Scott Sumner offers a tribute.  Earl Thompson was one of the most genuinely creative economic minds of his generation.  In my view he was often wrong, such as when he argued that markets would overproduce public goods.  Nonetheless his work always inspired fruitful thought, even if one did not accept his conclusions.  Here is his famous paper on taxation and national defense.  He used "national defense" arguments to try to explain the pattern of government subsidies and taxes.  His paper on monetary theory will make your head spin.  Here is his paper on the economics of[...]

[Published in NonProfitBlogs - Read the original article]