The social sciences, I’ve come to believe, don’t have a coherent concept of causation. To talk about ‘causation’ we need to have a boundary on cause and effect. I reflect on what this means for studying causation.

We often talk about inequality using a single number — usually the Gini index. But the reality is that inequality is complex. To study inequality, we need to use multiple metrics.

Aaron Swartz fought for and (effectively) died for open access to the world’s scientific literature. I reflect on Swartz’s legacy, six years after his death.

In the United States, the income share of the top 1% is tightly related to the share of corporate dividends in national income.

Citation counts are similar to social media “likes” — they are always positive. But what if we had negative citations?

Anthropologist Jason Hickel thinks we measure inequality incorrectly. He argues we should measure absolute inequality rather than relative inequality. I think this is a mistake.

Marx thought that private property was the cause of capitalism’s social ills. But when Marx’s ideas were put in action, they were disastrous. I discuss what went wrong.

I have a confession: I’m a recovering academic writer. Here I share resources that have helped my recovery.

Gregory Clark proposes that the differential reproduction of the rich led to the industrial revolution. He’s probably wrong.

The less free market we have, the more we use the phrase ‘free market’. George Orwell would be proud.

An update to “The The Growth of Hierarchy and the Death of the Free Market”. I show you which countries are which.