The Economics of Sportsmanship

Cheaters never win and winners never cheat. Most children have heard this simple admonition at some point. It is truly unfortunate that it is not true. Sometimes athletes cheat and win, at least for a while. But it is rarely a good long-term strategy. And given the desire to win evident in athletes at all levels, maybe we should not be surprised at the occasional act of cheating, but rather at the rampant cooperation and sportsmanship that in fact transpires each day in professional sports stadium, high school and college facilities, and parks and sandlots across America. In this essay, we will use the tools of economics to examine and explain this epidemic of sportsmanship and good behavior

The Lost Purpose of Learning

In the autumn of AD 386, a thirty-two-year-old academic superstar named Aurelius Augustinus made a radical move: He resigned his position as imperial professor of rhetoric in Milan and retired early. The position, as prestigious as an endowed chair of government at Harvard today, represented the pinnacle of intellectual achievement in its time. Yet Augustine was disillusioned, tired of teaching “résumé virtues” to “excellent sheep.” He complained that liberal education in the later Roman Empire had become purposeless and disoriented, preoccupied with the ephemeral aims of career, wealth, and fame. Intellectual and spiritual vitality had vanished from lecture rooms and pupils alike. The soul of education was dead

Our Own Devices

A flickering glow welcomed me to my university’s chapel service. Votive candles? If only. No, these were glowing smartphones, as thick as fireflies on a summer’s evening. It was a scene of tremendous absurdity, like a man watching TV while making love to his wife: distracted people distracting themselves during a sacred act. It struck me as oddly understandable (I even joined them to check my email during the sermon), yet also as the foretaste of some looming spiritual crisis. So much has been written lately about the perils of smartphone use that I’m reluctant to join the chorus. Yet I feel that many Christians—I include myself—have yet to find any healthy forms of resistance to this new cultural habit

What we do with words, and what they do with us

This is an invited paper based on the keynote presentation that Professor Ralf St Clair made at the 2019 Australian Council for Adult Literacy Conference in Sydney, Australia on 4 October

Daylight overdrafts: who really bears the risk?

Payment systems ; Federal Reserve banks ; Electronic funds transfers ; Overdrafts