Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover

Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and

find links down there information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives,

but every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org. We'd

love to hear from you. Today is August 31, 2021 and my guest is economist and author David Henderson,

a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and an emeritus professor

of economics with an Naval Postgraduate School. David blogs at econlog. He's the editor of the

concise encyclopedia of economics, both are part of the Library of Economics and Liberty, which

hosts econtalk. And this is David's second appearance on econtalk. He was here last in amazing

a long time ago, David. July of 2007 when we were discussing disagreeable economists. Our topic

for today is David's new book, the essential UCLA School of Economics co-authored with Stephen

Globerman. I want to thank Plantronics for providing today's guest with the Blackwear 5220 headset.

David, welcome back to econtalk. Thanks, Russ. So this is a very short, very well done introduction

to the UCLA School of Economics. It's focused mainly but not exclusively on what I think of as the

two best economists, not to win an Nobel Prize, Armin Alchyn and Harold Demsitz, two of my favorite

economists. And I feel they've received insufficient attention here, their work on econtalk. So I'm

really glad we're here to talk about them as well as UCLA generally. I want to start with an insight

that you quote of Alchyn's, you say his work was guided by the insight quote, you tell me the

rules and I'll tell you what outcomes to expect. And I think that's an incredibly deep,

simple way of capturing a key part of the economic way of thinking. What does that mean to you,

that phrase? And by the way, Armin started with that idea, not in those words exactly, but with

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