to investigate whether publicized food safety concerns surrounding beef pork and poultry chicken and turkey have impacted meat consumption food safety indices are constructed separately for beef pork and poultry

the corporate propensity to save why do corporations accumulate liquid assets we show theoretically that intertemporal trade offs between interest income taxation and the cost of external finance determine optimal savings intriguingly we find that controlling for tobin s q saving and cash flow are negatively related because firms lower cash reserves to invest after receiving positive cash flow shocks and vice versa consistent with theory we estimate negative propensities to save out of cash flow we also find that income uncertainty affects saving more than do external finance constraints therefore contrary to previous evidence saving propensities reflect too many forces to be used to measure external finance constraints

do prices respond asymmetrically to cost changes this article investigates price asymmetry by using an almost complete sample of taiwanese industries to see whether output prices respond faster to cost increases than they do to decreases in contrast with the earlier literature the evidence shows that positive price asymmetry cannot be applied to all industries especially those industries with rapid productivity growth the evidence also indicates that firms exhibiting fast slow productivity growth see their prices react less more to cost increases than to cost decreases

developing a sustainability framework for the assessment of bioenergy systems the potential for biomass to contribute to energy supply in a low carbon economy is well recognised however for the sector to contribute fully to sustainable development in the uk specific exploitation routes must meet the three sets of criteria usually recognised as representing the tests for sustainability economic viability in the market and fiscal framework within which the supply chain operates environmental performance including but not limited to low carbon dioxide emissions over the complete fuel cycle and social acceptability with the benefits of using biomass recognised as outweighing any negative social impacts this paper describes an approach to developing a methodology to establish a sustainability framework for the assessment of bioenergy systems to provide practical advice for policy makers planners and the bioenergy industry and thus to support policy development and bioenergy deployment at different scales the approach uses multi criteria decision analysis mcda and decision conferencing to explore how such a process is able to integrate and reconcile the interests and concerns of diverse stakeholder groups

modeling of biomass to energy supply chain operations applications challenges and research directions reducing dependency on fossil fuels and mitigating their environmental impacts are among the most promising aspects of utilizing renewable energy sources the availability of various biomass resources has made it an appealing source of renewable energy given the variability of supply and sources of biomass supply chains play an important role in the efficient provisioning of biomass resources for energy production this paper provides a comprehensive review and classification of the excising literature in modeling of biomass supply chain operations while linking them to the wider strategic challenges and issues with the design planning and management of biomass supply chains on that basis we will present an analysis of the existing gaps and the potential future directions for research in modeling of biomass supply chain operations

the power of bias in economics research we investigate two critical dimensions of the credibility of empirical economics research statistical power and bias we survey 159 empirical economics literatures that draw upon 64 076 estimates of economic parameters reported in more than 6 700 empirical studies half of the research areas have nearly 90 of their results under powered the median statistical power is 18 or less a simple weighted average of those reported results that are adequately powered power 80 reveals that nearly 80 of the reported effects in these empirical economics literatures are exaggerated typically by a factor of two and with one third inflated by a factor of four or more

a feedstock supply model integrating the official organization for china s biomass generation plants abstract shortage of feedstock has hindered the development of china s biomass power generation because it is highly difficult to collect straw in china we pioneered a new feedstock supply model in which the formal official organization of villagers committees is introduced different from the previous feedstock supply patterns the immaterial utility of relative stakeholders and the impact of villagers committees on farmers behavior are considered in this paper to compare this pattern s performance with that of the conventional ones this paper developed a multi agent model specifically for china s situation we applied the model to simulate the operation of a biomass supply chain the results show that the proposed feedstock supply pattern can significantly increase the profits of biomass plants biomass supply amounts and farmers participation and in contrast with the broker pattern it can lower feedstock prices through disintermediation sensitivity analyses show that preferential feed in tariffs are still necessary for biomass power and that the new pattern can ease the government s subsidy burdens additionally farmers opportunity costs for supplying biomass their perceptions of immaterial utility and the cooperative s financial resource schemes of the public welfare fund all have differing impacts on the achievement of the new pattern

analysis on the policies of biomass power generation in china abstract this paper systematically collects and sorts out china polices of biomass power generation policy mainly from 2006 to 2012 based on the actual demand of the biomass power generation project according to the effect of the policy implementation it analyzes the problems about the policies such as the development goal being too large tax policies not being easy to implement the relevance amongst some policies being poor and provides some suggestions finally it concludes that biomass power generation should be developed steadily in china and fiscal supporting should not be introduced any more

the nature and causes of unemployment in the federal republic of germany since the seventies an empirical investigation the leading economic problem of our time is the high and persistent level of unemployment as of early 1985 there are no signs that the severity of unemployment will weaken within the near future this paper discusses first some basic developments of labour supply and labour demand in the federal republic of germany frg the composition of the labour supply and the structure of the labour demand for persons and hours worked as well as the dynamics of the unemployment pool the next section reviews very briefly some empirical findings explaining the rise in the nairu where we make the distinction between the no shock and the actual nairu following suggestions put by the organizers of the conference we then elaborate on the employment function in the empirically oriented literature most employment functions use labour services i e total hours worked as the dependent variable thus assuming homogeneity of labour demand with respect to jobs and working hours in the german political arena however the distinction between persons employed and hours worked is particularly important first it figures in the employment aims of labour unions who request reductions in weekly working hours in order to induce higher manning second the distinction arises in the context of overtime work for it has been suggested that the reduction in overtime to standard working hours could create more than 1 million new jobs in germany we present some estimated labour demand functions which take into account these two dimensions of labour demand jobs and hours and which are used to elaborate on the direction and magnitude of the employment effects of reductions in wage costs and increases in overtime premia

the adjustment of the real interest rate to inflation this paper reports tests of carmichael and stebbing s 1983 inverted fisher hypothesis that it is the real rather than the nominal interest rate which adjusts to changes in the expected inflation rate unlike the earlier analysis the results presented here are based on a properly specified estimating equation derived from a short run open economy macro model the results support the inverted fisher hypothesis in the short run but indicate that there is some overshooting of the real interest rate so that after four quarters about 75 of the effect of an expected inflation change is reflected in real rates while the remainder leads to an increase in the nominal rate

what s in a p reassessing best practices for conducting and reporting hypothesis testing research social science research has recently been subject to considerable criticism regarding the validity and power of empirical tests published in leading journals and business scholarship is no exception transparency and replicability of empirical findings are essential to build a cumulative body of scholarly knowledge yet current practices are under increased scrutiny to achieve these objectives jibs is therefore discussing and revising its editorial practices to enhance the validity of empirical research in this editorial we reflect on best practices with respect to conducting reporting and discussing the results of quantitative hypothesis testing research and we develop guidelines for authors to enhance the rigor of their empirical work this will not only help readers to assess empirical evidence comprehensively but also enable subsequent research to build a cumulative body of empirical knowledge

some evidence on the empirical significance of credit rationing this paper examines the credit rationing debate using detailed contract information on over one million commercial bank loans from 1977 to 1988 while commercial loan rates are sticky consistent with rationing this stickiness varies with loan contract terms in ways that are not predicted by equilibrium credit rationing theory in addition the proportion of new loans issued under commitment does not increase significantly when credit markets are tight despite the fact that borrowers without commitments can be rationed whereas commitment borrowers are contractually insulated from rationing overall the data suggest that equilibrium rationing is not a significant macroeconomic phenomenon

writing as a responsibility of science a reply to laband and taylor it must have been around 1968 in the coffee room of the social science building at chicago that milton friedman and the late george stigler had a jovial and public conversation about being economists that made a big impression on me milton was lamenting the stupidity of tariffs and george broke in from a foot above saying something as follows milton you re such a preacher if people want free trade they ll get it if they don t want it no amount of jawboning by economists will change their minds ah that s where we differ george we admire markets but you think they ve already worked and why not people are self interested and they vote their pocketbooks that s enough to make the market work they bought tariffs tariffs must be what they want no they pursue their interests but often do not know what their interests are people need education the average citizen has no idea that a tariff hurts him education try educating a lobbyist for the textile industry as i said that s where we differ i m a teacher and think that people do some things because they are ignorant and i m a scientist an economic scientist people do what they do because they are wise laband and taylor are stiglerites they believe with dr pangloss that we are in the best of all possible worlds the friedmanites which is my own tribe believe that we could be in it if we would only stop to think the stiglerites assume rationality the friedmanites teach it the stiglerites want to praise the world the friedmanites to change it the stiglerites detest policy what is is the friedmanites embrace it what might be can be the stiglerites are pessimistic in the manner of the master the friedmanites are optimistic laband and taylor the reader can see have a pessimistic and stiglerite explanation of why they have not learned to write competently they defend themselves against advice such as i give in the original paper by saying that it is presumptuous of anyone to claim unique knowledge of the marginal benefit to authors of investment in better presentation if the investment we were talking about was oil drilling i d agree with their economics i ve written a book called if you re so smart that makes a similar point about economic experts going around offering advice but the investment in question here is where laband and taylor go wrong is economic education laband taylor and i are economic educators in the educational industry we are the oil drillers the experts we educate our student roughnecks in the craft teaching them because we do know better or else we should not be standing up there tuth 10 50 12 10 part of the craft laband and taylor agree is attending to elements of presentation so the initial mistake in their paper is economic they think that because some advice is silly and misinformed all advice must be even advice from teachers to students stiglerites tend to drive themselves into such extreme skepticism but no one can actually live as an extreme skeptic i d like to see what laband and taylor say to a student who thinks that markets are bad for you do they agree mildly that it s just a matter of opinion another stigler story george opposed requirements in the graduate curriculum at chicago around 1970 he killed off the requirement in the history of thought which was his own field and tried repeatedly to kill off economic history he succeeded in 1980 when i left the faculty his argument which is heard in many other departments of economics was that the graduate students should be free to choose listen up milton after all they are just like consumers what george and laband and taylor never answered was the teacher s point which milton made in the discussions about the history of thought requirement we are teachers we do know better graduate students because they are not educated already that s why they are students often make bad decisions about their curricula