Bryan Douglas Caplan (born April 8, 1971) is an American economist. Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, research fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and blogger for EconLog. He works in public choice theory and is interested in libertarian subjects.
Personal life
Caplan holds a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. His thesis is titled "Three essays on the economics of government behavior."
Books
The Myth of the Rational Voter
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, published in 2007, further develops the "rational irrationality" concept from Caplan's earlier academic writing. It draws heavily from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy in making the argument that voters have systematically biased beliefs about many important economic topics. Caplan writes that rational irrationality is an explanation for the failure of democracy. The book was reviewed in the popular press, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, as well as in academic publications such as the Journal of Libertarian Studies, Public Choice, Libertarian Papers, and The Independent Review. It received a scathing critique by Rupert Read in the European Review.
Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids
Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a 2011 book arguing that people often work too hard in child-rearing, and as a result, they are scared off the idea of having kids. Caplan's book urged parents to relax with respect to child-rearing. He also argued that as the perceived costs (in terms of child-rearing expense and effort) of having kids fell, it made sense to have more kids based on the basic theory of supply and demand. The book was reviewed in Wall Street Journal. The book was also reviewed by The Guardian, RealClearMarkets and the Washington Times.
The book also led to debates featuring Caplan in the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. It was also featured in a story on National Public Radio.
Viewpoints
Pacifism
Caplan has identified himself as a pacifist on pragmatic grounds and has summarized his "common-sense case for pacifism" using three steps:
- The immediate costs of war are clearly awful
- The long-run benefits of war are highly uncertain
- For a war to be morally justified, its long-run benefits have to be substantially larger than its short-run costs
In July 2011, Caplan debated his case for pacifism with Ilya Somin. Sheldon Richman claimed to find Caplan's arguments more convincing in the debate. In a February 2013 LearnLiberty-sponsored debate with Jan Ting at the Students for Liberty conference, Caplan used a slightly different breakdown of the case for pacifism, using four steps instead of three.
Caplan's arguments in favor of pacifism have been critiqued by Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution blog and by many others.
Open borders
Caplan is a vocal proponent of open borders, submitting that immigration restrictions keep the poor locked in a prison of poverty, limiting both freedom and prosperity. He has made his case in an article for the Cato Journal and numerous other writings on his blog and elsewhere, as well as in talks and debates. A talk titled Immigration restrictions: a solution in search of a problem by Caplan in September 2010 to the GMU Economics Society, sponsored by the Future of Freedom Foundation, was praised by David R. Henderson and Jacob Hornberger.
Caplan was cited as one of the leading proponents of the open borders position in an article in The Atlantic by Shaun Raviv. He has also been quoted in other mainstream press pieces on immigration in outlets such as the Huffington Post and Time Magazine.
Anarcho-capitalism
Caplan is an anarcho-capitalist, citing influences such as Murray Rothbard and David D. Friedman, and has written on the feasibility and desirability of a stateless society. Caplan identifies closely with Michael Huemer's position on anarcho-capitalism (in addition to sharing other ethical and meta-ethical views with Huemer) and played an important role in promoting Huemer's book The Problem of Political Authority on his blog, EconLog.
Caplan's anarcho-capitalist views were discussed by Brian Doherty in his book Radicals for Capitalism and in Reason Magazine. One frequent criticism of Caplan is an accusation that he has engaged in historical revisionism by claiming that anarcho-capitalists have a better claim on the history of anarchist thought than mainstream left-anarchists.
Austrian economics
In September 2012, Caplan participated in a Cato Unbound debate along with Steven Horwitz, George Selgin, and Antony Davies on the value of Austrian economics. In his response essay, Caplan reiterated some of his earlier criticisms of Austrian economics and also argued that Austrians' rejection and/or neglect of behavioral economics was puzzling given their philosophy of subjectivism.
Public choice
The bulk of Caplan's academic work is in public economics, especially public choice theory. He has agreed with political economist Donald Wittman that traditional public choice has reached conclusions inconsistent with the canonical assumption of voter rationality; many of his publications examine the effects of relaxing this assumption, an idea Caplan dubbed rational irrationality. In a series of exchanges with Wittman, Caplan defended many of the conclusions of public choice while agreeing that Wittman's criticisms hold under the assumption of voter rationality. Caplan has also done empirical work on public opinion which suggests voters indeed hold systematically biased views about economics.
Intellectual honesty
Caplan has written about the problem of preference falsification in the face of social pressure and said that: "I think the wisest course is to turn the other cheek. I will not call anyone else names, express my disappointment in them, or try to shame them."
Caplan has called himself a "betting man" and stated that people who make predictions about the future should be willing to make bets about their claims. He has proposed and made a number of bets with others. He has been critical of the view offered by Tyler Cowen and Noah Smith that financial portfolios are a better test of one's true beliefs than bets.
Inspired by a blog post by Paul Krugman, Caplan also proposed the concept of an "Ideological Turing Test" (named by analogy to the Turing test). His blog post inspired a number of tries at the ideological Turing test.
Ayn Rand and Objectivism
After having long shed a youthful infatuation with the works of Russian-American writer Ayn Rand and her philosophical system of Objectivism, in 2004 Caplan wrote in his essay 'An Intellectual Biography': "I rejected Christianity because I determined that it was, to be blunt, idiotic. I rejected Objectivism and Austrianism, in contrast, as mixtures of deep truths and unfortunate mistakes. Let me begin with the deep truths. The Objectivists were right to insist that reality is objective, human reason able to grasp it, and scepticism without merit. They correctly hold that humans have free will, morality is objective, and the pursuit of self-interest typically morally right."
In his essay, "Atlas Shrugged and Public Choice: The Obvious Parallels", Caplan lauds Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as making "an important contribution to social science."
In a blog entry posted at the Library of Economics and Liberty website on February 2, 2005 (on the occasion of Ayn Rand's one hundredth birthday), entitled "Join the Party: Why You Should Celebrate Rand's 100th", Caplan asserted that Rand was an excellent novelist, a wise philosopher, and an insightful social scientist.
Other views
In a Cato Unbound piece, Caplan identified himself as a natalist â€" he believes that more people are good for the world. He identifies himself as a fan of Julian Simon, who was a proponent of the idea that larger populations lead to greater technological progress and a higher standard of living for all.
Caplan believes that much of higher education is signaling. He is a believer in dualism and in libertarian free will. Caplan also holds the view that twin studies and adoption studies have demonstrated conclusively that parenting style has very little impact on the adult outcomes of children.
Media
Caplan has published multiple op-eds as well as a book review in the Wall Street Journal. He also participated in a live chat with Laura Carroll and Will Wilkinson for the WSJ.
Caplan debated "Tiger Mom" Amy Chua in The Guardian in June 2011 regarding the merits of different parenting styles.
Caplan has been interviewed by the New York Times Economix blog, and the Freakonomics blog. He has also guest blogged for Freakonomics. Caplan's book and Freakonomics guest posts were also picked up by the New York Times parenting blog.
Caplan appeared on Fox and Friends where he was interviewed by Gretchen Carlson about his advice on child-rearing and his book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.
References
External links
- Bryan Caplan's Website
- The EconLog blog
- Roberts, Russ. "Bryan Caplan Podcasts". EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty.Â
- Bryan Caplan work at Ludwig von Mises Institute
- Video of interview/discussion with Caplan by Will Wilkinson on Bloggingheads.tv
- Caplan's bio at the Mercatus Center