Mark D. White

Writer, editor, teacher

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about

I’m a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where I teach courses in philosophy, economics, and law, and the author/editor/co-editor of several books.

Category: Markets

  • Cost effectiveness is not the problem — government control of health care is.

    Mark D. White In today's "The Upshot" in The New York Times, economist Aaron E. Carroll bemoans the fact that health policymakers, regulators, and spokespeople are reluctant, and sometimes even forbidden, to discuss and make use of information regarding the cost effectiveness of particular treatments. The fear is that they will invoke the spectres of…

  • What explains the lack of criminal prosecutions related to the financial meltdown?

    Mark D. White Many people, including in the media and academia, have wondered about the lack of criminal prosecutions stemming from the 2007-08 financial meltdown, especially related to fraud in the banking sector. In the new issue of Crime, Law and Social Change (61/1, February 2014), Henry N. Pontell, William K. Black, and Gilbert Geis…

  • An Answer to “Questions for Free-Market Moralists”

    Mark D. White I read with great interest Amia Srinivasan's contribution to the New York Times' philosophy column "The Stone" titled "Questions for Free-Market Moralists." After introducing the political philosophies of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, she states that "on the whole, Western societies are still more Rawlsian than Nozickian: they tend to have social…

  • Chick-fil-A, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Ethical Consumption

    Mark D. White I've read an enormous amount of what's been written on the Chick-fil-A controversy the last couple weeks, although I'm sure I haven't scratched the surface. But I was fascinated by Will Wilkinson's recent post at The Economist's Democracy in America blog, titled "Feathers Flying," in which he casts the fast food company's stance…

  • Decision-making is not math: A lesson in the subjectivity of value

    Mark D. White Last month, The Economist published an article (based on research published in Journal of Marketing) on consumers' irrationality when compared discounts and added content: Consumers often struggle to realise, for example, that a 50% increase in quantity is the same as a 33% discount in price. They overwhelmingly assume the former is better value.…

  • Yes, of course health insurance improves health, but…

    Mark D. White At the New York Times' Economix blog this morning, David Leonhardt reports on a recent NBER study that studied the health outcomes of low-income people who either were or were not granted access to Medicare through a lottery, and good golly gosh, guess what they found: those with health insurance had better…

  • The Royal Wedding and the Nobility of Commerce

    Mark D. White There's a very interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal about the commcerical background of the Middleton family, and how the impending royal nuptials can be seen as belated recognition of the worth of commerce and entrepreneurship: Much has been made of the fact that Kate Middleton, Prince William's bride-to-be, is a…

  • Lessons in Monetary Economics from Playing Monopoly

    Mark D. White The New York Times has a great little piece today on Monopoly (the game), Milton Friedman, and monetary economics, which ends with this description of a particular game which took place in a University of Chicago dorm in the late 1970s: The precise details of our classic game are blurred by the…

  • Lying to Get Student Discounts

    Mark D. White Thanks to Annie Lowrey, I found this recent New York Times article, "Getting a Student Rate When You're Not a Student," which advises youngish people, typically former students, on how to take advantage of the discounts that retailers and other merchants give to current students. The discussion of the ethics of this practice is…

  • “Free to Choose” symposium on behavioral law and economics

    Mark D. White As I noted earlier, on December 6 and 7 the blog Truth on the Market hosted "Free to Choose?", an online symposium on behavioral law and economics, the contents of which appear below the fold, followed by an excerpt from Josh Wright's introductory comment.