The headline in Mark Thoma’s blog is more colorful: “To Reduce Crime, Get the Lead Out.” His post points to a Washington Post story, “Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity,” in which economist Rick Nevin says lead exposure is the biggest factor behind crime. Now as any statistician will tell you, correlation is not causation, […]
Read more...Mind you, the headline above doesn’t mean that politicians curry favor of wealthy donors, but wealthy people in general. Mark Thoma provides this tidbit from Ezra Klein at the LA Times who in turn cites the abstract of a paper by Larry Bartels, Economic Inequality and Political Representation: I examine the differential responsiveness of U.S. […]
Read more...Dani Rodrik posted the findings of a paper by Anna Maria Mayda, Kevin O’Rourke, and Richard Sinnot that concludes that that public has less protectionist leanings in countries with a larger government sector (which presumably means more social services). Rodrik was surprised by their conclusion. I am surprised that Rodrik is surprised. Martin Wolf, the […]
Read more...Larry Summers has a remarkable piece in the Financial Times today, “Harness market forces to share prosperity.” It’s noteworthy not so much for the information, arguments, and recommendations Summers makes regarding rising income inequality, but for the line Summers takes. After so many years in the wilderness, it appears that liberals are finally regaining their […]
Read more...It’s hard to reach any firm conclusions from the data cited in this New Economist post, “Women and Wealth,” which compares estate data from the US and the UK to see how very wealthy women are faring, becaues the populations are so different (millionaires in the UK, which is roughly the highest 5%, versus the […]
Read more...Since Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has increasingly shifted his focus from his technology enterprise to his charity, the William and Melinda Gates Foundation, he has also had time to clarify and refine his objectives. Unlike the super-wealthy of the past, whose giving typically has been motivated by a combination of enhancing their prestige (often revealed […]
Read more...If by some bizarre happenstance you do not know who Eric Hobsbawm is, it is never too late to find out. The Guardian’s website reported on a recent lecture he made on the declining role of empires. It’s a testament to the stature of the 89 year old Marxist historian that he was invited to […]
Read more...An article in the New York Review of Books, “The Specter Haunting Your Office,” discusses three books, one by Louis Uchitelle, The Disposable American, meaning the disposable employee; one by Greg LeRoy, on the way corporations play states and muncipalities to extract economic concessions; and one by John Bogle, on “managers’ capitalism” and how it […]
Read more...As a matter of proper usage, I doubt that one can parse bullshit. Bullshit, by nature, comes in big blobs of varying degrees of firmness, depending on the diet of the bull of origin, while parsing is an analytic activity. The inherent unsuitability of bullshit as raw material for logical or syntactical scrutiny is probably […]
Read more...The headline above isn’t news per se, but someone reputable, in this case, Matt Fellowes and Mia Mabanta, have done the sleuth work of putting together the data to dimension the problem. The report says that the bottom quintile is “awash” with credit and now is one of the fastest growing segments. Ee found this […]
Read more...Mark Thoma’s blog featured The Commonwealth Fund’s latest comparative survey of health care in six countries – Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the UK and the US – and the US comes out dead last. Having lived in Australia, which gets a rank of 3 at a cost less than half of America’s (also true […]
Read more...According Robert Cringely at PBS, IBM is cutting at least 150,000 US jobs in its Global Services Division, and each US worker is to be replaced by a new overseas hire. This headcount cut, called Project Lean, bears out the populist view that corporate executives are greedy and outsourcing damages the American economy. As we […]
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...The debate among some serious academics on the economic models, their merits, and what they say about who might win or lose from trade continued over the weekend. While informative, it was also oriented heavily towards theory. Dani Rodrik tries to sum up: Can we all agree on these? 1.Trade policy works through its effect […]
Read more...Australian economist John Quiggin posted a high level event chart of the how Seriously Bad scenarios might play themselves out (from a talk by sustainability expert Chris Moran) and what the policy response might be. It includes probability estimates from 80 students. However, as the chart shows, the rational calculus doesn’t bode well for forestalling […]
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