最佳MR文章评选

From the Archives–written by ChatGPT. This ranking judges posts on reasoning, originality of framing, explanatory power, intellectual stimulation, timeliness, and how much they accomplish in their length. Originality includes an unusually illuminating application of an existing idea. Provocation earns credit when it exposes a real problem; unsupported certainty still counts against a post. The selection draws on searches across Marginal Revolution’s downloaded archive of 40,326 posts, covering publication through October 20, 2026, and close reading of shortlisted candidates. It is an editorial ranking among the posts examined, not an exhaustive evaluation of every entry. There is no author or topic quota. Timeliness matters when an economic argument clarifies a consequential decision while there is still time to act. The vaccine entries are assessed as contributions to the policy debates of 2020 and 2021. 1. Alex Tabarrok — In the Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine, We Must Go Big May 4, 2020 · Read the original post “We argue for a big program to invest in vaccine capacity before any vaccine is tested and approved.” Apparently wasteful investment can be economically prudent when waiting is enormously expensive. Building production capacity for vaccine candidates that might fail buys the possibility of delivering a successful vaccine sooner. The relevant comparison is between the cost of unused capacity and the social cost of delay. What makes it exceptional: The post combines the gap between private and social returns, investment under uncertainty, portfolio diversification, and contracts that reward speed. It proposes an institutional response rather than merely identifying a market failure. Its timing is integral to its achievement: the argument was made before the successful vaccines were known. The proposal was collaborative work with Susan Athey, Michael Kremer, Christopher Snyder, and a larger team. The post translates that work into an accessible case for action, explaining how advance purchase commitments and support for capacity could complement one another. Its numerical targets depend on assumptions about costs, success probabilities, and benefits. But the central insight is robust: minimizing expenditure on unsuccessful candidates is a different objective from minimizing the total cost of a pandemic. The combination of reasoning, urgency, and practical design earns it first place. 2. Tyler Cowen — The fallacy of mood affiliation March 31, 2011 · Read the original post “people are first choosing a mood or attitude, and then finding the disparate views which match to that mood” In a few hundred words, Cowen gives a recognizable intellectual habit a memorable name: deciding to be an optimist, pessimist, or partisan, then assembling beliefs that sustain that identity. The insight travels. Someone can believe technological progress is substantial while worrying about a particular environmental problem. Sympathy for disadvantaged people need not settle every explanation of their circumstances. What makes it exceptional: It gives readers a tool they can keep using, including against themselves. Its value exceeds the particular examples. The danger is using the label to dismiss opponents without examining their arguments—but that is a reason to apply it carefully. Its brevity, memorability, and usefulness across subjects make it one of the strongest examples of the short economics blog post. 3. Alex Tabarrok — First Dose First December 21, 2020 · Read the original post “If the answer is yes then can you ethically deny this to someone else’s spouse?” The preceding thought experiment asks whether someone awaiting a second vaccine dose would instead give it to their spouse as a first dose. In a few sentences, Tabarrok makes the opportunity cost of a scarce dose tangible: compare the additional protection from a second dose with the protection another person could receive from a first. What makes it exceptional: It turns a technical allocation debate into a choice readers can understand immediately. The addendum about an older recipient and a much younger spouse recognizes that the comparison depends on individual risk, rather than treating all recipients as interchangeable. The post also distinguishes delaying second doses during scarcity from abandoning them altogether. Expected future supplies matter to the decision. The medical premises, including the strength and duration of first-dose protection, still required evidence. The thought experiment does not resolve those questions. Its achievement is to show why following a tested schedule for one recipient does not, by itself, settle how limited supplies should be allocated across a population. 4. Alex Tabarrok — Market Design to Accelerate Vaccine Supply February 26, 2021 · Read the original post “Buying doses isn’t optimal because companies can just agree and put you to the back of the queue.” Buying a place in a queue and expanding production capacity are different achievements. Tabarrok moves from the case for greater spending to the harder questions of what governments should purchase and how contracts should work. What makes it exceptional: The post combines an assessment of the enormous social value of speed with concrete institutional design. Capacity subsidies, options to purchase output, and attention to input bottlenecks can matter more than announcing large orders. It also considers procurement auctions as a way to mobilize suppliers beyond a single government’s jurisdiction. The argument draws on a collaborative Science paper with Camilo Castillo, Michael Kremer, Eric Budish, Susan Athey, and others. Its estimates of the value of additional capacity are model-dependent, but the post connects the policy recommendations to explicit calculations and a research framework. Its lasting contribution is the distinction between securing supplies for one buyer and increasing the supplies available to everyone. That distinction makes it useful well beyond the immediate vaccine debate. 5. Tyler Cowen — What libertarianism has become and will become — State Capacity Libertarianism January 1, 2020 · Read the original post “A strong state is distinct from a very large or tyrannical state.” Cowen reorganizes a political argument around an overlooked distinction: the scope of government and its ability to perform its functions are different things. A government can regulate extensively while failing to build infrastructure, administer courts, or deliver public goods. The productive question becomes: which state capabilities help sustain freedom, markets, and prosperity? What makes it exceptional: It is an ambitious attempt to revise an intellectual tradition from within. Readers can reject parts of the manifesto and still find their questions changed by it. It is one of the longer entries, and its partisan characterizations are less persuasive than its central distinction. But as a post that proposes an agenda rather than merely commenting on one, it deserves a high place. 6. Alex Tabarrok — The Happy Meal Fallacy July 20, 2015 · Read the original post “Benefits are a product that workers buy from firms.” Requiring fries and a drink with a burger does not establish that the customer receives a better deal. Tabarrok uses this memorable analogy to explain a central economic insight: mandated benefits are part of a compensation package, and workers may pay for them through lower wages. What makes it exceptional: The post connects compensation, choice, and regulatory incidence without technical machinery. Readers can reconstruct the argument long after forgetting the details. It also poses a productive challenge: if workers value a benefit above its cost, what prevents employers from offering it voluntarily? That question makes advocates explain the mechanism through which a mandate would improve matters. In a short space, the post shifts attention from the visible benefit to the full terms of the exchange.