prior probability

Among other things, I am a huge fan of my fellow classical liberal scholar Russ Roberts, and I am also fascinated by conspiracy theories, especially when they are true (see, for example, my paper on “The Leibniz Conspiracy“), so when I stumbled upon the new books pictured above at my local bookstore earlier today (shout out to Writer’s Block in Winter Park, Florida), I knew what I had to do: buy the books and start reading! I will report back soon …

That is the question posed in this case: Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, which is before the U.S. Supreme Court. The “oral argument” is scheduled for 12 October at 10:00 AM Eastern (see here); in addition, the Federalist Society is sponsoring a national “teleforum” about this case during the afternoon of 12 October at 3:00 PM Eastern (register here). For more background, check out this recent report via Reuters. Also, check out my 2019 NYU paper (“Of Coase and Copyrights”). Although the focus of my paper is on the law and economics of literary fan art, I explain why disputes about the fair use doctrine in copyright law–i.e. disputes between “creators” and “copiers”–are really a reciprocal problem and when copiers should be given the benefit of the doubt.

To the point, I recommend Stephen Stigler’s new book Casanova’s Lottery to anyone interested in the history, economics, ethics, and politics of modern-day lotteries. Among other things, Stigler not only traces the history of the French Loterie, the first large-scale commercial lottery in history, he also examines the mathematics of risk, including the epic back-and-forth debate over the “maturity of chances” or so-called gambler’s fallacy, and the politics of legalized gambling generally. For me, however, the most fascinating part of Stigler’s book is, Why do people even bother to buy lottery tickets? Unless you can somehow rig the drawing in your favor (see here, for example), the expected value of a lottery ticket will always be less than the cost of that ticket. For his part, Stigler revisits two possible answers. One is that people are just plain stupid: “the lottery is a tax on stupidity” (p. 202). Another explanation resides in the subtle difference between expected value (a mathematical concept) and expected utility (a psychological one): the psychological value of even a small chance of winning an enormous jackpot is worth more than the cost of a ticket (see especially pp. 203-207). Either way, aren’t lotteries just another form of legalized theft? Less than 50% of all ticket sales of the Illinois Lotto, to mention just one egregious example, goes to actual prizes (see pp. 189-190)!

According to this 2021 Pew Research Center report, “Columbus Day” is a public holiday in only 20 States, as well as American Samoa and Puerto Rico. (See infographic below.) Although Christopher Columbus has become a polemical figure in some quarters, his 1492 voyage changed the history of the world. For a fair and balanced portrait of the great Genoese explorer, here is his Wikipedia page.

Perfect timing: my copy of Stephen Stigler’s new book on “Casanova’s Lottery: The History of a Revolutionary Game of Chance” arrived a few days ago. I will read it over the weekend and report back soon …

Below are three observations that caught my attention during the Cato Institute’s 6 October conference on “New Challenges to the Free Economy“:

1. Hal Varian (Google): Google has more than 60,000 patents. (See slide below from Professor Varian’s Cato talk.)
2. Matthew D. Mitchell (Mercatus): the Tullock paradox still hasn’t been solved. (Look it up!)
3. Bryan Caplan (George Mason): political discourse is about social desirability bias. (Me: what about academic discourse?)

SpaceX launched their fourth manned spacecraft on 5 October (yesterday); meanwhile, the costly and obsolete Artemis rocket is still grounded …

The editors of the Mercer Law Review have invited me to present my work on Ronald Coase, cattle trespass, and nuisance law at their Annual Symposium, which is scheduled to take place this Friday, October 7, 2022. (See the full schedule below.) The symposium is open to all and will be “live-streamed” for free, but you must register here. P.S.: My panel will take place in the early afternoon, starting at 12:45 PM Eastern, and my co-panelists include my colleague and friend Cathren Page (Mercer), who will speak on the problem of “post-truthism,” as well as Matt Saleh (Cornell), who will address the following fascinating question: How do law’s narratives construct one of its central objects: the human body? For my part, my talk will be devoted to one of the most famous legal narratives of all time: Ronald Coase’s cattle-trespass parable in his landmark paper “The Problem of Social Cost.” (The tentative title of my talk is “Coase’s Parable“.)

The latest issue of Econ Journal Watch is available here. Among the many items in this new volume that caught my attention was this Erroneous Erratum section, which begins as follows: “Previously, Stephen Walker criticized an article in Journal of Accounting Research (here and here). Now the authors [of that JAR article], Yang Bao, Bin Ke, Bin Li, Y. Julia Yu, and Jie Zhang, have issued an Erratum in JAR, citing Walker’s critiques. Walker takes a hard look and calls on JAR to do an investigation into research misconduct.” For my part, instead of calling for another toothless investigation, what if we imposed legal liability for research fraud, an idea I proposed back in 2015?!