Tyler Cowen’s blog “The Marginal Revolution” was one of those blogs I examined as a possible recommendation to the students. But having spent considerable time reading it, I decided against it. Basically, Cowen comes across as a dilettante – prolific, unfocused and superficial, and not of much use to learners of Economics. His considerable education is arguably a waste. I instead point my students to Krugman and Mark Thoma of EconomistsView. I will venture that most economists have never heard of him, much less to say that he has risen to the first rank of economic celebrity.

Your comment on the New Yorker piece: “But Mayer was unconvincing in her characterizations of the Mercatus Center as little more than a cat’s paw for the wealthy and conservative Koch brothers, of Wichita, Kansas, and Manhattan”caught my attention.

The problem self confessed libertarian economists have is that such a self identification immediately raises doubts about their intellectual honesty. Having engaged in debates with them, I can certainly confirm that the doubts are well placed.

The problem they face is that their ideological agendas make it very difficult for their writings to be published in peer reviewed journals because their propositions tend not to be evidence based, but a priori suppositions. Feeling shut out of serious journals, they have found wealthy patrons, such as the Kochs, to fund libertarian “think tanks” such as Mercatus, Cato and numerous others. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of thinking going on in these places – just policy positions that serve the interests of their patrons. Mayer’s characterization is spot on. Intellectual prostitution is not too strong a phrase to describe much of their writings.

Serious think tanks are places like the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, to mention a few.

Worse, the libertarians establish faux economic journals such as the Economic Journal Watch, also with a strong association with George Mason University.

No doubt that Mayer’s statement: “The Wall Street Journal has called the Mercatus Center “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of,” and noted that fourteen of the twenty-three regulations that President George W. Bush placed on a ‘hit list’ had been suggested first by Mercatus scholars” is accurate, as we now live the consequences of the Bush decisions.

Might I suggest a little investigative journalism to tally up the consequences?