What Randomised Control Trials Can and Cannot Do: The 2019 Nobel Prize
A long-form discussion of the randomised approach celebrated in this year’s “Nobel” for economics.
Read more...Category Archives: Dubious statistics
The Oil Mystery Undermining An Aramco IPO
Why might investors be skittish about Aramco’s oil reserve claims?
Read more...CalPERS Abandoning Passive Equity Investing
alPERS has made big changes to how it invests, yet the press has barely noticed.
Read more...Why Have Facebook and Other Tech Giants Gotten Away With Gobbling Up Competitors?
Why have regulators sat pat as Big Tech companies like Facebook and Google have done deals that look like violations of antitrust law?
Read more...Impoverished Economics? Unpacking the Economics Nobel Prize
Yves here. Even thought the mainstream media, as usual, duly applauded the winners of this year’s “Nobel” prize in economics, there’s been less attention paid to the recipients than usual and far more criticism, some very measured, others more critical. The winners helped develop and promote an approach to development economics they called “randomized control […]
Read more...A Bitter(Sweet) Pill: The Impacts of Private Provision of Medicaid
A study on Texas turning Medicaid over to private contractors shows mixed results, which is better than most critics would expect. But does this study attribute bennies to privatization that aren’t justified?
Read more...How to Know Which Impeachment Polls to Believe – and Which to Skip
Since impeachment looks likely to stay front and center of the news, how to make sense of polls.
Read more...Making Profit Should Not Now Be the Primary Goal of a Business: Being Net-Zero Carbon Should Be
Central banker Mark Carney argues for green economy gradual transition, Can’t get too much in the way of almighty profit.
Read more...California’s New Transparency Law Reveals Steep Rise In Wholesale Drug Prices
Drug price data in Califorinia shows mind-boggling increases in wholesale prices since 2019. Of course, the industry claims that that information is misleading.
Read more...The Census Fails to Count 100 Million People as Living in Poverty
IPS Fellow Karen Dolan, who works with the Poor People’s Campaign, discusses her new study on poverty in the US.
Read more...Understanding Why the Green New Deal Won’t Really Work
A sanity check on the Green New Deal.
Read more...How Performance Evaluation Metrics Corrupt Researchers
New research shows how citation metrics create perverse incentives for corruption in economics.
Read more...The Implementation Flaw in Warren’s Wealth Tax
There are better ways to skin fat cats than Warren’s wealth tax.
Read more...Secular Stagnation: The Limits of Conventional Wisdom
The debate over secular stagnation continues, yet orthodox economists are loath to admit that the needed fix is more demand, which means more government spending.
Read more...Hubert Horan: Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Twenty-One: Mike Isaac’s Book Ignores Economics and Financial Results and Gets the Uber Story Almost Entirely Wrong
Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped!, a new book on Uber, draws fundamentally false conclusions about the company.
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