Care to Wager Again? An Appraisal of Paul Ehrlich’s Counterbet Offer to Julian Simon

Alongside Joanna Szurmak and Pierre Desrochers, I have a new paper available. This time its at Social Science Quarterly and its a very long article. So long that the journal asked us to split it into two parts (part 1 and part 2). The paper deals with the aftermath of the bet between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich (which was started in the pages of Social Science Quarterly) on the price of natural resources as indicator of environmental decay. Ehrlich, who had been predicting environmental decay at a rapid pace, lost that bet and it has since then been used to whack his ideas around. Less known is that, after losing, Ehrlich proposed a counter-bet to Simon — which the latter refused. In the paper, we evaluate the outcome of this counter-wager.