Must- and Should-Reads: July 22, 2017

• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Boosting the competition” edition: “Since 2000 the concentration of businesses in the United States has increased and the amount of business investment relative to profits has declined… https://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-boosting-the-competition-edition/
• Jonathan Baker: Market power in the U.S. economy today: “The U.S. economy has a ‘market power’ problem, notwithstanding our strong and extensive antitrust institutions… https://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/market-power-in-the-u-s-economy-today/
• Doug Elmendorf et al.: Letter from Former CBO Directors on the Importance of CBO’s Role in the Legislative Process: “The undersigned represent every former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)… https://medium.com/@douglas.elmendorf/letter-from-former-cbo-directors-on-the-importance-of-cbos-role-in-the-legislative-process-278863b7e1c6
• Ryan Avent: Making Monetary Policy Great Again: “Obama’s response to the economic crisis… the timidity of his stimulus plan… his failure to provide broad support to struggling homeowners… his premature pivot to deficit cutting… http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/45/making-monetary-policy-great-again/
• Pedro Nicolaci da Costa: Ex-Bank of England official says Fed has wrong idea on jobs, inflation: “The Fed’s misleading view of the job market reflects ‘a huge intellectual failure’… http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-bank-of-england-official-says-fed-has-wrong-idea-on-jobs-inflation-2017-7
• Anatole Kaletsky: A “Macroneconomic” Revolution?: “Given the abundance of useful ideas, why have so few of the policies that might have ameliorated economic conditions and alleviated public resentment been implemented since the crisis?… https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/replacement-market-fundamentalism-by-anatole-kaletsky-2017-07
• Mark Thoma: Here’s Why We’re Not Prepared for the Next Recession: “When will the next recession hit?… http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/07/17/Here-s-Why-We-re-Not-Prepared-Next-Recession
• Christina Romer and David Romer (2009): Do Tax Cuts Starve the Beast? The Effect of Tax Changes on Government Spending: “The hypothesis that decreases in taxes reduce future government
  spending is often cited as a reason for cutting taxes… https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/do-tax-cuts-starve-the-beast-the-effect-of-tax-changes-on-government-spending/
• Nick Bunker: Is declining competition causing slow U.S. business investment growth?: “Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon… the divergence between investment and profits… employ a so-called natural experiment where the entrance of competition from China changed investment decisions… https://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/is-declining-competition-causing-slow-u-s-business-investment-growth/
• Nick Bunker: Recessions, recoveries, and racial employment gaps in the United States: “The unemployment gap between black and white workers… can’t be explained by black Americans having lower levels of education or differences in demographics… https://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/recessions-recoveries-and-racial-employment-gaps-in-the-united-states/
• Maarten de Ridder and Coen Teulings: Endogenous growth and lack of recovery from the Global Crisis: “The crisis [is] a quasi-natural experiment to test the endogenous growth hypothesis… http://voxeu.org/article/endogenous-growth-and-lack-recovery-global-crisis
• Christian Odendahl: The Hartz Myth: “Germany’s labour market and welfare reforms of the early 2000s have gained an outsized importance over time… http://www.cer.eu/sites/default/files/pbrief_german_labour_10.7.17.pdf
• Ann Marie Marciarille: Those Pesky Pre-Dispute Arbitration Agreements for Skilled Nursing Facilities: “Assisting a parent or loved one in seeking skilled nursing facility admission is no joke… http://www.marciarille.com/2017/05/those-pesky-pre-dispute-arbitration-agreements-for-skilled-nursing-facilities.html
• Jonathan Cohn, Paige Lavender, and Chris D’Angelo: Senate Republicans Just Killed Their Health Care Bill Again: “But it could come back in another form. Like a zombie… http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jerry-moran-mike-lee-senate-health-care_us_596d594ce4b0e983c05877f4
• Nancy Folbre: Why current definitions of family income are misleading, and why this matters for measures of inequality: “Researchers studying income distribution in the United States seem reluctant to acknowledge the family as an important unit of production and distribution… https://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/why-current-definitions-of-family-income-are-misleading-and-why-this-matters-for-measures-of-inequality/

Interesting Reads:

• Annie Lowrey: The Problem With Trump’s Steel Tariffs: “Trump’s widely-anticipated steel tariffs are likely to end up hurting the heartland…” https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/made-in-america/534339/
• Tim Worstall: Quantitative easing has outstayed its welcome – CapX: “Quantitative easing was a great idea and we’d be lost without it. But now QE has saved us, we’ll be lost if we don’t get rid of it…” https://capx.co/quantitative-easing-has-outstayed-its-welcome/
• Brad Setser: Can the Fed and ECB Work Together To Reduce Imbalances?: “An ECB that tightens through rates and a Fed that relies on balance sheet roll off… would work together to… weaken the dollar and reduce the U.S. trade deficit and European surplus. That at least is how I read this paragraph in Brainard’s speech…” https://www.cfr.org/blog-post/can-fed-and-ecb-work-together-reduce-imbalances
• Lael Brainard: Cross-Border Spillovers of Balance Sheet Normalization https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20170711a.htm
• Senate Budget Committee Minority Staff: Background on BCRA Byrd Rule Decisions https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Background%20on%20Byrd%20Rule%20decisions_7.21[1].pdf
• Noah Smith: Redlining Never Went Away: “New research shows that discriminatory lending holds down housing values, hurting black wealth accumulation…” https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-07-19/redlining-never-went-away
• Dylan Matthews: The 2 most popular critiques of basic income are both wrong: “Both the work critique and the cost critique, as cases against the idea of any sort of guaranteed cash grant, fail. They might be helpful critiques when designing the exact form a minimum income should take in the United States, but they leave the underlying concept unscathed…” https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/20/15821560/basic-income-critiques-cost-work-negative-income-ta
• 32/http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2002_05_12.html
• Elizabeth Anderson: How bosses are (literally) like dictators: “Americans think they live in a democracy. But their workplaces are small tyrannies…” https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/7/17/15973478/bosses-dictators-workplace-rights-free-markets-unions
• Jonathan Chait: Trumpcare Collapsed Because Republicans Cannot Govern: “In 2009, David Frum, the former Bush administration speechwriter whose ideological apostasy was in its formative stages, met with conservative intellectuals to discuss the policy response to the great recession. Faced with evidence that only massive government action—a financial rescue coupled with fiscal stimulus—could have prevented a complete economic meltdown, one conservative made a startling confession: ‘Maybe it was a good thing we weren’t in power then—because our principles don’t allow us to respond to a crisis like this’…” http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/trumpcare-collapsed-because-republicans-cannot-govern.html
• Neera Tanden and Topher Spiro: The bipartisan way to strengthen health care https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bipartisan-way-to-strengthen-health-care/2017/07/18/b2e2b444-6bef-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html