Understanding Gordon Tullock

Gordon Tullock was rational to a fault, and he tried to insist that others be fully rational, confronting all with any inconsistency in their thinking. He loved to be shocking. He was also quite generous. Tullock’s willingness to take a chance, as editor of Public Choice, on a paper that he did not understand led to the publication of the most widely cited paper ever published in the journal.     

Vier Jahre Eurokrise: Wege zu neuem Systemvertrauen

Political gridlock, violations of European law and inconsistent political communication have turned the euro crisis into a crisis of confidence in public policy. To re-establish trust in the system, Europe needs a comprehensive approach consisting of three elements. First, rules can invigorate societies if they provide for cross-border competition in a revived single market and abstain from top-down provisions. Second, new growth perspectives — e.g. by reassigning major parts of the EU budget — can enhance the selfconfidence of societies. And finally, a pan-European debate on common goals and values can help answer the essential question of Europe’s sense and purpose. As the euro can only ever enjoy as much trust as the institutions governing the euro area, the solution of the European confidence crisis is crucial to the fate of the common currency.     

Peace, Justice, and Economic Reform

Abstract . Is justice necessary for peace? There can be no justice while people have unresolved grievances, but peace is more than the absence of strife. It is harmony. Justice is the principles of equality and evenhandedness that command and prohibit the use of force in resolving conflicts. Justice is not necessary for peace, but it does facilitate it. Conservative, majoritarian, egalitarian and contractarian efforts to specify justice all fail to respect persons in crucial ways and cannot be expected to lead to peace. The justice that leads to peace is classical liberalism, with its insistence that each person own himself or herself, augmented by the principle of equal rights to the opportunities provided by nature, as advanced by Henry George.     

The impact of mechanized processing of cassava on farmers’ production efficiency in Uganda

The study investigates the impact of adopting mechanized processing of cassava on farmers’ production efficiency in Uganda. A stochastic production function, using translog functional form, was used to compare efficiency measures of farmers in mechanized cassava-processing villages compared with the farmers in nonmechanized cassava-processing villages in 2014. Given the specification of the translog production function, the mean technical efficiencies of the farmers were 0.69 and 0.52 in mechanized and nonmechanized villages, respectively. The significant determinants of technical inefficiency among the respondents are farming experience, education, membership of farmer association, access to markets, sale of cassava to processors and farmers who planted cassava as sole crop are all negative, which confirm to a priori expectations and significant at different levels. The policy implication of the study is that mechanization of cassava processing, particularly if done at the right scale, could create demand that can transform primary production for increased yields, higher incomes and production efficiency of smallholder farmers who constitute a significant proportion of Uganda’s agricultural sector.     

The Jerome Levy Economic Institute Conference:

The Jerome Levy Economic Institute at Bard College presented a program arranged by Professor Kris Feder on “Land Wealth and Poverty,” on November 2-4,1995, Two of the talks presented are here reproduced with more to follow in subsequent issues of this Journal. J. Ted Gwartney, former senior appraisal officer of the Bank of America presented the view that a 4% tax on the value of land, as broadly defined, could provide revenue adequate for the removal of all other taxes. Professor Nicolaus Tideman argued the case of morality of taxation at the local level.     

Künstliche Intelligenz und der Faktor Arbeit

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on the demand for human labour has become a fashionable topic — particularly among economic policy advisors. However, most papers that warn about high substitution rates of conventional jobs use questionable data and methodologies. Future economic policy advice ought to include a company perspective — and discover that disruption will be much more gradual and less dramatic than proclaimed by the current topical papers. As this AI revolution is just at its very beginning, economic policy makers are advised to accompany and support digital change instead of actively intervening in digital value chains with taxes and/or subsidies.     

Adding value through the mechanization of post-harvest cassava processing,and its impact on household poverty in north-eastern Zambia

This article investigates the impact of adopting a mechanized cassava processing system on household poverty levels in Zambia. An Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measure was used to compare poverty levels among households using a mechanized cassava processing system against those households using a nonmechanized process. Based on the FGT poverty measure’s specifications, a significantly lower poverty status of 49% was found among households using the mechanized process when compared to the 58% found among households using the nonmechanized process. The significant factors contributing to these differences in poverty levels include whether households are using a mechanized process or not, the number of years’ schooling among household members, the number of years’ farming experience, household income and membership of associations. The study concludes that the mechanization of cassava processing, particularly if done on the right scale, can transform primary production activities, in turn leading to higher incomes and reduced poverty levels in rural villages. Thus, policies should be introduced aimed at encouraging the promotion of mechanized post-harvest cassava processing technologies among rural households, so as to enhance crop productivity and household income levels, as well as reduce poverty among rural households.