Bryan Caplan
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Bryan Caplan (born 1971) is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He received his B.S. in economics from University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. His professional work has been devoted to the philosophies of libertarianism and free-market capitalism and anarchism. (He is the author of the Anarchist Theory FAQ.) He has published in American Economic Review, Public Choice, and the Journal of Law and Economics, among others. He is a blogger at the EconLog blog along with Arnold Kling, and occasionally has been a guest blogger at Marginal Revolution with two of his colleagues at George Mason, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok. He is an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
Currently, his primary research interest is public economics. He has criticized the assumptions of rational voters that form the basis of public choice theory, but generally agrees with their conclusions based on his own model of "rational irrationality." Caplan has long disputed the efficacy of popular voter models, in a series of exchanges with Donald Wittman published by the Econ Journal Watch. Caplan outlined several major objections to popular political science and the economics sub-discipline public choice.[1][2][3][4] Caplan later expanded upon this theme in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter (Princeton University Press 2007), in which he responded to the arguments put forward by Wittman in his The Myth of Democratic Failure.
He maintains a website that includes a "Museum of Communism" section, that "provides historical, economic, and philosophical analysis of the political movement known as Communism", to draw attention to human rights violations of which, despite often exceeding those of Nazi Germany, there is little public knowledge.[5] Caplan has also written an online graphic novel called Amore Infernale.[6][7]
[edit] Quotations
| “ | Through the lens of the Jock/Nerd Theory of History, the welfare state doesn’t look like a serious effort to "equalize outcomes." It looks more like a serious effort to block the "revenge of the nerds"—to keep them from using their financial success to unseat the jocks on every dimension of social status. | ” |
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— Bryan Caplan [3]
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| “ | In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right. | ” |
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— Bryan Caplan [4]
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[edit] References
- ^ http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/CaplanCommentApril2005.pdf
- ^ http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/WittmanReplyApril2005.pdf
- ^ http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/CaplanRejoinderAugust2005.pdf
- ^ http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/Wittman2ndReplyAugust2005.pdf
- ^ http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/musframe.htm
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
[edit] External links
- Bryan Caplan's Website
- The EconLog blog
- "The Myth of the Rational Voter" (essay)
- Why I Am Not An Austrian Economist
- Anarchist Theory FAQ
- Intellectual Autobiography of Bryan Caplan by Bryan Caplan
- Caplan on voting Caplan discusses his book on EconTalk
- Caplan on labor markets Caplan discusses labor markets on EconTalk
- Caplan on voter ignorance on NPR Caplan discusses voter ignorance on NPR
- Video of interview/discussion with Caplan by Will Wilkinson on Bloggingheads.tv
