My favorite blog is Marginal Revolution, written by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok (both economists at George Mason University and the latter a Canadian!). Today they put out a list of their most popular posts of 2012, which contains a lot of great stuff. I’ll quote a few and paste a few awesome graphs below.
A Bet is a Tax on Bullshit ends with the money quote:
Overall, I am for betting because I am against bullshit. Bullshit is polluting our discourse and drowning the facts. A bet costs the bullshitter more than the non-bullshitter so the willingness to bet signals honest belief. A bet is a tax on bullshit; and it is a just tax, tribute paid by the bullshitters to those with genuine knowledge.
A simple theory of why so many smart young people go into finance, law, and consulting. A short piece; do read it.
Cowen goes at Robert Solow with both barrels in Robert Solow on Hayek and Friedman and MPS. Try this:
You can consider this essay a highly selective, error-laden, and disappointing account of a topic which could in fact use more serious scrutiny….
And Solow wonders why the Mont Pelerin Society and monetarism were needed. Solow should have started his piece with a sentence like “Milton Friedman was not right about everything, but most of his criticisms of my earlier views have been upheld by subsequent economic theory and practice….”
In Firefighters Don’t Fight Fires, we don’t even need quotes. We only need the graphs:
All in all, a great year from some of the best in the blogging biz.
Not Unreasonable 