Once again it’s been a long while between posts. I’m off to Vegas tomorrow morning for this years APEE conference. The ominous dissertation defense is right around the corner, scheduled for April 22.
Here are some interesting links to help pass the time without real post:
Are prison populations a crises?
Do cheap consumer goods deter burglary?
If the writer of the wire decided on prison policy.
Apparently marriage gives more housework to women. Seems reasonable but I wonder if they held constant for the size of the house. Also wonder what Caplan would have to say?

ENJOY!

1) Pointer from Marginal Revolution to Cop in the Hood. Pre-ordered my copy already and can’t wait for the exciting read.
2) Don’t know why I keep torturing myself on the whole colorblind thing but I think I’d be some kind of outlier in this survey.
I think the same phenomenon would emerge if you played people songs and asked what genre they’d call it.

It has been a while since my last post and I apologize. In the past month or so I have been very busy traveling and such. First, I went to Houston, for a Liberty Fund conference on Francois Furet. Anyone interested in the odd self-deprecating nature of the bourgeoisie should give his works a close reading. After a brief but love-filled visit to South Florida for holidays with my family I attended the American Economic Association as part of my job search. Though the conference was hectic and stressful I feel good about my interviews and eagerly await callbacks for additional fly outs.
Here are a few things I wish I had been more informed of before doing my interviews.
1. Bring copies of your research with you, not necessarily to give to interviewers but to read and have fresh in your own mind for when you’re asked to describe it.
2. Map-quest the city before you go. Not so much of an issue for me since this year’s meeting was in New Orleans but I would have dreaded doing the same traveling in an unknown city. This goes hand and hand with wearing comfortable shoes.
3. Put thought into what your ideal course would be to teach. Know some books and readings you want to use in it and what key idea it would communicate to the students.
4. You obviously can’t take notes during an interview but write down everything you can remember about the specifics of the job after each one. This means you have to leave time between your interviews for travel and recollections.
5. Talk to someone who went in a recent year and have them explain the disclosure code system to you. I’d explain here but I don’t think I’d do it justice.

Laugh all you want. Count me among the 10.5 million other American men. Yes, these photos all pretty much look the same to me too.

This ruling seems to be getting a bit of support. The measure is in part a reaction to unequal sentencing for drug offenses. In recent years, crack dealers were given higher sentences than powder cocaine offenders because charges were assigned based on the weight of the substance, but the difference in dollar value between the two is very high. The same weight of crack cocaine and powder cocaine carried similar sentences, but the crack dealers substance had a far lower street value. More often black drug dealers received higher sentences than their wealthier counterparts.
This ruling allegedly gives more discretion to judges in the sentencing process rather than relying upon federally imposed guidelines. While I agree that these inequalities in sentencing practices are a concern worthy of attention I’m unsure if this particular ruling will bear a significant influence upon the current outcomes.
More to come…

I was cleaning out my bookmarks folder recently and I realized that there are a few blogs that don’t get the traffic they deserve, or at least the people I tend to talk to don’t read them (I think). So here’s a list of good blogs you’re probably not reading but should consider in addition to the less popular but always great GMU crowd.
Rough Ol’ Boy
The Tory Anarchist
Chris Brunner.com
Truth, Justice and the American Way
Lowercase liberty
Profitus Veritas
Total Information Awareness
Anyone have similar lists?

Cross posted at The Austrian Economists.

At Professor Horwitz’s request, I wrote this post as an update to my Lavoie contest essay. My original paper entitled “The Use of Knowledge in the Criminal Justice System,” was an attempt to outline points of decision making within the criminal justice system where central-planning inhibits the transmission of knowledge between suppliers and demanders. When police, courts, and prisons are provided by central-planning they uphold the emergence of prices. Without market prices there is no insight into the local knowledge about the problems of crime and the harm that it causes. Furthermore, the absence of knowledge in earlier production nodes causes discord in later stages as well. For example, prisons rely upon good court decisions, and courts rely upon effective police forces; for criminal justice to function well as a wide variety of institutional goods and services, knowledge must be revealed, detected and responded to, in each stage of production. I still believe that this approach was a useful one and needs more attention, so I plan to return to that draft and improve its structure and clarity.
Now the paper has radically changed form from the previous draft. It is more specifically focused on the topic of proportionate punishment. Proportionality is a philosophical standard of evaluating punishment norms – “a punishment should fit the crime.” I argue that the popularly accepted insights of proportionate punishment assume the state as the sole provider of punishment services, and in doing so they assume a state-central-planner to possess a degree of knowledge that it is impossible to possess. I assume that the moral and normative arguments in favor of proportionate punishment are sound, and then I explain that even if the philosophical arguments for proportionality were universally accepted, the central-authority would still lack the real knowledge of individuals’ tastes, preferences, evaluations, and abilities to provide proportionate punishment. Providing punishment like any other provision of goods and services on the market is a task of social coordination and therefore confronts knowledge problems. Furthermore the decision making process requires a mechanism to update and improve itself in order to maintain proportionality in changing social environments and crime rates.
The updated draft can be found here. Any comments or suggestions would be most appreciated. Once again I’d like to congratulate Claudia Williamson for also winning the Lavoie contest and say thank you to the SDAE and the Lavoie Prize committee.
Addendum:
Sorry I didn’t put the link in earlier. It should work now.

Add this to the list of social entrepreneurship surrounding gangs and tattoos.

Now in all cases the measure of the punishment to be inflicted on the delinquent is the concurrence of the impartial spectator with the resentment of the injured. If the injury is so great as that the spectator can go along with the injured person in revenging himself by the death of the offender, this is the proper punishment, and what is to be exacted by the offended person or the magistrate in his place who acts in the character of an impartial spectator. If the spectator could not concur with the injured if his revenge led him to the death of the offender, but could go along with him if he revenged the injury by a small corporal punishment or a pecuniary fine, this is the punishment that ought here to be inflicted. In all cases a punishment appears equitable in the eyes of the rest of man kind when it is such that the spectator would concur with the offended person in exacting it. The revenge of the injured which prompts him to retaliate the injury on the offender is the real source of the punishment of crimes. That which Grotius and other writers commonly allege as the original measure of punishments, viz the consideration of the public good, will not sufficiently account for the constitution of punishments. So far, say they, as public utility requires, so far we consent to the punishment of the criminal, and that this is the natural intention of all punishments. But we still find the case to be otherwise. For though in many cases the public good may require the same degree of punishment as the just revenge of the injured, and such as the spectator would go along with, yet in those crimes which are punished chiefly from a view to the public good the punishment enacted by law and that which we can readily enter into is very different. Thus some years ago the British nation took a fancy (a very whimsical one indeed) that the wealth and strength of the nation depended entirely on the flourishing of their woolen trade, and that this could not prosper if the exportation of wool was permitted. To prevent this it was enacted that the exportation of wool should be punished with death. This exportation was no crime at all, in natural equity, and was very far from deserving so high a punishment in the eyes of the people; they therefore found that while this was the punishment they could get neither jury nor informers. No one would consent to the punishment of a thing in itself so innocent by so high a penalty. They were therefore obliged to lessen the punishment to a confiscation of goods and vessel. In the same manner the military laws punish a sentinel who falls asleep upon guard with death. This is entirely founded on the consideration of the public good; and though we may perhaps approve of the sacrificing one person for the safety of a few, yet such a punishment when it is inflicted affects us in a very different manner from that of a cruel murderer or other atrocious criminal.

Adam Smith, Lectures On Jurisprudence, ed. R.. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein, vol. V of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982).