I’ll be at the Warwick Economics Summit February 17-19, speaking on the 18th.

I’ll be speaking at the Adam Smith Institute in London on February 20.

On February 23, I’ll be at the off-Broadway Soho Rep Theater, moderating a panel discussion on “The Economy of Beauty” following a performance of the hot German playwright Marius von Mayenburg’s new play The Ugly One. My fellow panelists will include the sociologist Ashley Mears, author of Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model and a former fashion model herself.

On March 9, I’ll be speaking at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics in beautiful Rochester, New York.

I expect to be speaking at the University of Maryland on a date still to be negotiated in April or May.

And from July 29 through August 3, I’ll be giving four lectures and hobnobbing with the other participants at Cato University. (Yes, I know the link is to last year’s Cato U.; this year’s page seems not to be up yet.)

If you’re in any of those neighborhoods, do join us.

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Here’s the one passage the WSJ didn’t have room for; one day our children will look back in wonder on an age when the length of an argument was constrained by anything so archaic it could be measured in square inches:

I know you’ve heard it said that spending is good for the economy. That might be true during a recession, if you subscribe to a broadly Keynesian view of the world. But the death tax encourages overspending year in and year out, which is not a good thing no matter what your point of view.

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Note that all of my remarks apply equally well to all forms of capital taxation. Entin did a better job of focusing on the particular shortcomings of the estate tax.

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(Larger and more easily viewable version here.)

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And Memphis is where I will be later this month, for the sixth annual Economics Teaching Conference, where I will be one of three keynote speakers, along with Greg Mankiw and KimMarie McGoldrick. The conference runs all day Thursday, October 21 and Friday, October 22. To register, click here.

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(Go here if you’d rather watch this on a bigger screen.)

I was warned in advance that the audience would be hostile and that I had no hope of winning the final vote. This prediction proved entirely accurate.

Overall, I think we provided good entertainment without pretending that this was any kind of serious intellectual exercise. There are, of course, a few things I’d do differently given the chance, but I won’t indulge the temptation to enumerate them here. Enjoy the show.

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There is still, of course, the inevitable tradeoff between better quality on the one hand and less bandwidth on the other. I think I’ve found the sweet point, but am still experimenting.

The current batch of experiments is here. If these download too slowly, or are frustrating to watch for other reasons (other than, perhaps, the content, which is another matter) I’d like to know about it. If they work for you, I’ll be glad to know that too.

PS: It seems crystal clear that these work much better (in the sense of not stalling) in .flv format than as, say, .mp4, even when the flv files are much bigger, and I have the vague sense that everybody in the world except me understands exactly why. Do educate me.

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All of which is my excuse for taking the rest of the week off from blogging. I’ll see you next week, and I’ll let you know how things went.

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(Edited to add: The video I originally posted was hard for several of you to view due to the large file size. I’ve shrunk the filesize by 2/3 and converted from m4v to flash, which I believe should solve the problem.)

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