This blog seldom talks directly about the problems of the poor, but a post by Mark Thoma, citing a Center for Housing Policy study, provided striking and disheartening information about the plight of the impoverished class. It’s not news, but the poor can’t win. They often must live far from their workplaces to find affordable […]
Read more...For those of you who (understandably) don’t follow this matter, Australia is in the midst of a six year drought that shows no signs of abating. It has gotten so serious that agricultural irrigation may be severely curtailed, which will not only further damage badly depressed agricultural areas, but will destroy fruit trees that take […]
Read more...This New Scientist special report is a great resource for those of you who have the misfortune to know climate change deniers. Here’s the overview: Our planet’s climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there […]
Read more...The Financial Times on Monday had two stories on inflation, one a lengthy story, the other a a comment, “The problem with inflation indices,” by Gideon Munchau, triggered by the fact that the Bank of England missed its inflation targets of 2% by over a percentage point (their Consumer Price Index increased at an annualized […]
Read more...A very informative (albeit also a bit rambling at points) post from Tanta at Calculated Risk on how subprime mortgage delinquency figures are derived. Answer: by small scale sampling of institutions that have very different standards for reporting. I anticipate some howls of outrage about now. You mean to tell me that these delinquency numbers […]
Read more...This article from the BBC discusses the US’s effort to eliminate language from a draft G8 agreement to take action to limit temperature increases this century to 2 degrees Celsius and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. The 2 degree target is particularly important, since some scientists believe that a rise of 3 […]
Read more...Apologies for being a bit behind the eight ball. Still under the weather, so forgive me if my posts for the next little while are a bit light on my own commentary. This op-ed piece, “Getting on a low-carbon diet,” by Ronald Brownstein in the LA Times gives an even-handed treatment of the merits of […]
Read more...Normally I steer clear of politics, but this post by Australian Guy Rundle on Blair’s legacy makes some trenchant observations about what happens when you start dismantling a liberal social order: For the fact is that, under Tony Blair, Labour cut all ties not only with anything resembling democratic socialism, but also with social democracy, […]
Read more...I’m certain you’re familiar with the expression “death wish.” I am beginning to wonder whether America has a banana republic wish. The country has been taking steps towards being a small-minded, elite-dominated, sham democracy. Mind you, I am pointing to a tendency, not an established fact. The US isn’t Haiti, or even Argentina. But we […]
Read more...The third installment of this year’s series of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is out, this one focusing on the level of corrective measures needed to counteract climate change and their likely cost. As we reported earlier (“Third IPCC Report: Compromised on Arrival“), each successive report is more and more politicized. This […]
Read more...Dani Rodrik, if he thought it wasn’t beneath him, deserves an op-ed column at a well respected paper. He has managed to foment a good deal of lively debate among Serious Economists (the blogs involved include his, Brad DeLong’s, Mark Thoma’s, and Greg Mankiw’s) on the question of trade economics. For the most part, Dani […]
Read more...Yesterday, our post “Costly Trade with China,” cited a study by the same name by the Economic Policy Institute which estimated the jobs lost to trade with China between 1997 and 2006 at 2.1 million. I wondered whether anyone had done the calculus as to what the offsets to these job losses might be, and […]
Read more...The third installment of this year’s series of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes’ reports is due out Friday. Each successive report becomes more and more politicized, with the upshot that they are less and less valid as scientific pronouncements. China is the heavy in the effort to water down and distort the findings, […]
Read more...Interestingly, after a some robust debate among Serious Economists at Mark Thoma’s blog, Economist’s View, on the merits of trade (even Krugman contributed via e-mail), a study taking the opposite view appears at Economic Policy Institute. The study argues that millions of jobs have been lost to China. Its methodology looks reasonable. Mark Thoma was […]
Read more...This is a nice post from Dani Rodrik. The short answer is it depends. Free trade increases the price of export goods and lowers the price of imports: [A]nyone who understands comparative advantage knows that free trade affects relative prices, not the price level (the latter being the province of macro and monetary factors). When […]
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