In the economics of acquisition, who is in the best place to make choices?
Economist Arnold Kling recounts an argument from Milton Friedman about whether people make rational decisions on behalf of other people: If you buy a coat […]
arnold kling
DoD is failing on the three E’s: experimentation, evaluation, and evolution
Here is the Director of Defense Research & Engineering Harold Brown in 1962, discussing how he has responsibility for all R&E activities in DoD since […]
Government and the institutional memory of failure
I think that large, established organizations operate according to different incentives than start-ups. Large organizations focus on the downside of new initiatives. In the start-up […]
Public vs. private innovation
I like to break down innovation into experimentation, evaluation, and evolution. I think that government has a disadvantage at all three.
Kling Answers a Question on Defense Economics
Here’s my question to Arnold Kling: I was wondering if you could comment on the fact that you’ll never see papers or courses in defense […]
Do intangibles lead to a productivity divergence?
When intangibles hardly matter, then capital and labor ought to be about equally productive across all firms. When intangibles matter a lot, then productivity differences will widen. What does this mean for defense organization?