Economy News

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes — The origins of "If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

truthonthemarket — The biggest and most important issue for the next few months won’t be immigration, the New Black Panthers, or even the war in Afghanistan. Huge tax increases are headed our way, and it raises tough questions. On the one hand, signaling we are serious about deficits is likely a good...

econlog.econlib — Alex Tabarrok writes, The U.S. housing vacancy rate--an unemployment rate for home--is at its highest level since at least 1965 (see figure). Why? Is it sticky prices? Lack of aggregate demand? Structural? For labor, the recalculation story says that employment is a by-product of patterns of specialization and trade. ...

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes — The BPS Research Digest reports that "[a] simple perceptual bias could influence football referees' judgments about whether a foul occurred or not."

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes — In "Binge Drinking & Sex in High School" (abstract here; PDF here), Jeffrey S. DeSimone argues that "binge drinking significantly increases participation in sex, promiscuity, and the failure to use birth control, albeit by amounts considerably smaller than implied by merely conditioning on exogenous factors."

mjperry.blogspot — Gary Varvel.  

stumblingandmumbling.typepad — Should firms be free to sack workers who are short or ugly? The answer is yes, if you support the CBI’s opposition to the government’s decision to scrap the default retirement age.The case for firms forcibly retiring 65-year-olds is that these tend to be less productive (pdf) than younger workers....

cafehayek — Here’s a letter to the Washington Post: E.J. Dionne argues that rich Americans are “undertaxed” (“In American politics, stupidity is the name of the game,” July 29).  He quotes the Congressional Budget Office to explain why: “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle...

newmarksdoor — I feel kinda bad not giving it to Ann Arbor (see yesterday's post) and while Detroit is a perennial contender--one wag wrote recently, "Detroit's city council puts the dis in dysfunctional"--but, sorry, worthy contenders, Brockton's performance is simply too outstanding to ignore. The Brockton Water Department has been inaccurately billing thousands of...

econlog.econlib — How many times have you heard the following argument in the last two years? Tax cuts/helicopter drops of cash/whatever won't stimulate demand.  People are too nervous to spend.  Whatever you give them, they'll just save it. The problem with this claim, like the analogous argument about reserves, is that it never considers...

mjperry.blogspot — Excerpts from a bullish report on world trade and global shipping from IHS Global Insight (Press Release here and Executive Summary here): "Global trade along virtually every trade route has shown a remarkable recovery from the 2007–09 recession.  Despite some commentators' views that global trade volumes would not recover to their...

econlog.econlib — What the Blinder-Zandi paper does is explore the properties of a macroeconometric model. The economics profession abandoned those models thirty years ago, so the tool they are using is like a fossil, frozen in time. Of course, there have been many tweaks over the years, but my guess...

econlog.econlib — While ghost-writing for the Conservative Missionary and the Libertarian Missionary, I found myself reflecting on the principles of good debating.  I realize that debating can just be a sophistical exercise.  But it doesn't have to be.  In fact, it has obvious truth-seeking advantages over the straightforward lecture format.  For starters, debaters...

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes — One of my German colleagues has access to €30,000 for Gleichstellung-a German version of an EU-wide initiative to achieve equality between healthy white males and various "disadvantaged" groups, including women. Cleverly, the German government does not want people to substitute these moneys for other funds; as with any subsidy,...

mjperry.blogspot — From the Mpls.-St. Paul StarTribune: "For years, anybody who pulled, twisted, sprained or broke some part of their body would show up at the emergency room.  There, they'd often wait hours as more critical cases -- heart attacks or strokes -- leapfrogged ahead in line.Then they'd go home with an...

mjperry.blogspot — Can a bunch of technocrats in Washington really make better decisions than free consumers in the marketplace? No economic or scientific case exists for subsidizing the electric vehicle. The government should remain technology-neutral. Subsidies hinder the ability of free enterprise to innovate and develop other advanced auto technologies like the...

econlog.econlib — Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi used Zandi's econometric model as the basis for a claim that the stimulus and the TARP worked. Thirty-five years ago, I was Blinder's research assistant, doing these sorts of simulations on the Fed-MIT-Penn model for the Congressional Budget Office. I think they are...

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes — A reader named Karisa Cloward, a school teacher, needs your help. Her dilemma calls to mind earlier blegs about roommates/rent and dividing up a loved one's earthly goods.

gregmankiw.blogspot — New research on the value of kindergarten teachers is remarkable.  In fact, it seems a bit hard to believe.  If kindergarten teachers matter as much as this new research suggests, then you would think that parents would have a large influence on their kids' adult outcomes.  After all, you spend a lot more...

cafehayek — The always-vital-and-vibrant Institute for Justice hits another home-run. My former GMU student Alex Nowrasteh writes wisely on immigration in today’s Wall Street Journal.  Here’s a key ‘graf: Worse, deputizing all of Arizona’s police officers as federal immigration agents will make their jobs more difficult and dangerous. This is because unauthorized immigrants would...

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes — Kathryn Schulz, the author of Being Wrong, has been guest-blogging for us about being wrong - and admitting our mistakes. Her latest post examines the historical culture of error in the United States.

cafehayek — Here’s a letter to the New York Times: I appreciate the sub-headline, appearing on your website, to a report on the BP oil spill: “The oil is clearing much faster than expected, but concern remains over the unseen effects” (“On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay,” July...

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes — In Hollywood, a lot of people make a good living by making TV pilots that never end up on the air. (There's also a strong market for writing film scripts that are never turned into films.) According to Variety, roughly one-third of pilots end up on the air; here's a...

econlog.econlib — I'm going on vacation Thursday morning here. I'll be there until August 15. Sometime tomorrow and for a four-hour layover in Denver on Thursday, I'll pre-program some posts on things I've been thinking about. I'll also go on line from time to time while I'm there, although...

econlog.econlib — Paul Romer is always interesting, and especially in this podcast with Paul Kedrosky. In the last quarter of the interview, the discussion turns to badly-performing cities, and Romer speculates that we need a workout procedure that would allow a city government to move into completely different hands. As...