- : ‘Chicagonomics’ and ‘Economics Rules’
- : Clinton on Glass-Steagall: Right or Wrong?
- : An Essential Part of Job Creation Policy Is Missing
- : The Aspen Summit on Inequality and Opportunity
Tag: roundup
Must-Reads Found Up to Lunchtime on November 20, 2015
- : Number-Crunchers Lift Lid on Investor Choice: “Retail investors…fatally drawn to chasing performance…” :: Must-Read: This is what Akerlof and Shiller’s Phishing for Phoolsis about…
- : mainly macro: Politically Impossible: “Should I have demanded a retraction? I didn’t: life is short… perhaps it said more about the writer than it did about me…” :: The writer, BTW, is Chris Giles, whom we have seen before…
- : Why Democrats Fixate on Glass-Steagall: “Glass-Steagall… is the perfect Washington Issue… negligible impact but great popular charm… politicians… sound as if they are addressing some major problem without having to go to the trouble of actually doing so…” :: But narrow-banking advocate Milton Friedman would be especially shrill today that the repeal of Glass-Steagall should be repealed…
- **: 2015 National Book Award Non-Fiction Winner
- Macro Advisers Forecasts: 1.9% GDP Growth in Q4
- : “States with Democrats in charge accept [Medicare expansion]. States with Republicans… have mixed records…. But once a state goes along with Medicaid expansion, it doesn’t go back on it even if a strongly conservative Republican is elected governor…”
- : EZ Crisis: A Consensus Narrative
- (2014): North Dakota’s Oil Bonanza Is Unsustainable
- : “Swiss watch exports had their biggest decline in six years in October, led by a 39 percent slump in shipments to Hong Kong…. Shipments declined 12 percent to 2 billion Swiss francs ($2 billion), the Swiss customs office said…”
Must-Reads Found Up to 7:20 AM EST on November 19, 2015
- Prime-age female employment in the U.S. and Canada https://equitablegrowth.org/?p=16112
- : Models of the Minimum Wage: “We can introduce some ideas… that comport a bit more with reality…. At the end of the day… when the theory doesn’t match the evidence, trust the evidence…” :: The rationale for a minimum wage is the theory that the low-wage labor market suffers market failures analogous to those of natural monopolies…
- : Inequality: A Fact, an Interpretation, and a Policy Recommendation: “A common storyline…[:] inequality has not increased… there is little that can be done… effort… fighting inequality diverts attention from more pressing problems…” :: That Miles Corak… [says] ‘a common storyline’ is a measure of… right-of-center echo chamber…”
- : Where Have All the Workers Gone?: “Among male heads of household… between… 25-54 [nt working], 27 percent say it is because they are ill or disabled…. [But] we excluded from the sample anyone on disability…” :: I really want to see what happens to these numbers in a high-pressure low-slack economy…
- : GSPP Policy Research Seminar: Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data: “The rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0.1% wealth share…” :: It’s all at the peak…
- : Are the Robots Taking Enough Jobs?: “The next wave of labour-saving technology looks to be replacing human brains, rather than human brawn, and the impact could be far more wide-reaching…” :: Human smiles and human truly creative thought look to remain economically valuable. So learn how to smile!
- : High Slack or Low Slack?
- : Esther Duflo on Alphachatterbox:
- : Maryland’s Global Budget Interim Success
- (November 18, 2015): Do Millennials Stand a Chance? Giving the Next Generation a Fair Shot at a Prosperous Future
- : “What Are the Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren?
- : Critics–Like Carly Fiorina–Who Claim Medicaid Coverage Stinks Should Talk with Parents Who’ve Actually Relied on the Program
Must-Reads Found on November 16 and November 17, 2015
- : Uber Is Not the Future of Work: “Driving mostly for supplementary income on a transitory basis…” :: I’m with Larry Mishel here: Why do people think Uber-type companies are an important deal, again? Uber, AirBNB, Criagslist… and what else?
- : The Value and Limits of Economic Models: “The alleged failings of economics are now widely understood…. Rodrik no doubt set out to offer an evenhanded view of modern economics, [but] in the end he winds up delivering a fairly devastating critique…” :: Let me agree with Steve Perlstein here: the economics that Dani Rodrik praises is not the strongest current, outside of our liberal-arts non-business school ivory towers, and not always even in them.
- : The Pre-Great-Recession Slowdown in U.S. Productivity Growth: “Counting “free” digital goods wouldn’t raise market productivity much…” :: I do not understand what John Fernald is getting at here: Who cares if it is not “market” but “home” production?
- : Where Fed’s Critics Got It Wrong in GOP Debate: “The Federal Reserve was instrumental in easing the impact of the Great Recession…” :: Critics of expansionary macro policies in a high-slack low-inflation economy have taken over Republican-Party economic policy. Can somebody please tell me what is going on?
Must-Reads Found Over the Weekend
- : Republicans Think America Is Doing Terribly, but It Isn’t: “Unemployment… 5 percent… recovery… has outpaced… other developed nations… uninsured Americans… plummeting… Obamacare… cost[s] less than expected… a second tech bubble…” :: America looks bright today primarily from the perspective of the rich, the techie, and those who have benefitted from ObamaCare’s coverage expansion. That is not most Republicans.
- : Asking the Question Is the Most Important Step: “None of our contributions could’ve happened without the work by the original authors…” :: Something very, very peculiar is going on with middle-aged American whites in the Bush 43 and Obama years–much more so for women–and it is distinctly odd.
- : Being An Inflation Hawk Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry: “Jeffry Lacker… just said…. Oh, wait: That’s what he said six years ago…” :: As long as reporters–even good reporters–act as stenographers, and thus neither make readers aware of their sources’ track records nor ask sources to justify why one should place confidence in their assessments, our public intellectual sphere and our dialogue will continue to be broken.
- : We Now Know The 6 Most Ridiculous Things About The 2015 Budget Agreement
- Clausen Center Conference on Global Economic Issues: “November 21, 2015…”
- : Friction is now between global financial elite and the rest of us
- : Estimating the equilibrium real interest rate
- : Mizzou Football’s Long, Fraught History With Racism On Campus: “The protests that brought down top officials at the University of Missouri were the culmination of a decades-long rift between black athletes and the school…”
- : Logitech’s Create is the iPad Pro Keyboard Case You Really Want
- : “We’re bullish on Rubio. We’re bullish on Cruz. But just because an outcome is the most likely doesn’t mean that it’s likely…. The Republican race… remains relatively wide open…. Cruz and Rubio are in as strong a position as any…. But the nomination process remains far too muddled to know what’s going to happen…. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
- : How Crystal Dynamics Saved Lara Croft
- : The Internet Will Always Suck
Noted for the Morning of November 13, 2015
- : Labor in the Second Machine Age: “People, unlike horses, can choose to prevent themselves from becoming economically irrelevant…” :: B&M see human sociability, extraordinary human brain reach, and the fact that we humans control our politics as forces that will prevent any robotic dystopia
- : The False Discovery Rate (FDR) and the Positive Predictive Value (PPV): “The False Discovery Rate (FDR) and the Positive Predictive Value (PPV): Together with Michael Zehetleitner I developed an interactive app that computes and visualizes these numbers…” :: Everybody reading (or writing) statistical work should use this tool–it is the best quick way to understand how to assess any study given its ex-ante plausibility and its statistical power.
- : Daniel Hamermesh… and Elena Stancanelli… [on] the tendency to work what the authors call ‘strange hours’… nights and weekends…” :: part-time, flex-time, unusual-time, and on-call work make Americans’ labor significantly more laborious than work schedules in other countries (except, I believe, Britain)
- : TensorFlow and Monetizing Intellectual Property: “Monetizing infinitely reproducible intellectual property [is] akin to selling ice to an Eskimo: it can be done, but it better be some really darn incredible ice…” :: how Alphabet’s (Google’s) strategy may suggest that our current intellectual property system and defaults may not even be to the advantage of those who hold the rights to the crown jewels of technology
- Via Richard Mayhew: : “37 Premera members enrolled in individual health insurance plans generated $17.5 million in medical bills…. ‘Less than 1 percent of the pool generating a quarter of medical claims,’ Coon said. She described the marketplace in Alaska as ‘unsustainable.’ Coon said Premera lost millions of dollars last year in Alaska…”
- : “It would be better to try to tweak the [Cadillac] tax rather than repeal it…. The most important thing it has going for it is that it’s on the books. Those who think they can join ranks with O’care haters for repeal and break ranks with them to replace, in this Congress, are kidding themselves…”
- : Inflation and Activity: Two Explorations and Their Monetary Policy Implications
- (1983): The Long-term Impact of Technology on Employment and Unemployment: National Perspectives: The Definition of Problems and Opportunities
- : Globalisation Fraying: The Pre-Great War Version
- (1999): Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Health The Added Effects of Racism and Discrimination
- : The Blinkered Economics of the 2016 GOP Presidential Candidates
- : Labour Mobility in the European Union
- : Rising Income Inequality Causes Republicans to Shift Rhetoric–But Not Policy
Must-Reads: For the Morning of November 12, 2015
Must-Read:
- Neel Kashkari confuses an unsustainable level of investment, a sectoral maldistribution of demand, with an unsustainable level of output…
- Mark Thoma and company on live questions for monetary policy…
- Noah Smith and company on the reading list for bubbles and panics…
- And…
- Plus…
Sorry Japan, printing money is morphine. makes u feel better but doesn't cure. BOJ Unveils Bold Bid to End Deflation http://t.co/9G9mnAOdOq — Neel Kashkari (@neelkashkari) April 5, 2013 And in January 2014, arguing that U.S. real GDP in 2007 was unsustainably high, and thus that the economy needed a recession: @delong @pswagel How's this? Growth was artificially fast due to leveraging of econ. Trying to return to that rate thru def spend is futile. — Neel Kashkari (@neelkashkari) January 10, 2014 In response, quotes himself from 2011: A Note on Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply: “One thing that keeps appearing in comments is the notion that… …because we had a bubble, in which some people were borrowing too much, the economic growth of 2000-2007 wasn’t [sustainable]…. This is confusing demand with supply. We really did produce all the goods and services… because we had willing workers, a sufficient capital stock, the right technology, and so on…. Some… spending… was debt-financed, and those [particular] debtors can’t continue to spend…. But that doesn’t say… the capacity has somehow ceased to exist; it only says that… someone else has to spend instead…. Past growth wasn’t an illusion, or a fraud[, or unsustainable]; but we need policies to sustain aggregate demand. And yes, I have a model. Paul Krugman’s model: : Debt, Deleveraging, and the Liquidity trap: A New Model: “Debt is the crux of advanced economies’ current policy debates… …Some argue for fiscal expansion to avoid recession and deflation. Others claim that you can’t solve a debt-created problem with more debt. This column explains the core logic of a new model by Eggertsson and Krugman in which debt shocks and policy reactions can be examined. Relying on heterogeneous agents, the model naturally produces the paradox of thrift but also finds new supply-side paradoxes, those of toil and flexibility. The model suggests that most economists have been misthinking the issues and that actual policy in the US and EU is misguided. These are must-reads because Neel Kashkari’s views of potential output and monetary policy are, Milton Friedman would say, profoundly wrong. Friedman would say: the way you tell whether a boom is artificial and unsustainable or not is whether it generates unexpected and rising inflation. Friedman would say: When employment and production are below their sustainable supply-side trends, the right monetary policy is for the central bank to boost the money stock. Milton Friedman would say: Friedrich von Hayek was a great economist–but his greatness was definitely not in the field of business-cycle theory. Also: Charles Steindel (2009): Implications of the Financial Crisis for Potential Growth: Past, Present, and Future; (2010): The Financial Crisis and the Measurement of Financial Sector Activity. And, if you wish: : Neel Kashkari to Replace Narayana Kocherlakota at the Minneapolis Fed? The second must-read is one from the estimable : Questions for Monetary Policy: “James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed… says there are five questions for monetary policy…. “What are the chances of a hard landing in China? Have U.S. financial market stress indicators worsened substantially? Has the U.S. labor market returned to normal? What will the headline inflation rate be once the effects of the oil price shock dissipate? Will the U.S. dollar continue to gain value against rival currencies?” I would add: Will wage gains translate into inflation (or something along those lines)? Anything else? I would add: if the Federal Reserve starts raising interest rates, will there be wage gains? Third, presents his “Panics and Bubbles” reading list: “There are a lot of good non-macro and empirical papers out there on the topic of ‘Panics and Bubbles’… …Harrison and Kreps (1978)… [on] overconfidence can lead to asset price volatility. Scheinkman & Xiong (2003) follow up. Barber and Odean (2001) provide some evidence…. Heterogeneous beliefs… a good overview by Xiong… Morris… David Romer… Barsky talking about the Japanese bubble…. Learning… Zeira…. Noise trader models… DeLong et al. (1990)… Abreu & Brunnermeier (2003). Mendel and Shleifer (2012) is yet another good one… Brunnermeier and Nagel (2004) on hedge funds and the technology bubble for some evidence…. ‘Information cascades’… Avery and Zemsky (1998), Chari and Kehoe (2003), and Park and Sabourian (2009)…. Variance bounds… other kinds of bubble tests… Refet Gurkaynak… surveys… by Brunnermeier and by Scherbina and Schlusche…. The finance theory literature has developed in parallel to the macro literature, with incomplete communication between the two… Noah is responding to : If I was devising a panics and bubbles course…: “Looking through the reading list for the [proposed] PCE Manchester course… …it seemed to miss… mainstream financial macro and microeconomics. If I were teaching a course on panics and bubbles… I would take them through Diamond and Dybvig’s classic model of banks runs… And I would take them through the analyses of moral hazard in the provision of public deposit insurance to stop these runs [for example, see the references in Sargent’s LSE lecture, or indeed Andy Haldane’s speeches]… Geanakoplos’ work on how leverage and bouts of optimism creates booms and busts in asset prices…. Karaken and Wallace…. Angelotos and co-authors, Morris and Shin and Shleifer and Vishny… have sought to model how beliefs (eg about the value of an asset, or the likelihood of a future event) can spread and become self-fulfilling…. Roger Farmer…. I would stuff the reading list with reams of papers I hadn’t even properly read myself… Brunnermeir and Sannikov… Shin, and John Moore… Kiyotaki-Moore… Lucas, Svensson, Mehra and Prescott, Campbell and Cochrane, Epstein and Zin, Fama, Shiller…. Banking and finance in macro [due to Bernanke, Gertler, Gilchrist, Carlsrom, Fuerst, and others]…. I don’t really know why the proposal for the Manchester course on panics and bubbles was rejected. But, if it were me, I would have ditched it too, in favour of a course that looked more like the above. Who is responding to : Students’ hopes dashed over ‘crash’ course in economics teaching: “Students from the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution have had their hopes for a course on financial crashes… …dashed after the University of Manchester refused to put it on next year’s syllabus…. The University of Manchester said: ‘We have decided not to run the Bubbles, Panics and Crashes module next academic year, but will launch other new economics-run modules to address broader areas of the economics curriculum.’ : The Euro Was Pointless: “It’s easy to forget now, but… many economists in the 1980s and 1990s… …thought monetary union would encourage cross-border investment and trade by eliminating the risk premiums associated with the supposedly destabilising devaluations of the past. The net effect would be converging living standards, dampened business cycles, slower inflation, and faster productivity growth for everyone. This was a laudable goal, but unfortunately it’s not how things worked out. The policy mistakes that exacerbated the eurozone crisis, while deeply destructive, can’t be blamed. A stimulating conference recently hosted by the Centre for European Reform made it clear to us the euro had already failed to meet the expectations of its architects before the crisis. : When US intergenerational income mobility vanished: 1900-1920: “Intergenerational income mobility is currently not very high in the US… …compared to other developed countries…. US intergenerational income equality was high in the 19th century but plummeted between 1900 and 1920. The income-mobility ladder was thus pulled up during the so-called Great Gatsby era.
Noted for the Morning of November 10, 2015
Must- and Should-Reads:
- (1857): American Slavery
- : Welcome to the ZLB Global Economy
- : Is US Monetary Policy Made in China?
- : “Robot Helpers”
- : Reviving Economic Growth: Policy Proposals from 51 Leading Experts
Might Like to Be Aware of:
- : “Yes I realize this is pointless, but the Yale classroom where Ben Carson took an exam with 150 other people holds 28. Further evidence of the miraculous nature of the events I suppose…
- : H.P. Lovecraft’s Racism and the World Fantasy Award
- : The New Utopians: Building a Better Future Through Science Fiction
Noted for Lunchtime on November 9, 2015
Must- and Should-Reads:
- : ‘Economic Policy Splits Democrats’
- : Thomas Piketty at the University of Chicago
- : Case-Deaton and the Human Capital Debate
- (2006): Education and Health: Evaluating Theories and Evidence
- Nassau Senior
- : Austerity’s Grim Legacy
- : Albert Hirschman’s Linkages, Economic Growth, and Convergence Yet Again…
- : Bernanke on Austerity and the Fiscal Charter
- : “Shorter Tyler Cowen: if you set aside the most egalitarian parts of the ACA, it is less egalitarian than you probably think.”
And Over Here:
-
Might Like to Be Aware of:
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: Ben Carson admitted a key part of his life story was false. And other parts look fishy
- : “Carson is angrily denying the allegation that he was not in fact a danger to those around him…”
- : James Bond in Spectre–A Farewell to Daniel Craig’s 007
- Dumb Cuneiform. We’ll take your tweets and make them permanent clay tablets…
- : On Ben Carson: “There’s nothing quite so ballsy as fabricating a story to show off how honest you are…”
- : Misfire: 5 Wars America Should Never Have Fought
- : With Ben Carson’s Truthiness in Question, Rightbloggers Rage Against ‘Liberal Media’
Noted for the Morning of November 6, 2015
Must- and Should-Reads:
- : The U.S. labor market and the health of workers
- : Hike They Shouldn’t
- : Du Runsheng, Chinese Farm Reformer, 1913-2015
- : Lunch with the FT: Mariana Mazzucato
- : Our Big Series On Inequality
- : Deflation Risks May Warrant Radical New Central-Bank Thinking
Might Like to Be Aware of:
- (2014): Ron Fournier, Tim Geithner, And The Perils of Relying on Book Excerpts
- Château de Beaucastel
- : The Nameless City
- : “Those of us who know what the pyramids were REALLY for realize Carson is spreading misinformation to throw people off. I’ll say no more…”
- Friendly Floatees
- : Hidden Epidemic: Tapeworms Living Inside People’s Brains
- : Burials or Granaries? Ben Carson’s Theory Comes from Bishop Gregory of Tours