Tag: economics

The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed (review: 3.5/5)

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

I enjoyed reading Moneyball last month, so I got the notion to explore some other baseball books. The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed is pretty good, and a surprisingly quick read. The author/ economist JC Bradbury runs Sabernomics, a baseball nerd blog that’s well worth your time.
As you might expect, Bradbury applies some statistical tools and good old-fashioned open-minded economic reasoning to various aspects of baseball. Topics for discussion range from why batters get hit by pitches in the AL more than the NL, the best ways to measure hitting and pitching, manager ejection theory, salary negotiations, whether MLB is a monopoly, etc. I have to say Bradbury does a pretty darn good job of breaking down the statistics and economics jargon he introduces. Marginal revenue product and regression analysis exist happily along with LOOGYs and the cup of coffee. The thought process behind the studies he’s developed is fascinating in its own right—sometimes it’s just cool to read how someone thought through an intricate project, accounting for variables and dealing with potential bias. I also give Bradbury bonus points for quoting from one of my favorite thinkers, Frederic Bastiat.

One last thing that amuses and delights me to no end: almost a full third of the book is dedicated to the most extensive back matter I’ve ever seen outside of purely academic texts. There’s an epilogue, acknowledgements, one two three four appendices, an endnotes section, a bibliography, and an index.

The Law (review: 5/5)

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

Frederic Bastiat was an economist and writer in France in the early 1800s. His short book/ long essay The Law is one of the best pieces of political science writing I’ve read in a while. I loved this book. The Law is about the purpose and place of law in society, and Bastiat makes his case so clearly it brings me to tears.
One of the sections I particularly enjoyed was his critiques of other well-known French political theorists like Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Condillac. He examines the pessimistic worldview that informs their visions of society, in the end saying,

Oh, sublime writers! Please remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, and this manure which you so arbitrarily dispose of, are men! They are your equals! They are intelligent and free human beings like yourselves! As you have, they too have received from God the faculty to observe, to plan ahead, to think, and to judge for themselves!

I also thought Bastiat’s critical look at classical education to be pretty perceptive. The case he makes is this: that classical education necessarily focuses on ancient thought, and that “antiquity presents everywhere ‚Äî in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome ‚Äî the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their whims, thanks to the prestige of force and of fraud”. Learning about these ancient societies is not a problem per se. The problem arises when thinkers and teachers “offered them for the admiration and imitation of future generations… They took for granted the grandeur, dignity, morality, and happiness of the artificial societies of the ancient world.”

Some other great moments: the tired, dangerous notion of the “great man”; that “a science of economics must be developed before a science of politics can be logically formulated”; and some relevant, challenging words in light of our misadventures in Iraq and elsewhere:

I defy anyone to say how even the thought of revolution, of insurrection, of the slightest uprising could arise against a government whose organized force was confined only to suppressing injustice.

Read this book.