The Trouble in Getting to Denmark “In our argument it was not that the Wars of Religion simply exhausted confessional and doctrinal disputes. Rather there was a transformation at the institutional level. The leading European states shifted away from identity rules towards more general rules. This shift was related to 19th-century historian Henry Sumner Maine’s […]

Book Review: Zero to One “There’s a lot more to this book, but it all seems to be pointing at the same central, hard-to-describe idea. Something like “All progress comes from violations of the efficient market hypothesis, so you had better believe these are possible, and you had better get good at finding them.” The […]

Interview with Larissa MacFarquhar on Altruism “COWEN: And where does it come from, the hostility toward extreme altruists? Is it people feeling envy or that they don’t measure up? MACFARQUHAR: I think it comes from many, many sources, and I tried to unravel some of them in the book. I think it comes from a […]

Economics helps explain why suicide is more common among Protestants “One key is that the suicidal tendency of Protestants is more pronounced in areas with low church attendance. The strongest effect is thus more likely to be found in areas with little social integration rather than in areas with high devotion to the Protestant doctrine. […]

How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation “In the movie version of this story, this man moves to an island to rediscover the good life, or figures out he loves woodworking and opens a shop. But that’s the sort of fantasy solution that makes millennial burnout so pervasive. You don’t fix burnout by going on vacation. […]

Black Triangles “Afterwards, we came to refer to certain types of accomplishments as “black triangles.” These are important accomplishments that take a lot of effort to achieve, but upon completion you don’t have much to show for it — only that more work can now proceed. It takes someone who really knows the guts of […]