Below you will find a feed of the economics-related web sites that I find particularly interesting, insightful, entertaining, etc. (In other words, you are getting pretty much an edited view of my Google Reader.) My purpose in doing this is to provide readers with a portal for a wider range of information than I can provide myself. I will add new sources here as I come across them, and feel free to email me with suggestions for sites that you think should be included. It’s not practical to have too many sites incorporated here, so I will keep a list below both of included sites and sites that are not included but worth checking out individually. (Some of these are sites that are great but are not updated frequently enough for them to make sense in the feed.)
I am still working on the formatting, so please bear with me. For now, the page displays the last 50 posts in round robin fashion from the following sites:
- Marginal Revolution
- Greg Mankiw’s Blog
- Freakonomics Blog
- NYT Economix Blog
- Slate’s Moneybox
- Nudge
- Megan McArdle
- Environmental Economics
- The Becker-Posner Blog
- NPR’s Planet Money
- EconomistMom.com
- EcoComics
- xkcd
- Indexed
- Dilbert
The following sites are not currently included in the feed below, but are interesting nonetheless:
- The Consumerist
- Think Like An Economist
- Slate’s Undercover Economist
- Above The Crowd
- The Daily Show Economics Forum
- Economic Policy Review
- Economic Deficit Disorder
- Piled Higher And Deeper
- The Sports Economist
- The PULSE Review
Marginal Revolution
Small steps toward a much better world.
The forthcoming clustering of human capital
by Tyler Cowen
25 May 2013 at 10:03pm
A radical change is taking place in the German job market: Today’s immigrants to Germany are better trained and have a higher level of education than native Germans, according to a study carried out by labor market researcher Herbert Brücker on behalf of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a private think tank based in Gütersloh. Today, 43 [...]
xkcd.com
xkcd.com: A webcomic of romance and math humor.
Sticks and Stones
24 May 2013 at 4:00am
Greg Mankiw’s Blog
Random Observations for Students of Economics
Dear Paul
by noreply at blogger.com (Greg Mankiw)
26 May 2013 at 1:25am
My Harvard colleagues Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff have written an open letter to Paul Krugman. (pdf version)
Freakonomics » Blog
The Hidden Side of Everything
NASA to Print Pizzas; Free Delivery Unlikely
by Freakonomics
24 May 2013 at 4:32pm
In our podcast “Waiter, There?s a Physicist in My Soup!,” we talked to Pablos Holman at Intellectual Ventures about food printers (we’ve also blogged about organ printers and meat printers). Now NASA is funding an Austin, Tex., company that is working on a pizza printer. From CNET:
Systems and Materials Research recently received a $125,000 grant from NASA to make a pizza. OK, it’s a little more complicated than that. Contractor already created a proof-of-concept printer that can print chocolate onto a cookie. His next goal is to print out dough and cook it while printing out sauce and toppings.
Economix
Explaining the Science of Everyday Life
Debating Doctors? Compensation
by By UWE E. REINHARDT
24 May 2013 at 4:01am
The value that society places of medical services is the best determinant of just pay for doctors, an economist writes.
Indexed
PUBLISHED WEEKDAY MORNINGS as the COFFEE BREWS. FOR MORE randomness GO TO jessicahagy.info
No one stole the thunder you never had.
by Jessica Hagy
23 May 2013 at 5:40pm
Share and Enjoy:
Slate Articles
Stories from Slate
Before They Were Movies
by Max Linsky
25 May 2013 at 11:20am
Every weekend, Longform shares a collection of great stories from its archive with Slate. For daily picks of new and classic nonfiction, check out Longform or follow @longform on Twitter. Have an iPad? Download Longform?s app to read the latest picks, plus features from 70 of the world?s best magazines, including Slate.
Nudge blog
From Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”
We?ve moved to www.nudges.org. Come with us.
by nudgeblog
27 Feb 2010 at 7:08pm
Nudges.wordpress.com has been a great home for the Nudge blog over the past year and a half, but it’s time to move on. Where to? www.nudges.org. That’s right, we’re taking over our first home and revamping it for the future. We’ve added new social media capabilities that let you share our posts on facebook and [...]
Megan McArdle : The Atlantic
Atlantic content from Megan McArdle
Romney’s America: Fewer Cops, Fewer Firefighters, Fewer Teachers?
by Megan McArdle
11 Jun 2012 at 2:49pm
If that’s the argument Mitt Romney wants to have, Barack Obama should accept the invitation
Dilbert Daily Strip
The Official Dilbert Daily Comic Strip RSS Feed
Comic for May 26, 2013
26 May 2013 at 5:00am
Environmental Economics
The Cromulent Economics Blog
Amenity Value
by Tim Haab
24 May 2013 at 11:04am
Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, otherwise known as Dr. Beach, is a coastal scientist and professor at Florida International University who evaluates 650 public beaches along the U.S. coasts and creates a Top 10 list every year. His report is based on 50 criteria that include sand softness, rip currents, pollution, lifeguards and safety record. Topping the 23rd annual list is an underdog that bounced back from a deadly storm.
via local.msn.com
I’ve been to #’s 2,3,5 and 8. Good calls on 2 and 3.
High Unemployment, Low Interest Rates: Get Used To It
4 Jun 2010 at 3:38pm
By Jacob Goldstein Today’s monthly jobs report suggests two key pieces of the economic picture are likely to persist in the coming months: High unemployment and low interest rates. Hundreds of thousands of temporary workers hired to help conduct the census — which accounted for the overwhelming majority of jobs created in May — will once again find themselves out of work later this year. These weekly figures from the census department suggest the number of temporary workers employed by the census peaked the first week of May — during the same period that the labor department took its monthly jobs survey — and has already begun to decline. “I do think that we have peaked,” Census spokesman told The Hill this week. “I do not expect it to go back up.” In 2000, during the last census, the census department added 348,000 jobs in May, then cut 225,000 jobs in June. Meanwhile, state and local governments cut jobs in May. That is likely to continue, the WSJ says. And private-sector job growth was anemic in May — 41,000 jobs, down from more than 200,000 in April, and not enough to drive an economic recovery. (The number of jobs in manufacturing and temporary services increased, but the number of jobs in construction fell.) “Remember, it requires 150,000 to 200,000 jobs [per month] in order to reduce that unemployment rate,” Bill Gross, who manages the bond fund Pimco, told Bloomberg News. The unemployment rate fell from 9.9 percent to 9.7 percent in May, but the decline was largely due to the fact that fewer people were looking for work. (The unemployment rate only includes those who are actively seeking employment.) Before the recession, the rate was less than 5 percent. High unemployment, in turn, means the Federal Reserve is likely to keep interest rates ultra-low. This is true for a few reasons. For one thing, when more people are out of work, consumers spend less money. That lowers the risk of inflation, which can be a byproduct of low rates. For another, low interest rates make it more appealing for businesses to borrow money to drive growth, which creates new jobs. At least in theory. “[W]e are now in the fourth quarter of economic expansion, with jobs once more being created rather than destroyed,” Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday. “Nonetheless, important concerns remain. One particularly difficult issue is the continued high rate of unemployment.”
Ecocomics
Where Graphic Art Meets Dismal Science
Can Wolverine Build a School?
by ShadowBanker
17 Nov 2011 at 2:30pm
Wolverine #17 by Jason Aaron and Ron GarneyMarvel Comics, 2011
Where does Wolverine get his money from? If he has managed to save up enough to start a new school for mutants in Westchester, he must certainly have exercised several lifetimes of prudent money management. Here is what we had to say about this before:
Throughout his long, long life Wolverine has shown very little interest in matters of an economic nature. He’s spent most of his time living in cabins, hovels, and sleeping in the beds and houses of others. His worldly possessions seldom exceed the clothes on his back (usually a jumpsuit made of spandex or leather), a cache of cheap cigars, a motorcycle, and a six-pack of beer. This is the sum of the worldly possessions he has accrued in over 100 years of life. Granted, a large part of this life was spent being mind controlled and experimented on, but in the years since he’s escaped from Weapon X, Wolverine has made a series of life decisions which placed him in financial jeopardy.
We know Wolverine likes to live a life of modesty. Previously, I thought this was due to the fact that, despite living the equivalent of several lifetimes, he never took a job that was lucrative enough for him to splurge on things like mansions and jets.
Evidently, this is incorrect. Turns out that Wolverine has been slowly saving for years and has now accrued enough funds to open a school.
I haven’t the fainted idea of what it costs to open a school. I doubt that the Xavier Institute was a charter school or received any sort of public funding. In today’s Marvel Universe, mutants are still highly stigmatized so it is unlikely that Wolverine will be able to receive any sort of grant or government assistance, unless through nefarious means (snikt snikt). I do, however, know that it is extremely expensive, probably requiring initial funding of upwards of $500,000 to one million dollars. Westchester County, New York, also seems like it would be particularly costly.
Is it possible that Wolverine managed to save up this much money? Actually, it doesn’t seem that crazy. Let’s assume all assets that he had saved up prior to his kidnapping by the Weapon X program had been wiped (it is unlikely that the sinister Canadian organization let him keep his money). Then, once Logan escapes the program (well after World War II), he had to start with nothing.
He then met Charlies Xavier and joined up with the X-Men in the 1970s. I think it’s safe to assume that he started his savings at this point. Assuming that he had been paid a salary for his service (something of which I am not sure, though I imagine he needed some form of income to, you know, eat) and that he served continuously through the present (a stretch, but it would be difficult to account for all the gaps in his time with the X-Men), it is certainly feasible that Wolverine had saved the amount required to at the very least put forth the initial funds. He had been actively working for four decades (longer if you count the time between Weapon X and the X-Men, where he was employed with Department K and probably earned some sweet government pay) and his expenses were minimal (for a while, he took up free residence at the X-Mansion and, as mentioned above, spends very little on material things).
Therefore, it would appear as though Wolverine’s modest lifestyle is evidence of prudence and thrift, rather than of having little assets.
Hell, Logan might even be part of the 1%.
The Becker-Posner Blog
Welcome to the new Becker-Posner Blog, maintained by the University of Chicago Law School.
Security Surveillance Cameras?Posner
by Richard Posner
23 May 2013 at 5:58am
In the wake of the Boston Marathon attack last month, considerable attention is being paid to surveillance cameras, which played a key role in the identification of the two attackers; their identification led within days to the killing of one and the arrest of the other. Had they not been identified, they might have escaped from the Boston area and committed a terrorist attack in New York City or elsewhere.
Many businesses (notably banks) and even homes have surveillance cameras nowadays. Usually they are pointed at the interior of the building though sometimes also or instead at the entrance to or the grounds of the building. These uses of surveillance cameeras are uncontroversial. But there is controversy over surveillance cameras that are owned by or form part of a network of surveillance cameras that is accessible to government, especially when, as is increasingly common, the surveillance cameras are technologically sophisticated and can for example enlarge the photographed
images, take pictures at night, enable face recognition by matching facial features of a person photographed by the camera with a database of facial features, and even follow a vehicle or pedestrian as it or he goes out of the range of one camera and into the range of another.
Most surveillance cameras are privately owned and operated and therefore do not provide coverage of vehicles (and sometimes their drivers or passengers), or of pedestrians other than the entrance to the private establishment. But some cities, like London, New York, and Chicago (and many others, including many much smaller ones, as well), install large numbers of surveillance cameras outdoors (for example on lamp posts), where they can photograph vehicles and pedestrians. Moreover, many owners of private businesses or other private institutions (or public institutions, such as public schools, that may be part of a different part of government from the part to which the police or other
law enforcement agencies belong) agree to give the police or some other law enforcement agency access to their surveillance cameras, thus creating a much richer surveillance network than the government would have if it were limited to placing surveillance cameras in public places. So when for example one reads that Chicago now has 22,000 surveillance cameras, one is to understand that the Chicago police department has access to a network of 22,000 surveillance cameras; only a relatively small number are owned by the police.
So what are the costs and benefits of these surveillance networks? These seem to be largely unknown. The financial costs probably are small, since most of the cameras are private and the network as a whole probably operates as a substitute for a number of police who would otherwise have to be watching personally the users of streets, sidewalks, parks, and other public spaces. The benefits of the surveillance camera networks include preventing crimes (as by observing suspicious behavior in time to head off a terrorist attack or other crime), deterring criminals (including, of course, terrorists) by increasing the likelihood that they will be apprehended and successfully prosecuted, apprehending criminals who have not been deterred, and, by providing evidence for use in criminal prosecutions, helping to convict criminals. But I am not aware of studies that enable these benefits to be estimated, even crudely. Obviously there are benefits, however, and the costs of terrorist attacks and other murder sprees are such that the expected benefits of comprehensive surveillance are likely to be substantial.
The major costs, or at least the costs that people worry about, are of two kinds. One is the potential for abuse by government, and is the focus of civil liberties organizations, which invoke, though inappropriately, the ?telescreens? in George Orwell?s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), whereby ?Big Brother? (the totalitarian government depicted in the novel) watches the interior of every home. Our government is not totalitarian, obviously, though there have been abuses of government surveillance, notably in the Cold War, and surveillance within the home is more intimidating than surveillance in public.
The greater concern is invasion of privacy; many people don?t like the idea of being watched, even in public, by government monitors, even if there are no abuses. I find this concern difficult to understand, and I don?t think it?s actually widely shared. Even before the Boston Marathon attack focused attention on the security benefits of surveillance cameras pointed at streets and sidewalks, surveillance cameras public as well as private were widely endorsed.
Although ?privacy? has positive connotations and is greatly valued by most people, most people don?t think of streets and sidewalks as private places, because they are open to personal observation (including eavesdropping) by strangers, including police, journalists, and (other) snoopers. The incremental invasion of privacy by the photograph seems to most people offset by the benefits in enhanced security.
More interetingly, the social as distinct from private value of privacy is easily exaggerated. After all, as a practical matter, privacy means concealment; and with some exceptions (such as trade secrecy), concealment is more often a social bad rather than a social good. People conceal aspects of themselves that might cause others to shun them or, more generally, transact with them on less favorable terms; privacy is thus, to exaggerate slightly, a form of fraudulent marketing of oneself. Against this characterization it can be argued that people often exaggerate the significance of personal aspects of a person that everyone prefers to conceal, such as psychiatric or other medical impairments, an arrest record, a business failure, a criminal relative. But this is a paternalistic ground governmental protection for privacy. The less protection for privacy there is, the better behaved people are likely to be and also the more realistic they are likely to be in evaluating the disfavored ?private? characteristics of other people.
Still, there is an argument that privacy is inverse to conformity; that creativity tends to be correlated with nonconformity; and hence that a population is likely to be more creative if there is considerable legal protection of privacy. I think this is an argument worth taking seriously, but that it has little or no application to security cameras in public places.
EconomistMom.com
…because I’m an economist and a mom–that’s why!
Back to Just (An) Economist Mom
by economistmom
10 Jan 2013 at 6:18pm
After 4 and 3/4 years and 932 posts (counting this one), I’m putting down my pen as “the EconomistMom” (capital-E, capital-M, smooshed together) and going back to being (more ordinarily) just (an) economist mom. (I think in my older (i.e., younger) days I would have been anal about it and set a target of ending [...]
Marginal Revolution
Small steps toward a much better world.
Oops, and double oops?
by Tyler Cowen
25 May 2013 at 5:31pm
Au pair programs are in danger of ending, a possible victim of legislation now moving through Congress… At issue is a provision of the bill that would bar any labor contractor from charging a fee to foreign workers being brought into the country. Supporters say the measure is aimed at preventing the exploitation of foreign [...]
xkcd.com
xkcd.com: A webcomic of romance and math humor.
Insight
22 May 2013 at 4:00am
Greg Mankiw’s Blog
Random Observations for Students of Economics
Weitzman on Climate Change
by noreply at blogger.com (Greg Mankiw)
23 May 2013 at 8:19pm
Wisdom from my Harvard colleague Marty Weitzman.
Freakonomics » Blog
The Hidden Side of Everything
The Latest in Happiness Research
by Freakonomics
24 May 2013 at 3:27pm
In the L.A. Times, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton highlight some of the more interesting recent findings in the field of happiness research. Two surprising examples from the article:
1. “A study of women in the United States found that homeowners were no happier than renters, on average. And even if you’re currently living in a cramped basement suite, you may find that moving to a nicer home has surprisingly little impact on your overall happiness. Researchers followed thousands of people in Germany who moved to a new home because there was something they didn’t like about their old home. In the five years after relocating, the residents reported a significant increase in satisfaction with their housing, but their overall satisfaction with their lives didn’t budge.”
2. “[D]ozens of studies show that people get more happiness from buying experiences than from buying material things. Experiential purchases ? such as trips, concerts and special meals ? are more deeply connected to our sense of self, making us who we are. And while it’s anyone’s guess where the American housing market is headed, the value of experiences tends to grow over time, becoming rosier in the rearview mirror of memory.”
Economix
Explaining the Science of Everyday Life
The Changing Face of Community Colleges
by By DAVID LEONHARDT
23 May 2013 at 2:34pm
A Century Foundation report shows a sharp increase in enrollment of lower-income, nonwhite students at community colleges, institutions that will do much to shape the economy.
Indexed
PUBLISHED WEEKDAY MORNINGS as the COFFEE BREWS. FOR MORE randomness GO TO jessicahagy.info
Human exhaust.
by Jessica Hagy
22 May 2013 at 5:51pm
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Advertisement: Snag-a-Sidekick With Eaton’s Claw O-Matic
25 May 2013 at 11:20am
Research shows that taking short breaks can actually enhance your productivity level. That's why Eaton is excited to offer you an opportunity to boost your efficiency while learning some valuable information–and even win prizes!
Eaton >> Read more Ads by Pheedo
Nudge blog
From Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”
Auto-suggest suggests how far behavioral economics has come, and how far it s…
by nudgeblog
25 Feb 2010 at 2:30am
In terms of recognition and respect, behavioral economics has certainly come a long way in the last 25 years. But it is still a Hibernian outpost in the great Roman Economics empire. One of the newest metrics for evaluating its impact is the auto-suggest feature in many search engines that has become quite popular since [...]
Megan McArdle : The Atlantic
Atlantic content from Megan McArdle
Farewell
by Megan McArdle
10 Jun 2012 at 10:55pm
This is a bittersweet post for me to write. I’ve missed you all terribly while on leave, and in?
Dilbert Daily Strip
The Official Dilbert Daily Comic Strip RSS Feed
Comic for May 25, 2013
25 May 2013 at 5:00am
Environmental Economics
The Cromulent Economics Blog
The new phonebooks are here!
by John Whitehead
23 May 2013 at 6:15pm
In other words, Tim and I have an essay in the latest AERE Newsletter. From the inbox:
Here is a link to the May issue of the AERE Newsletter. I hope you take some time to look it over. Read about plans for the upcoming AERE Summer Conference in Banff, Alberta, Canada this June with nearly 300 members attending?a great turnout! And check out the opportunities for presenting your work at regional meetings?including the addition of the Midwest Economic Association. Plus this issue has two interesting essays?one entitled What Do Environmental and Resource Economists Think? Preliminary Results From a Survey of AERE Members by Timothy Haab and John Whitehead and Valuing Ecosystem Services Using Stated Preference Methods: Challenges and Practical Solutions by Heather Hosterman, Megan Lawson, Colleen Donovan, David Chapman, and Richard Bishop.
If you are an AERE member you received the email. If you are not, it used to be that the most recent newsletter was made available after 6 months or so. It appears that it is available now for non-members.
Job Growth: A Big, Disappointing Number
4 Jun 2010 at 2:06pm
The U.S. economy added 431,000 new jobs in May, the federal government said this morning. Sounds promising. But dig a little deeper, and the number doesn’t look so nice. Almost all of those jobs — 411,000 of them — were temporary employees hired to work on the census. Those jobs typically last only for a few months. The private sector added only 41,000 jobs during the month. It’s much lower than what economists were expecting, and far fewer jobs than private employers added in April. It suggests the economic recovery is slowing. Private employers added more than 200,000 new jobs in April. And Economists were predicting that private employers would add more than 100,000 jobs in May. The economy has shed more than 7 million jobs since the end of 2007, though the number of jobs has increased since the start of 2010. May was probably the peak month for census hiring, Bloomberg News notes. And in the coming months, the census department will begin dismissing more employees than it hires. The unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent in May, down from 9.9 percent the month before, the government said this morning. But that number, like the jobs number, is somewhat misleading. The unemployment rate only considers people who are actively seeking work and can’t find it. In May, fewer unemployed people started looking for work again. That contributed to the decline in unemployment.
Ecocomics
Where Graphic Art Meets Dismal Science
Disproportionate Response Man
by ShadowBanker
20 Oct 2011 at 4:37pm
A great entry from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:
The Becker-Posner Blog
Welcome to the new Becker-Posner Blog, maintained by the University of Chicago Law School.
The Internet, Surveillance Cameras, and Misuse of Big Data-Becker
by Gary Becker
20 May 2013 at 12:26am
Surveillance cameras, tax reporting, Internet-based data, emails, mobile phone records and their cameras are some of the more salient modern ways that provide information on individuals and organizations. Few object when banks and other organizations use surveillance cameras on their premises to deter theft and robbery. There is much greater concern when Internet companies like Google and Facebook use their vast stores of data to learn about the interests and other personal information, of the millions of individuals who use their services. Probably, however, the most serious threat is the misuse of ?big data? by governments, including democratic governments.
This past week the possible misuse of extensive data by the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department has been widely reported. Prior to the presidential election in 2012, tax inspectors may have singled out for closer scrutiny the applications of ?Tea Party? and other conservative organizations for tax-exempt status. The Justice Department secured telephone records of reporters for the Associated Press in order to find their sources for leaked information. Data mining with advanced technologies played a part in both alleged abuses of governmental power.
To be sure, using the vast data resources of modern governments to target opponents is not new. For example, Richard Nixon wanted tax inspectors to audit his list of ?enemies? and avoid auditing his friends, but George Shultz, the then Secretary of Treasury, refused to go along. What is different now is the explosive growth in governmental (and private) access to ?big data? with extensive information on millions of individuals and hundreds of thousands of organizations.
Of course, big data has many valuable uses. To give a few examples, health insurance companies can better forecast their future financial obligations from their extensive information on the past health, use of medical resources, and other behavior of millions of insured individuals and families. Economists use the vast government social security data to track how earnings of different individuals vary over the lifecycle, and even how the earnings of children are related to those of their parents. Governments use their extensive information on incomes and deductions to discover who is likely to be underreporting their incomes and over reporting their deductions to tax authorities.
Yet each of these and other big data sets is subject to abuse. Extensive health histories enable insurance companies, unless checked, to reclassify men and women into worse health categories as they age and experience health problems. Such reclassification takes away the prospect of individuals getting some long term health insurance from annual insurance contracts. Big data sets available to researchers have been manipulated to identify individuals and corporations. Already mentioned is that governments sometimes use extensive tax information to target individuals and groups who oppose them. The information from government surveillance cameras, as Posner indicates, may be improperly used for political advantage, as when cameras detect well-known political leaders in cars with women who are not their spouses.
Fortunately, the Internet, social media, and other modern technologies are not only a major source of the big data that is sometimes used for bad purposes, but these technologies often also help expose these abuses. Individuals who become privy to damaging information about governmental (or private) behavior can publicize that behavior on the Internet to vast audiences. For example, since information about these events is quickly posted online,The Internet has forced China to admit to events that in the past would have been kept secret, such as governmental land grabs, protests against local pollution levels, local health epidemics, and deaths from mining disasters,
How to harness big data to socially valuable purposes while keeping down abuses is becoming an important priority in democratic societies. The Internet is an important source of big data, but it also is an increasingly valuable way to control the abuses.
EconomistMom.com
…because I’m an economist and a mom–that’s why!
Over the Cliff and Yet Back in the Same Place
by economistmom
2 Jan 2013 at 5:37pm
It’s as if we’ve just survived a near-death experience. (Image above from NPR.) Like we followed the light and even saw the pearly gates and then miraculously were sucked back down into our bed overnight! We technically “went over” the fiscal cliff at midnight yesterday, and yet here we are today celebrating more extended tax [...]
Marginal Revolution
Small steps toward a much better world.
Prisoner unemployment is rising in California
by Tyler Cowen
25 May 2013 at 11:27am
Prison labor, once best known for making license plates, has grown to 57 factories doing such work as modular building construction, toner cartridge recycling, shoemaking and juice packaging, according to its latest annual report. Convicts supply closed-captioning for television and transcribe movies into Braille… Yet even with workers paid 35 to 95 cents an hour, [...]
xkcd.com
xkcd.com: A webcomic of romance and math humor.
Geoguessr
20 May 2013 at 4:00am
Greg Mankiw’s Blog
Random Observations for Students of Economics
On Stock Investing
by noreply at blogger.com (Greg Mankiw)
18 May 2013 at 9:10pm
Click here to read my column in Sunday’s NY Times.
Freakonomics » Blog
The Hidden Side of Everything
Steal This E-Book?
by Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman
24 May 2013 at 2:39pm
Digital rights management, or DRM, is a set of technologies used to control piracy. An example is the ?Fairplay? system that Apple used until recently on most songs sold in its iTunes store. Fairplay was a set of digital locks that blocked certain uses ? for example, a song could be played only on up to five authorized computers. As you might imagine, DRM has been controversial, at least among some people who want to make uses of content they?ve purchased ? like making a back-up copy, or copying small portions of a work for fair use purposes. Music DRM once involved the installation ? without users? knowledge — of a particularly malicious bit of software that modified, and sometimes broke, the operating systems of customers? computers. That strategy imploded amidst government investigations, class-action lawsuits, and a storm of terrible publicity. In contrast, e-book DRM has been nowhere near as controversial, or ineffective. Still, the fact remains that many DRM-haters exist.
Economix
Explaining the Science of Everyday Life
How a Big-Bank Failure Could Unfold
by By MARC JARSULIC and SIMON JOHNSON
23 May 2013 at 4:01am
All the talk of safeguards and international cooperation is likely to prove ineffectual if a huge international bank fails, two economists write.
Indexed
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A simple recipe.
by Jessica Hagy
21 May 2013 at 6:23pm
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Rob Ford, Spam, and the Quintessential Summer Cocktail
by Byron Boneparth
25 May 2013 at 11:00am
?Obama?s Post-9/11 World: While the president said nothing new about drone strikes, he appears ready to take real risks to close Gitmo,? by Fred Kaplan. Kaplan analyzes President Obama?s counterterrorism speech on Thursday, writing that although the president?s renewed attention to closing the Guantánamo detention center is encouraging, his defense of drone strikes merely echoes a Justice Department white paper released in February. Elsewhere on Slate, Eric Posner writes that Obama?s speech underlines how similar the pesident?s national security policies are to those of George W. Bush.
Nudge blog
From Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”
Millionaire athletes hate handing over $20 cash for being late
by nudgeblog
24 Feb 2010 at 2:39am
UCLA economist Matthew Kahn picks up on a neat little story about Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson’s use of psychology in his NBA locker rooms. Ever the behavioralist, Jackson fined his players tiny amounts – $10 and $20 – for being late to games by a few minutes. Jackson has found that players are [...]
Megan McArdle : The Atlantic
Atlantic content from Megan McArdle
On the Death of a Public Policy Giant
by Megan McArdle
6 Jun 2012 at 6:34am
LA Police Chief Charlie Beck, Pepperdine economist Angela Hawken, and UCLA political scientist Mark Peterson discuss Wilson’s work, impact, and legacy, with me moderating.
Dilbert Daily Strip
The Official Dilbert Daily Comic Strip RSS Feed
Comic for May 24, 2013
24 May 2013 at 5:00am
Environmental Economics
The Cromulent Economics Blog
CBO: Carbon tax an option to avoid ‘catastrophic’ outcomes
by John Whitehead
23 May 2013 at 2:24pm
The Hill’s E2-Wire:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) noted Wednesday that a carbon tax could generate ?significant? revenues for the United States and avert ?catastrophic? effects of climate change.
CBO said in a new report that there are many uncertainties about how to design and implement a carbon tax, but waiting too long to curb greenhouse gas emissions would have clear results. …
A carbon tax, while politically divisive, has continued to surface as an option for raising revenues as Congress dives into discussions about overhauling the federal tax code.
Last month, a Senate Finance Committee report suggested the carbon tax was one of many policy tools available to tax-writing panels.
While championed by some climate policy wonks and even some conservative groups looking to fill the Treasury Department?s piggy bank, the concept hasn’t gained much traction in Capitol Hill.
Republicans and some centrist Democrats have rejected the idea of a carbon tax, saying it would impose burdensome costs on the economy. The GOP-controlled House would block a carbon tax measure, and Republicans would likely be able to filibuster a bill in the Senate.
Democrats, though, say the benefits of reducing medical costs from improved public health and stunting climate change would offset any negative economic effects from a carbon tax.
For its part, the White House has ruled out pursuing a carbon tax.
And there you go. It was only 6 years when 2 presidential candidates were both campaigning on cap-and-trade. Someone please tell DC that cap-and-trade and a carbon tax are about the same.
Mohamed El-Erian Explains ‘The New Normal’
3 Jun 2010 at 8:15pm
Everybody’s talking about the “new normal.” On the investing shows, this is shorthand for an era in which returns on stocks and bonds are lower than they’ve been in the past. But Mohamed El-Erian, the bond-fund CEO who coined the term, says it goes much deeper than that. Today on All Things Considered, El-Erian tells Planet Money’s Adam Davidson that the new normal includes changes to the fundamental structure of the global economy: The world of yesterday was a world of tidy categories. On the one hand you had industrial countries, advanced economies. On the other hand, emerging economies. The first were the core of the system they held the system together. The second, emerging economies, were at the periphery and tended to be crisis prone. The financial crisis changed that, as China — an emerging economy — served as a key stabilizing force in a global financial crisis that started in the U.S. The shift has continued this year, as industrialized countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal have found themselves in the kind of dicey debt situation traditionally associated with developing countries. In the new normal, El-Erian says, the traditional major players like the U.S. and Germany will have less influence. And the likes of India, China and Brazil will have more. The shift will be turbulent. But, El-Erian says, the end result will be a more stable global economy. “It is better to have many locomotives of growth in the world,” he says.
Ecocomics
Where Graphic Art Meets Dismal Science
Arkham City Part I
by ShadowBanker
7 Sep 2011 at 1:00pm
Batman: Arkham City #2 by Paul Dini and Carlos D’AndaDC Comics (2011)
What a bizarre concept this is. So, the Joker and his pack of ruffians take over Arkham Asylum, riots ensue, and then Batman has to save the day. There were many casualties. So now, Mayor Sharp decides to let these prisoners loose from Arkham Asylum and have their own, heavily policed section of Gotham City, where they can run around and, apparently, rehabilitate.
The benefits of this plan are…let’s say dubious. Yes, Mayor Sharp is being controlled by larger forces (which I will not reveal for fear of spoiling), but he still had to convince the City Council–and Gotham citizens–that this plan is not only economically feasible, but that it has any benefits at all.
First of all, how many inmates does Arkham Asylum actually have? A quick count of notable (and other) inmates on Wikipedia suggests about 60 inmates. And these guys aren’t ever in Arkham all at once. But still, let’s be a little liberal with our estimate, and say that we have about 75 inmates at Arkham at any given time. If anyone knows of a better estimate, feel free to let me know.
Why exactly do these 75 people need half of Gotham City–one of the largest cities in the DC universe–all to themselves? It seems like an excessive waste of resources and space on 75 people. Couldn’t he have just walled off a neighborhood? The equivalent of, say, the east village in NYC? And even that’s being generous!
While we’re talking about space issues, I’m also a bit confused as to how the government acquired this space. If half of Gotham is being declared a war zone and sectioned off exclusively for Arkham prisoners, then what happens to the citizens formerly living in these areas? What about the businesses formerly operating in them? Well, they can’t possibly still be there once Arkham opens, right? No one would willingly choose to reside in neighborhoods where the most dangerous villains in the world are free to roam. And, unless your business is selling death rays, no one would choose to continue to go to work in Arkham City.
This means that, most likely, every citizen and business formerly operating in the now Arkham City has to pack up and move to another location. This has major economic implications. First of all, it is very likely that the government needs to subsidize the cost of moving for these guys. So that’s an area of half of Gotham City that the city needs to finance. I suppose, alternatively, that Gotham could subsidize people for staying in Arkham City and willingly exposing themselves to danger. But then that would be more or less equivalent to just setting the prisoners free in society.
Here’s another thing: moving people from one half of Gotham into another would almost surely cause major congestion and overpopulation problems. Not only that, but I imagine that many citizens and businesses will simply be lost in the transition. Small businesses might close if not fully subsidized and individuals might simply move outside the city limits. Gotham is losing a chunk of its tax base by creating Arkham City.
And that’s nothing to say of the enormous amounts of money being spent to maintain this large prison. For one thing, Gotham needs to commission task forces and experts in order to determine the appropriate plans, and estimate the appropriate subsidies. Moreover, the wall needs to be constructed. The private military securing Arkham City’s borders need to be paid.
Oh yeah, and let’s not forget that the Mayor is also providing health care and essential social services to these former inmates.
It has been clear for many years that politicians and citizens of Gotham City have been prone to panic and mass hysteria. They have been portrayed as corrupt, fickle, and ignorant. But even in the grand scale of Gotham’s historical blunders, Arkham City almost surely nears the top. Maybe top five.
The Becker-Posner Blog
Welcome to the new Becker-Posner Blog, maintained by the University of Chicago Law School.
The Rise in College Tuition and Student Loans-Becker
by Gary Becker
13 May 2013 at 1:06am
During the past 30 years tuition at American colleges has been growing at a fast pace. The increase has been greatest at 4-year private colleges and universities, and least at 2-year public colleges, but all college categories have had large tuition increases. For example, real tuition at the 4-year private colleges has more than doubled since 1980, while tuition at 2-year public colleges increased by over 50%.
Many commentators have criticized these large tuition increases. Colleges and universities are said to be too greedy and are charging what the traffic will bear, or colleges are claimed to conspire together to increase tuition. Although colleges do conspire on some financial issues, such as agreeing through the NCAA to prevent payments to college athletes, conspiracy is not likely to be important in determining tuition since over 4000 colleges and universities compete fiercely for students, faculty, and funding.
The growth in tuition is not explained by any conspiracy theory, but mainly by increases in the cost of producing college education. Professors and other teachers are the principal input in colleges, so that the cost of these teachers is an important determinant of the cost of producing education. College teachers are well educated since they almost always have Masters degrees, and at the better colleges and universities they are very likely to have PhDs or similar advanced degrees.
Colleges have to compete for highly educated persons against employers in both the private and public sectors. Since after 1980 earnings of highly educated persons has risen rapidly in these other sectors, colleges have had to pay a lot more for their faculties and administrative staffs. The greatly increased pay of faculty has substantially raised college costs, which in part have been passed on to students through higher tuition and other fees.
This analysis also explains why tuition has grown most rapidly at 4-year private colleges and other elite schools. These schools tend to have faculties that are considered the most skilled and productive, and they invariably have PhDs or other advanced degrees. Since the rise in earnings in recent decades has been greatest for the most educated individuals, the costs of more elite colleges and universities have risen faster than that of other schools. They too have passed through to students some of these much greater costs via much higher tuition.
The increased return to greater skill means that colleges have an incentive to increase the workload of students, and improve the quality of the education they provide. Higher quality education is more expensive, however, which further has increased the cost of providing education, and the tuition charged students.
Whatever the cause of the tuition increases, to many that indicates that college is no longer a good investment. That is, the costs of going to college are claimed to now outweigh the benefits for many of the students who attend college. This is particularly the case, it is argued, for students who take out large student loans to finance their education.
A benefit-cost analysis of an activity like attending college cannot be based only on costs, in this case represented by tuition, but also requires evidence on benefits. While tuition increased rapidly since the 1980s, so too did the monetary returns from college. In 1980, the average graduate of a 4-year college earned about 40% more than the average high school graduate, whereas now the average college premium is over 80%. The increase in earnings has been even greater for persons who received graduate degrees.
What happened to the value of a college education during the past several decades depends on how the increase in earnings from going to college compares to the increase in tuition and other costs of college. Calculations show that the average gain in earnings during the past 30 years has exceeded the rise in tuition, so that the average rate of return on graduating from college has greatly increased, despite the large growth in tuition.
Nevertheless, the rise in tuition has forced many students to take on larger student loans than students did in the past. This has led to growing calls to forgive much of student indebtedness, even though college is a better deal than it was in the past, and student loans are already significantly subsidized. Moreover, despite a widespread belief that student loans are the main source of debt to younger individuals, in fact student loans remain a relatively small fraction of their total debt. An article in the New York Times of May 11 shows that although student loans have grown rapidly during the past decade, they are still only 15% of the total debt of individuals under age 35 (and a smaller fraction of the debt of those over age 35), whereas mortgages comprise 74% of their debt. The article claims that the ?heavy? load of student debt is weighing on economy, but surely mortgages are a far more important influence on the spending of younger families.
Of course, a high level of student debt is a burden for individuals who are not earning a lot, and the default rate on student loans is much higher for low earners than for others with student debt. Students with low earnings mainly went either to proprietary colleges or to 2-year colleges. Their debt problems are not surprising since it is well known that these students are not likely to earn a lot after they enter the labor force. Perhaps greater constraint should be placed on their access to publically subsidized student loans, and perhaps interest rates on student loans should be positively related to earnings.
But any changes in policies regarding student loans should recognize that despite the rapid growth in tuition, college education remains a very good investment for the large majority of students who graduate from college.
EconomistMom.com
…because I’m an economist and a mom–that’s why!
Doomsday for the Cliff Deal
by economistmom
21 Dec 2012 at 1:22pm
All over an unwillingness to convince his colleagues to let tax rates come back up (as scheduled) on (even) the very richest, any “deal” between Boehner and Obama is off –at least until after Christmas: House Speaker John A. Boehner threw efforts to avoid the year-end ?fiscal cliff? into chaos late Thursday, as he abruptly [...]
Marginal Revolution
Small steps toward a much better world.
Painted into a corner?
by Tyler Cowen
25 May 2013 at 1:21am
According to the BoJ [Bank of Japan], a 100 basis-point increase in interest rates across all maturities would lead to mark-to-market losses equivalent to a fifth of tier one capital for regional banks, and 10 per cent for the major banks. At the same time, rising interest rates could undermine the government?s attempts to improve [...]
xkcd.com
xkcd.com: A webcomic of romance and math humor.
Combination Vision Test
17 May 2013 at 4:00am
Greg Mankiw’s Blog
Random Observations for Students of Economics
Christy Romer on Japan
by noreply at blogger.com (Greg Mankiw)
14 May 2013 at 9:50am
Last month, I had the pleasure of hearing Christy Romer give a great talk about Japanese monetary policy at the NBER Macro Annual conference. You can now read it here.
Freakonomics » Blog
The Hidden Side of Everything
More Evidence on Charter Schools
by Freakonomics
24 May 2013 at 1:29pm
Writing at Slate, Ray Fisman reviews the latest research on the efficacy of charter schools. The study focuses on students at six Boston schools that had previously demonstrated an ability to improve students’ test scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. This time, however, the researchers wanted to evaluate whether the schools really improved student outcomes or just mastered the art of “teaching to the test.” Here’s the breakdown:
The study examines the college readiness of Boston public school students who applied to attend the six charter schools between 2002 and 2008, with projected graduation dates of 2006?2013. In just about every dimension that affects post-secondary education, students who got high lottery numbers (and hence were much more likely to enroll in a charter school) outperformed those assigned lower lottery numbers. Getting into a charter school doubled the likelihood of enrolling in Advanced Placement classes (the effects are much bigger for math and science than for English) and also doubled the chances that a student will score high enough on standardized tests to be eligible for state-financed college scholarships. While charter school students aren?t more likely to take the SAT, the ones who do perform better, mainly due to higher math scores.
Economix
Explaining the Science of Everyday Life
Massachusetts Employees Will Keep Their Health Plans
by By CASEY B. MULLIGAN
22 May 2013 at 4:01am
Because the state’s employees are relatively highly paid, the impact of Massachusetts’ health care reform is likely to be different than that of the Affordable Care Act, an economist writes.