Mom’s Time

Dan Hamermesh always takes on the fun projects. A decade ago, he did a pile of work looking at returns to beauty. Now, he's looking at time-diary data. Here's the abstract from his latest at NBER. Using time-diary data from the U.S. and six wealthy European countries, I demonstrate that non-partnered mothers spend slightly less time performing childcare, but much less time in other household activities than partnered mothers. Unpartnered...

Graydon: COVID Evolving: Comment—Noted

...Viruses are too simple to have multiple enzymes for different temperature ranges. (This is why lizard genomes are generally larger than mammal genomes; the mammal needs the enzymes for its stable body temperature. The lizard needs a range of enzymes for a range of temperatures. Viruses don't have the room; they've got one set of enzymes at most, often a partial set that relies on specific cellular machinery.) So bat viral diseases tend to...

2020 Some Thoughts on the Year in American Economic History

1.       Was Fogel wrong?     Hornbeck, Richard, and Martin Rotemberg. Railroads, reallocation, and the rise of American manufacturing. No. w26594. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019.   Here is an attempt to explain the argument to a wide audience.   The NBER working paper came out last year but the paper started getting more attention this year and was presented at the meeting of the Economic History Association. Fogel...

Parler Competes Horizontally with Amazon, Apple, and Google?

Parler is a microblogging platform that was cut off from the internet by its web hosting service, Amazon.  Almost as drastic, Apple and Google took steps to prevent the use of Parler on their mobile operating systems.  Unlike Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Google do not describe themselves as microblogging platforms.  At first glance, these would seem to be vertical (i.e., supply chain) relationships with no potential to harm competition. ...

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,...

Barter is Evil 1970-01-01 00:00:00

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Spreads and Risk over the Past Week (and Months)

I’ve been amazed at how little the last week’s political turmoil has shown up in financial markets. The only thing that seems to have moved anything is the apparent control of the Senate moving to the Democrats. Figure 1: 10yr-3mo Treasury spread, % (blue, left scale), VIX (green, right scale), and Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index divided by 10 (brown, right scale). 1/11 observation for 2/30 EST. Light blue dashed line at 11/3...

100 million is a really big number: a review of Doug Saunders’ Maximum Canada

The following is a guest post by Mikal Skuterud, professor of economics at University of Waterloo  Despite my interest in Canadian immigration policy, I’ve been hesitant to read Doug Saunders’ latest book Maximum Canada: Toward a Country of 100 Million. The idea that the solution to Canada’s economic challenges is more people, and a lot more people, seems naïve. In hindsight, I waited too long. Saunders’ account of Canada's immigration history...

What puzzles and poker teach us about misinformation

Here’s a holiday quiz question for you: what do puzzles, poker, and misinformation have in common? The answer is at the bottom of this column. Let’s try an easier question first. In Santa’s workshop, if it takes five elves five minutes to wrap five presents, how long does it take 50 elves to wrap 50 presents? You probably know the answer to that one; it follows a classic formula for a trick question. But as you groped towards the correct...

Facing the Long-Term Problem of Low Interest Rates

Interest rates have been declining for several decades, both in the US economy and around the world. Why has this happened, what problems is it causing, and what monetary and fiscal policy responses might be appropriate? Elga Bartsch, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Giancarlo Corsetti and Xavier Debrun tackle many of these issues in "It's All in the Mix: How Monetary and Fiscal Policies Can Work or Fail Together" (December 2020, Geneva Reports...

All I’ve got left is hatred

For there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. — Epictetus Seriously, are you telling me that within a 12-month period I must:1. Root for Joe Biden to be elected president?2. Root for the Lakers to win the NBA title? Apparently so. PS. Trade Kyrie for Russ. I want to see what OKC would have looked like if they’d stayed together. Tags:

Insurrections are contagious

That is the topic of my current Bloomberg column, here is one bit: Put aside U.S. politics for a moment and view the events of the last week from a global perspective. Without backing from the military, a crowd entered the Capitol building and disabled the U.S. Congress, and almost succeeded in achieving more violent goals yet. The question is not what people should infer, or what most people will think. It’s what the people at the extremes...

Trump tries to incite a putsch, and his UK cheerleaders reveal their own contempt for democracy

It appears as if the Facebook ban on referencing this blog has been lifted. Many thanks to all those who complained to Facebook. I doubt I will ever know who persuaded them to ban it. Would be democratic dictators, elected heads of state who want to ensure they can never lose an election, should know the first rule to staying in power. It is to control a sufficient amount of the media. Convincing your faithful that the mainstream media is fake...

Innovation in the global firm

Summary Multinational corporations are among the most innovative firms in the world. Although they are defined by their geographically fragmented production processes, the innovation that they carry out is comparatively concentrated, with a large share of them pursuing innovation investment mainly in one ‘headquarters’ country.  A new study analyzes data on the global operations of...

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Quasi-Non-Ergodicity and Wealth Inequality

Why is Jeff Bezos worth $200,000,000,000 while the median American has net assets of just $121,000? In a new working paper, co-authored with Jean-Philippe Bouchaud of the Collège de France, we argue that the vast inequalities we see in the world distribution of wealth are deeply connected to a somewhat esoteric concept from the theory ...

El asalto al Capitolio comenzó a fraguarse hace décadas

Un aspecto sorprendente del putsch (golpe de Estado en alemán) en el Capitolio fue que ninguna de las demandas de los asaltantes estaba afincada en la realidad.No, la elección no fue robada, no hay evidencia de un fraude electoral significativo. No, los demócratas no forman parte de una conspiración pedófila satánica. No, no son marxistas radicales, incluso, en cualquier otra democracia occidental, se consideraría que el ala progresista del...

Noahpinion has moved to a new website!

Well folks, it's been a fun 10-year run at this little website. I'm moving on to a new platform: Substack! Here's the new Noahpinion:https://noahpinion.substack.com/Thanks for reading, and hope to see you at the new site!

Mom’s Time

Dan Hamermesh always takes on the fun projects. A decade ago, he did a pile of work looking at returns to beauty. Now, he's looking at time-diary data. Here's the abstract from his latest at NBER. Using time-diary data from the U.S. and six wealthy European countries, I demonstrate that non-partnered mothers spend slightly less time performing childcare, but much less time in other household activities than partnered mothers. Unpartnered...

Innovation in the global firm

Summary Multinational corporations are among the most innovative firms in the world. Although they are defined by their geographically fragmented production processes, the innovation that they carry out is comparatively concentrated, with a large share of them pursuing innovation investment mainly in one ‘headquarters’ country.  A new study analyzes data on the global operations of...

Tiktok of Econolimerick #2

I hope you like the tiktok above. It is a duet with my former intermediate macro student Taylor McCoy, who devotes her tiktok channel to tiktoks about economics. Here are links to all of my econolimericks so far (not all of which have TikToks yet):

An Employment Insurance system for the 21st century

The 2020 Speech from the Throne boldly claims that “This pandemic has shown that Canada needs an [Employment Insurance] system for the 21st century, including for the self-employed and those in the gig economy.” That is a tall order, a major overhaul of a complicated program in the span of the next couple of months, with little or virtually no consultation of stakeholders or engagement of experts outside of the government. Will Minister...

32+ Years…

Good early signal from the Biden administration: First doses first!

MarginalRevolution reports that the Biden administration will release all the available doses of COVID vaccine, essentially over ruling the bureaucrats at the FDA, to vaccinate twice as many people with a half dose!The expected benefit of a one-dose regime is millions of lives!This is a good harbinger of decision-making under the new administration,

Storytelling: Friday Chart Edition

I have not posted here in awhile, so I thought it would be good to share a few recent charts that tell interesting stories.Central Bank Balance SheetsFirst up, are two charts that show the relationship between the size of the central bank balance sheets and inflation rates. The first one shows for the 2010-2019 period the average size of central bank balance sheets as a percent of NGDP plotted against the average core inflation rate. Since...

Electronic-Commerce, Non-Store Sales and the Pandemic

Last week at the American Economic Association meetings, held online, many papers focused on Covid-19. A good example was the session organized by Dominick Salvatore which included Jan Eberly, Raghu Rajan, Carmen Reinhart, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, and me. Most papers focused on the economic policy impact of the Coronavirus. I focused the “supply side” policies rather than on the “demand side” policies. Using a simple model, key facts...

Low Interest Rates and Government Debt

This is a talk I gave for IGIER at Bocconi (zoom, sadly) Jan 11 2021. Olivier Blanchard also gave a talk and a good discussion followed. Yes, some content is recycled, but on an important topic one must go back to refine and rethink ideas. This post has mathjax equations and graphs. If you don't ...

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....

The Year 2020 in Three Phrases

TweetDecember 31, 2020 —  Consider the past year through the lenses of three phrases: “witch hunt,” “black swan,” and “exponential.”  Each of these terms is widely applied, but not necessarily in the most useful way. Witch hunt Donald Trump has used the words “witch hunt” approximately once every three days on average during his presidency, just counting tweets alone.  It wasn’t just his impeachment trial, which ended with the Senate voting to...

Job Losses Are Back

Posted on 13 January 2021 by UPFINA Article of the Week from UPFINAWe saw this negative jobs print from a mile away. It became clear a few weeks ago that the economy would lose jobs in December because the pandemic was shutting down businesses again. The good news is these job losses were temporary losses directly related to the shutdown rather than general economic weakness. That’s why our expectation for losses was so straightforward. If a...

Crypto finally becomes bigger than . . .  the world

Remember when bitcoin was “the ninth-biggest asset in the world”? Pretty impressive stuff (even if not actually true). Well bitcoin had better move aside because there’s another, bigger crypto token in town. In fact every asset in the world had better move aside — all of them combined, in fact. Introducing “Wrapped Bitcoin”: Yes that’s a screenshot from earlier today on CoinMarketCap — the world’s most trusted visited crypto data site,...

Pelosi Pushes Impeachment Vote: Washington, Wall Street News – Jan. 11

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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...

Cold Snap Sparks Record Rise in Natural Gas Prices in Asia

Traders are struggling to secure enough vessels to transport LNG from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Asia in time to meet rampant demand  By Joe Wallace of The WSJ. Good article illustrating supply and demand issues. It seems that an increase in demand and a decrease in supply are raising the price of LNG.Excerpts:"A blast of cold weather in northeast Asia [the demand increase] and a shortage of ships for transporting gas have sparked a...

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....

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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...