Podcast with Ed Glaeser

A podcast conversation with Harvard's Ed Glaeser, a if not the top economist who does urban affairs.   Does Zoom mean we all work from home? Will cities bounce back? Will San Francisco and New York fade and smaller cities grow? What problems are the policies causing and can cities reverse downward spirals? How to help unfortunate ...

Lisa Cook, Hilary Hoynes, and Atif Mian join Equitable Growth Steering Committee

Equitable Growth welcomes three new Steering Committee members.The Washington Center for Equitable Growth announced today that three distinguished economists—Lisa D. Cook of Michigan State University, Hilary Hoynes of the University of California, Berkeley, and Atif Mian of Princeton University—have joined its Steering Committee to help guide the organization’s efforts to study economic inequality and its impact on economic growth and...

Recent podcasts related to economic history

Historically Thinking Al Zambone talks to Sharon an Murphy about her book Other People’s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic   The Economic History Podcast is relatively new but has several episodes up now including one with Lisa Cook talking about racial violence, innovations. The Planet Money episode with Dr. Cook is also very good.   Coffee with Cornelius, podcast with Cornelius Christian, has several episodes with...

Unions and Inequality: Looking at the Obvious

At the same time that a particular labor union (teachers) has successfully pushed to keep school buildings closed, we are reminded that unions are part of the "solution to inequality."  As an update to an old literature on unions and inequality, let's first look at distributional effects of closing school buildings.The chart shows that closing school buildings reduces learning for all groups, but especially low-income and minority...

Economics’ race (and other) problems

There’s been much discussion in recent days about Economics’ race problem. Some of what has come out is quite disturbing. I have not said much, but I have listened and thought. Here are a few reflections I want to add. It doesn’t surprise me that the field, as a whole, reflects the ingrained attitudes and practices of the society of which it is part. But there are some features of the discipline that magnify and aggravate the problem. First,...

ND COVID Moving averages, 27 October 2020 Update

The point observation reported today (and therefore for 26 October) was 14.8%. The point observation from yesterday was in the 8% range. This is exactly why a smoothed out approach like the moving average is what I am using. However, with the higher values in the last seven days even the smoothed out process pushes well above the 10% threshold. The positivity rate above is approaching 11% at this point and seems likely to continue to...

Guest Contribution: “The Relative Performance of the U.S. Federal Debt”

Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution by Sam Williamson, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Miami University, and President of Measuring Worth. This is the second post in a series; the first post is here. It is not surprising that the largest increases in the debt were during the terms of Wilson and FDR who were financing the two World Wars and both were Democrats. Between the wars and after, the attitude was to reduce the debt...

Cochrane on debt II

Yesterday, I posted a reply to John Cochrane's Sept 4 post on the national debt. John alerted me to his Sept 6 update, which I somehow missed. Given this update (together with some personal correspondence), let me offer my own update. John begins with an equation describing the flow of government revenue and expenditure. With a debt/GDP ratio of one, the sustainable (primary) deficit/GDP ratio is given by g - r, where g = growth rate of NGDP...

Two Price-setting Monopolists Meet in the Street

Two price-setting monopolists meet in the street. One says to the other: "I will buy 10 more of your overpriced bananas, but only if you buy 10 more of my overpriced apples in return. Deal?" The second monopolist accepts the deal. They meet in the street again the following day. One says to the other: "Instead of me buying those 10 more overpriced bananas today, could I just lend you those 10 more overpriced apples, at the...

What I’ve been reading: a history of D&D, and a serious guide to humour

Not for the first time, I picked up Of Dice & Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and the People Who Play it by David Ewalt. I’ve been researching the history of role-playing games and found Ewalt’s book a useful complement to Jon Peterson’s 720 page brick, Playing at The World. Ewalt’s writing is fluid and engaging, and he can take a paragraph to cover events on which Peterson would lavish fifty pages. (For the avoidance of doubt: I...

Will China Be Caught in the Middle-Income Trap?

The "middle-income trap" is the phenomenon that once an economy has made the big leap from being a lower-income country to being a middle-income country, then it may find it difficult (although not impossible) to make the next leap from being middle-income to high-income. Matthew Higgins considers the situation of China in "China’s Growth Outlook: Is High-Income Status in Reach?" (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Economic...

Two new NGDP prediction markets

Hypermind has two new NGDP prediction markets up and running, one covering 2020:Q4 to 2021:Q4, and one covering 2021:Q4 to 2022:Q4.It’s early, and I don’t believe there’s been much trading, but so far the predicted growth rates are rather low (below 4%.) I hope to get the new markets embedded here soon, but feel free to start picking up some of the $100 bills on the sidewalk (actually Amazon coupons.) And once again, people with more...

Wednesday assorted links

1. GMU tenure-track assistant professor ad. 2. “We find that the fiscal, macroeconomic, and health benefits of rapid SARS-CoV-2 screening testing programs far exceed their costs, with the ratio of economic benefits to costs typically in the range of 4-15 (depending on program details), not counting the monetized value of lives saved.”  Link here. 3. Incentive-based approaches to addiction (NYT). 4. “Steiner says they tried negotiating to...

Starve a kid to save a quid [1]

One of the myths perpetuated by mediamacro is that management of the public finances is all about controlling our debt by keeping deficits down. As with so much of mediamacro, this is something no academic macroeconomist would say. Econ 101 (first year undergraduate economics) tells you that the deficit should rise and fall with the economic cycle. In particular in major recessions deficits rise rather a lot, and that is exactly what they...

Who Profits from Patents? Rent-Sharing at Innovative Firms

Summary Mounting empirical evidence that intra-firm wage differences contribute substantially to wage inequality among identically skilled workers has renewed interest in theoretical models of the ways in which variation in firm productivity can influence worker pay. A key question is the extent to which firms pass changes in the average labor productivity through into wages, but...

Rethinking Resilience in Business

COVID-19 is forcing firms to reimagine resilience. Instead of trying to strengthen their ability to resist change, companies must learn how to adapt and adjust if they are to continue to exist as employers, value creators for shareholders, and trusted members (and servants) of communities around the world. LONDON/GENEVA – COVID-19 is the biggest public-health crisis in a century and has caused...

Trump Tells Coronavirus, ‘I Surrender’

As we head into the final stretch of the election, Covid-19 is on a roll.Coronavirus cases keep hitting records — among other things, five aides to Vice President Mike Pence have tested positive. Hospitalizations, which lag behind cases, are soaring. And deaths, which lag even further behind, are starting to rise, too. Put it this way: Just between now and Election Day, we’re likely to lose almost twice as many Americans to Covid-19 as died on...

Rabbit = Good Friend (or, how to take care of rabbits)

Rabbits make great friends. Unfortunately, rabbits are not as popular of a pet as they ought to be, thanks to two big misconceptions. Let's start out by busting these myths. Myth #1: Rabbits can't be litter trained. In fact, most rabbits are really easy to litter-train. Just put the litter box next to the hay feeder, and they will train themselves. Here's my setup: There are a few exceptions, just like with cats, but in general this...

The cannabis referendum

I hope that the cannabis referendum passes. It isn't the legislation I'd have written, but it is preferable to prohibition. Last week, The Helen Clark Foundation and the Initiative co-hosted a webinar with The Brookings Institution's John Hudak, author of Marijuana: A Short History, about America's experience with legalisation. You can catch it below.  [embedded content]Public Address's Russell Brown covered the webinar here.There's been a lot...

Who Profits from Patents? Rent-Sharing at Innovative Firms

Summary Mounting empirical evidence that intra-firm wage differences contribute substantially to wage inequality among identically skilled workers has renewed interest in theoretical models of the ways in which variation in firm productivity can influence worker pay. A key question is the extent to which firms pass changes in the average labor productivity through into wages, but...

James Surowiecki: Forget Shutdowns. It’s ‘Demand Shock’ That’s Killing Our Economy

Money Talks is a column that explores what happens when business, the economy, and culture collide.On July 11, the American economy hit a key milestone in its recovery from the coronavirus: the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World reopened. The world’s most popular theme park had been shuttered since March 16, and the expectation was that Disney lovers from across the U.S., frustrated after months indoors, would flock to Orlando. And in the...

Employment Insurance reform that promotes agency

Benefits for employee initiated time away from work should be delivered through individual accounts, and a new program for maternity and parental benefits should be started outside of Employment Insurance. More than one out of every three dollars distributed through the Employment Insurance program are for so-called Special Benefits, those parts of the program associated with maternity and parental leave, with caregiving, and with...

32+ Years…

CDC data on Covid hospitalization and death rates

HospitalizationsDeaths

Economic Policy and Foreign Policy Go Together

I gave the Peter G. Peterson Distinguished Lecture on “National Security and Fiscal Policy” at the Foreign Policy Association (FPA) in New York last week. Henry Fernandez gave a kind introduction and Tom Michaud moderated with great points. And thanks to FPA for the book edited by Michael Auslin and Noel Lateef, American in the World 2020. Four years ago, Paul O’Neill gave the Inaugural Peter G. Peterson Lecture. Pete Peterson was in the...

Podcast with Ed Glaeser

A podcast conversation with Harvard's Ed Glaeser, a if not the top economist who does urban affairs.   Does Zoom mean we all work from home? Will cities bounce back? Will San Francisco and New York fade and smaller cities grow? What problems are the policies causing and can cities reverse downward spirals? How to help unfortunate ...

Paying for the right to be infected

Paying for the right to be infected August 14, 2020 in covid-19, economics, infection, Mechanism design Serious infectious diseases are a prime example of a public bad (non-exclusive and non-congestible). We limit them by restricting behavior and or getting individuals to internalize the externalities they generate. For example, one could mandate masks in public places. To be effective this requires monitoring and punishment....

Will the Coronavirus Spur Action on Climate Change?

TweetOctober 3, 2020 — From early on in this pandemic, a common reaction has been “at least, maybe now we will get serious about addressing climate change.”  One can see the logic.  The terrible toll taken by Covid-19 should remind us of the importance of three things: the need for science, the role for public policy, and the usefulness of international cooperation.  With these three revelations firmly in mind, we can see that we also need...

America’s Scariest Charts – Updated 24October 2020

Posted on 27 October 2020 Written by Constantin Gurdgiev, TrueEconomics.Blogspot.in The economic crisis accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic has nothing more serious than the massive impact on US employment. I have created a collection of graphics covering this which I call "America's Scariest Charts". Here is a summary from multiple posts at True Economics.Please share this article - Go to very top of page, right hand side, for...

Global gosbankification risk is now at orange

“If it’s free, you’re the product” has become the adage of our digital times. There is, as we are learning, always some iota of risk in giving something of yourself away for free.In the best-case scenario, your data will be harvested in line with your personal sharing preferences and used to advertise products and content to you that you actually want and benefit from. That’s positive sum progress.In the worst-case scenario your personal data...

Bitcoin: “Finding Its Seat at the Macro Table”: Real Vision Daily Briefing- Oct 27, 2020

Senior editor, Ash Bennington, is joined by managing editor, Ed Harrison, to interpret how the rising COVID-19 infections in Europe and the U.S. will impact markets. Ed conducts a deep dive on best practices for containing the virus while mitigating the economic damage, reviewing protocols in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, and New Zealand, and Ash looks at how China’s remarkable GDP growth could be related to its own containment strategy. Ed gives a...

The Worst Jobs Day Ever

Driven by the COVID-19 shutdown, April marked the greatest job loss in American history. The unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.7 percent, and employers cut 20.5 million jobs. Those figures are heart-wrenching. But as awful as they are, they do not fully capture workers’ hardships. To be counted as unemployed, people must be available for work and actively seeking it. With schools closed, job opportunities withering, and social distancing the...

How Odysseus Started The Industrial Revolution

Factory work may have been a commitment device to get everyone to work hard. Odysseus tying himself to the mast was also a commitment device. Dean Karlan, Yale economics professor explains how commitment devices work: "This idea of forcing one’s own future behavior dates back in our culture at least to Odysseus, who had his crew tie him to the ship’s mast so he wouldn’t be tempted by the sirens; and Cortes, who burned his ships to show...

The airlines don’t need a safety net

...says Roger Lowenstein.

The new tools of monetary policy

By Haowen Chen Since the 1980s, interest rates around the world have trended downward, reflecting lower inflation, demographic and technological forces that have increased desired global saving relative to desired investment, and other factors. Although low inflation and interest rates have many benefits, the new environment poses challenges for central banks, who have traditionally relied on cuts to short-term interest rates to stimulate...

Central Banking Stories to Watch in 2019

Happy New Year, everybody! 2018 has been a quiet year for my blog, but productive on other fronts, as I've kept busy with research and my family. But here are a few central bank-related stories I'm interested in following in the new year. 1. New Governor at Reserve Bank of IndiaFollowing the early exit of Governor Urjit Patel in December, Prime Minister Modi appointed the third central bank governor in just three years: Shaktikanta Das....

The request could not be satisfied

ERROR: The request could not be satisfied The request could not be satisfied. The Lambda function associated with the CloudFront distribution is invalid or doesn't have the required permissions. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner. If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find...

The media cannot reform itself until it acknowledges its power

As regular readers know, I have for the last few years been banging on about the importance of the media in influencing public opinion. (It formed a key part of my SPERI/News Statesman prize lecture.) It is not a partisan point about whether the media is politically biased in a particular direction. Instead it is a claim that the media can and sometimes is profoundly important in influencing major political events. I think it is fair to say...

In Memory of Bob Rossana

Robert “Bob” Rossana died back in February of this year. I was inadvertently left off of the university announcement email and did not hear about it until much later. Bob was my dissertation advisor. He meant a lot to me and so I want to share some thoughts. In graduate school, there were four macroeconomics courses. Two core classes and two field classes. Bob was instrumental in getting this four-course system started, as well as a “macro...

Who were the top taxpayers in 1923?

From page 71 of Daniel Marcin’s “The Revenue Act of 1924: Publicity, Tax Cuts, Response” div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

The media cannot reform itself until it acknowledges its power

As regular readers know, I have for the last few years been banging on about the importance of the media in influencing public opinion. (It formed a key part of my SPERI/News Statesman prize lecture.) It is not a partisan point about whether the media is politically biased in a particular direction. Instead it is a claim that the media can and sometimes is profoundly important in influencing major political events. I think it is fair to say...

The media cannot reform itself until it acknowledges its power

As regular readers know, I have for the last few years been banging on about the importance of the media in influencing public opinion. (It formed a key part of my SPERI/News Statesman prize lecture.) It is not a partisan point about whether the media is politically biased in a particular direction. Instead it is a claim that the media can and sometimes is profoundly important in influencing major political events. I think it is fair to say...