truthonthemarket — After two years of nagging and increasingly worse hip and leg pain, I learned last August (at age forty) that I have a congenital hip deformity and need to have both hips replaced. In planning for this surgery, I’ve witnessed first-hand a problem that is driving American health care costs through the...
marginalrevolution — 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...
marginalrevolution — 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...
marginalrevolution — 1. Economic Rewards to Motivate Blood Donations, important summary of the evidence in Science. 2. Words that cannot be spoken: raw milk. 3. Econometrics by simulation blog. 4. EU to ban olive oil in dishes? Way to upset the Greeks even more. 5. How does copyright law work in space?
marginalrevolution — 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...
marginalrevolution — 1. “Wanting to be liked.” 2. Trifecta (good photos too). 3. Hobson, underconsumption, globalization, and the great stagnation, by Robert Skidelsky; uneven but interesting. I’ve been waiting for this tradition to be rediscovered, I suppose Hilferding is next. 4. WSJ reviews the excellent Arnold Kling. 5. I am more pro-immigration than he is, but...
marginalrevolution — 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...
econlog.econlib — Thanks to Bryan Caplan for his excellent post this morning. In the Comments section, people discussed the difficulty of shorting housing even if you thought it was overpriced. I'll tell two stories of two friends who saw what was happening. One didn't act on his insight and...
freakonomics — (Photo: Neven Mrgan) 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...
marginalrevolution — 1. Finland photos from World War II. 2. Good review of the new Star Trek (full of spoilers), hail George Lucas. 3. What if you ran a natural-field Dictator Game? 4. Will China become more of a free market economy? 5. The Nikkei since the 1980s, and Billy Joel update. 6. Pricing ACA in California (a...
freakonomics — 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: “A study of women in the United States found that homeowners were no happier than renters, on average. And even if you’re currently...
marginalrevolution — John Cochrane discusses Andy Kessler: The usual thinking is that bank reserves are “special.” They are connected to GDP in a way that Treasuries are not. In the conventional monetary view, MV = PY. Bank reserves, through a multiplier, control M. The bank or credit channel view says that bank reserves...
freakonomics — (Photo: Drathus) 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...
econlog.econlib — I just read Foote, Gerardi, and Willen's subprime facts manifesto. Twice. In the process, I learned more about the subprime crisis than I learned in the last five years put together. If you're going to read one piece on this topic, read this one. Quick version: 1. A simple model...
freakonomics — (Photo: Alex Starr) 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...
econlog.econlib — Thanks to everyone who offered excellent comments on my last post. Most people were thinking about it the way I do. To recap, here were the questions I someday want to ask on an exam or in a job interview: Crying babies and loud children are among the common complaints of...
marginalrevolution — Last year the ENCODE Consortium, a big-data project involving 440 scientists from 32 laboratories around the world, announced with great fanfare that 80% of the human genome was functional or as the NYTimes put it less accurately but more memorably ”at least 80 percent of this DNA is active and needed.” What the NYTimes didn’t say was...
marginalrevolution — In my email, from Eric Crampton: Imagine the following deal, which is entirely not on any PPF so it’s not really a deal anyway. But imagine it. Genie offers a button. Push the button, and it burns the last n years of every journal in economics, along with all knowledge that...
marginalrevolution — Hazel Meade wrote: The banning of catastrophic-only plans infuriates me the most. Those are the only plans that are actually financially sensible for a healthy individual to purchase. Everything else on the market is a perverse by-product of the employer-based insurance system. Worst case scenario with a catastrophic-only plan is you end...
marginalrevolution — 1. Honeybees trained to find land mines. 2. Felix Salmon on bubbles, and Alen Mattich on bubbles, more from him here. And here is Krugman on the Japanese stock market plunge. 3. Ross Douthat, on the relationship between social and economic inequality. 4. Is this what an interview with a very smart person...
freakonomics — For 41 years, the city of Seattle enjoyed NBA basketball. And then the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder. Across the past year, though, there was hope that the NBA was returning to the Emerald City. Sure the team was the Kings, a team that has lost at...
econlog.econlib — I agree with co-blogger Bryan that most voters are rationally irrational. My sense is that there are also a lot of voters and people in positions of influence who know just enough economics to be dangerous. As Steve Horwitz and I pointed out in a recent essay for the Library...
marginalrevolution — Thousands of the finest automobiles ever made are now being abandoned every year since Dubai’s financial meltdown, left by expatriates and locals alike who flee in a hurry because they face crippling debts. With big loans to repay to the banks (unpaid debt or even bouncing a cheque is a...
freakonomics — [MUSIC: Ed Hartman, “Simple Life”] DUBNER: Hey Levitt, of all the things that are in your power to do at this very moment in time, what would be your very most favorite thing to do? LEVITT: If I could be doing anything right now, what would I be doing? DUBNER: Yeah. LEVITT: Probably playing...