Boosters

I was going to write about the FDA's idiotic booster recommendations, and then I found the perfect answer on Marginal Revolution, which I will quote in its entirety for the few readers who don't read MR every dayMy first reaction upon hearing that boosters were rejected was to ask the same thing: would these same ...

Brad DeLong: Worthy reads on equitable growth, September 14-20, 2021

Worthy reads from Equitable Growth: 1. The stakes involved in pushing the U.S. congressional reconciliation bill to the goalposts are very large indeed. Read Alix Gould-Werth and Sam Abbott, “Congressional investments in social infrastructure would support immediate and long-term U.S. economic growth,” in which they write: “President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda … boasts the potential to reshape the U.S. economy … [by] supporting...

Stelzner and Beckert on the Contribution of Enslaved Wokers to Output and Growth

There is a new working paper by Mark Stelzner and Sven Beckert The Contribution of Enslaved Workers to Output and Growth in the Antebellum United States that attempts to estimate the significance of enslaved labor to the American economy. The essence of the approach is to use slave prices to estimate slave production. The price of a slave should reflect the value of output that the enslaved person is expected to produce. They then use...

Michael T. Maloney: A Few Memories

Michael T. Maloney passed away this week. We both loved applied price theory and golfed to the exact same handicap.We both liked sailing too and together sailed around Long Island in less than 24 hours. He frequently asked why we had to spend so much time scouring the ocean for our competition. To this day I don’t know how to answer this question coming from a first-class IO economist, but perhaps he did not want to imitate Ahab too much.I...

IEA World Congress 2021

A few words on the International Economics’ Association online World Congress, July 2-6, on the theme “Equity, Sustainability and Prosperity in a Fractured World.” Here is the home of the World Congress where you will find details on all the info below, registration links, and more https://ieawc2021.org/ The IEA World Congress is co-sponsored by the Indonesian government and was originally scheduled to take place in Bali, Indonesia in July...

Sales Tax Collections in Fargo and Grand Forks

Sales tax is always an interesting topic. There is always the political angle of “we pay too much in taxes” and the whole “do we get value for taxes we pay.” These are all reasonable arguments that I love to watch as part of policy debates. When I start to look at data, call it the exploratory phase, I like to run graphs and other data analysis by others as much as I can. (This usually means my wife gets asked to check my work.) Now I caution...

Summarizing China’s Short Term Economic Outlook

Wells Fargo Economics analyses the extent of the current slowdown, and contemplates the impact on regional economies. Here’s the heat map: Source: McKenna/Guo, “China Economic Gauge and Sensitivity”, Wells Fargo Economics, 20 Sep 2021, Figure 1. From the report: Our dashboard (Figure 1) suggests the short-term outlook for China’s economy is indeed deteriorating, consistent with the multiple downward revisions we have made to our GDP forecast...

13 facts every Canadian economics student needs to know

1. Canada is a big country ...but not as big as one might think. Some maps show Canada as an enormous country, about twice the size of China or the US, similar in size to the entire continent of Africa: However maps like the one shown above distort the size of northern countries, making them appear much larger than they actually are. (This video explains why all world maps are wrong.) The "Peters projection" world map distorts the...

Pinker, Von Neumann, and how to be decent

Various exciting books are now out, or imminent. Steven Pinker’s “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce” is just around the corner, and as you might expect it is erudite, entertaining, and packed full of ideas (some new to me and some not). I’m doing an event with Steven Pinker, hosted by 5×15, in a couple of months – but you may not wish to wait for that. The book is well worth a look. Ananyo Bhattacharya’s “The Man From The Future:...

Mulling Pandemic Advice from September 2019

Two years ago in September 2019, before COVID was on everyone’s lips, the White House Council of Economic Advisers published a report called “Mitigating the Impact of Pandemic Influenza through Vaccine Innovation.” Even committed readers of government reports like me skipped over the report at the time. After all, I’d written about reports that discussed pandemic risks from time to time in the past (for example, here and here). Back in fall...

A simple model of monetary policy and interest rates

This comment caught my eye: I think it’s easier for most people (especially laymen) to understand how central banks affect interest rates than it is to understand the mechanics of the money supply and other aspects of monetary policy. You could probably count on one hand the number of laymen who understand how monetary policy affects interest rates. Suppose you asked an average person how the Fed affects interest rates. What might they...

Wednesday assorted links

1. Big excerpt of me on crypto, link now corrected, with Ezra Klein. 2. What should we conclude from the Bangladesh mask study? 3. New Yorker profile of Colm Tóibín. 4. It seems the NBA won’t require player vaccinations? 5. History of mRNA vaccines. 6. New Emily Oster Covid-19 School Data Hub, valuable. 7. Hedgehogs and foxes, for real, not just the usual b.s. The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

Three myths about Johnson’s Social Care package

Most of the controversy around the extra spending for the NHS and social care announced last week focused on the higher rates for national insurance. As Rachel Cunliffe explained here, national insurance contributions are a tax just like income tax or VAT. The misconception that they are payments into some pot of money that you ...

Kidney Exchange: An Operations Perspective

Summary Kidney failure is a leading cause of death around the world. The best treatment is transplantation, but no country is presently able to supply all the transplants required by its patient population; most people with kidney failure will die without receiving a transplant. Kidneys have to be compatible with the recipient, so not everyone healthy enough to donate a kidney can donate...

An Interview with Roger Farmer by Phil Armstrong: Part 2 of 4: On Conventional Theories of Money

An excerpt from Chapter 5 of  Can Heterodox Economics Make a Difference, published by Edward Elgar in 2020. Here is a link to the Table Of Contents, and a link to the biographies of all those interviewed for the project.   “[Then] there is the question of whether central banks should intervene by controlling the yield curve. … [My] answer ...

Norway’s Sovereign Duty

Having built its wealth by pumping hydrocarbons out of the seabed, Norway has an obligation to leverage the power of its massive sovereign wealth fund in the fight against climate change. With COP26 fast approaching, it should focus on building a new coalition of sovereign funds committed to net-zero emissions targets. BRUSSELS – Recent developments in Norway could have momentous implications...

Once Covid Is Under Control, Inflation Will Fade From Memory

Consumer prices have risen 4.4 percent over the past six months; that’s an annualized inflation rate of almost 9 percent, which puts us almost back into 1970s territory. And there are plenty of people out there proclaiming the return of stagflation.But the people in a position to do something about it — above all, Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve — are fairly serene. They insist that we’re looking at only a transitory blip...

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!

The cost of xenophobia

Radio New Zealand has been tallying the numbers on health workers stuck in our immigration system. New Zealand relies heavily on foreign medical specialists.Expressions of interest from skilled migrants for residence visas have been paused since March last year.Hundreds of doctors and nurses are among those waiting for news.The association said the current approach created frustration and angst. It raised concerns about the residence delays in...

Kidney Exchange: An Operations Perspective

Summary Kidney failure is a leading cause of death around the world. The best treatment is transplantation, but no country is presently able to supply all the transplants required by its patient population; most people with kidney failure will die without receiving a transplant. Kidneys have to be compatible with the recipient, so not everyone healthy enough to donate a kidney can donate...

The Claim of Big Cognitive Benefits of a Second Language Looks Flimsy

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“We don’t have a chance in hell …”, Canada’s poverty reduction strategy needs real voice

Source: https://twitter.com/ESDC_GC/status/1364596131590791171The Minister of Employment and Social Development in the Canadian federal government, Ahmed Hussen, recently tabled an annual report taking stock of the country’s poverty reduction strategy. The advisory council responsible for the reported dedicated it “to all those courageous people who shared their stories, successes and struggles with the Council in the hope that we would in...

32+ Years…

Good metaphor for Equity/Efficiency tradeoff

To communicate ideas, we need metaphors.  Greg Mankiw has a good one in this mornings NY Times, Can America Afford to Become a Major Welfare State?Providing a social safety net is like using a leaky bucket to redistribute water among people with different amounts. While bringing water to the thirstiest may be noble, it is also costly as some water is lost in transit.In the real world, this leakage occurs because higher taxes distort incentives...

New Principles of Economics Now Available

I am very happy to say that the new edition of Principles of Economics v9.1 is now officially published. Here is where you can find it on the FlatWorld web page: https://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/catalog/editions/principles-of-economics-9-1.  It has been pleasure for me to continue to work on this edition with Akila Weerapana of Wellesley College, who brings terrific experience and knowledge of teaching basic economic principles. The...

Boosters

I was going to write about the FDA's idiotic booster recommendations, and then I found the perfect answer on Marginal Revolution, which I will quote in its entirety for the few readers who don't read MR every dayMy first reaction upon hearing that boosters were rejected was to ask the same thing: would these same ...

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 G20 agenda, as the pandemic continues

TweetAugust 28, 2021 — Italy hosts the G20 this year.  The 2021 Summit of the Heads of Government will take place in Rome in October. Officials of member countries, including the finance ministers and central bank governors, are preparing. The G20 meeting will come at a time of great uncertainty as concerns the health and economic effects of the pandemic, midway through its 2nd year.  Although the mechanisms of international cooperation have...

Misinformation: Strategic Sharing, Homophily, And Endogenous Echo Chambers

Posted on 27 August 2021 by Daron Acemoglu -- this post authored by Daron Acemoglu, Asuman Ozdaglar, and James Siderius, Vox eu.orgMisinformation spreads rapidly on social media platforms. This column uses a model of online content-sharing to show that a social media platform that wishes to maximise content engagement will propagate extreme articles amongst its most extremist users. ‘Filter bubbles’ prevent the content from spreading beyond...

Ant split says more about money than Ma

FT Alphaville updatesSign up to myFT Daily Digest to be the first to know about FT Alphaville news. Beijing’s order for Ant Group to hive off its loans business into a separate app has made big news Monday. From the FT’s take (our emphasis):Chinese regulators have already ordered Ant to separate the back end of its two lending businesses, Huabei, which is similar to a traditional credit card, and Jiebei, which makes small...

US First Quarter GDP: Recovery or Just Another Rebound?

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Is There Economic And Political Meaning In “The Wizard of Oz?”

To get a handle on this, you can read Money and Politics in the Land of Oz By Quentin P. Taylor.  Below is an excerpt from the Taylor paper: "Dorothy, the protagonist of the story, represents an individualized ideal of the American people. She is each of us at our best-kind but self-respecting, guileless but levelheaded, wholesome but plucky. She is akin to Everyman, or, in modern parlance, “the girl next door.” Dorothy lives in...

Biden’s Leaky Bucket

Click here to read my new guest essay in The New York Times.

Africa in the news: Vaccine, energy, and climate change updates

By Tamara WhiteNew South African tech transfer hub to replicate Moderna vaccine A tech transfer hub in South Africa established in June aims to replicate, with the aid of Moderna, the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, according to a senior official with the World Health Organization. Moderna said in October 2020 that it would not enforce patents on its vaccine during the pandemic, but talks between the tech transfer hub and Moderna about disclosing...

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...