Economic links
You can now buy placebos.
Evidence that economists tend to be cheapskates.
A nice, enlightening post on trade and current account deficits: the basic point is that countries do not trade, individuals and firms do.
Someone who knows exactly what they are worth: 20 tons of wheat, wholesale. More here.
Deconstructing a Secretary Clinton speech on development as manifesting the political incentives to babble.
Seeing the hidden hand of government in the restaurant toilet disaster: we do not have this problem in Oz. Further comments here.
Spruiking a book covering for and against arguments about randomised evaluation of aid projects. (As one of the comments notes, much the same issues apply to stimulus and bailout spending.)
Much of the world did well economically over the last 10 years. Listing African successes over the last 10 years. Developing countries have emerged relatively quickly from the recession:
A year after the West’s slump began to spread to emerging markets, it has become clear that the recession has been a moment of tectonic slippage, a brief but powerful acceleration in the deep-seated movement of economic power away from rich nations towards emerging markets.
Investments by Somali pirates are suspected of causing a property boom in Kenya.
The internet is making “black” markets easier to operate in Cuba.
About which American economics textbooks way over-estimated Soviet growth rates and which did not. More. The paper. Rather better use of production possibility frontier analysis on the Soviet economy than in the earlier textbooks.
The first decade of the C21st was a lost decade for US job growth, in stark contrast to preceding ones. Interactive map of the spread of unemployment across the US during the recession.
How US federal taxes are raised and from whom: the top 1% of US taxpayers pay 40% of all US Federal taxes. Almost half of US “tax units” have no US Federal tax liability.
US Federal Reserve Chair is open to monetary policy as a tool against bubbles according to a recent speech:
Although the house price bubble appears obvious in retrospect--all bubbles appear obvious in retrospect--in its earlier stages, economists differed considerably about whether the increase in house prices was sustainable; or, if it was a bubble, whether the bubble was national or confined to a few local markets. Monetary policy is also a blunt tool, and interest rate increases in 2003 or 2004 sufficient to constrain the bubble could have seriously weakened the economy at just the time when the recovery from the previous recession was becoming established.
The speech reviews evidence that monetary policy was not the main cause of housing bubbles.
Democratic Congressional districts received on average nearly twice as much stimulus money as Republican ones. This, may, of course be explained purely by relative need …
Agitating against the burgeoning costs of public employees. US states and localities have a looming underfunded public pension problem. US states have very limited control over their own budgets:
If you thought elected officials in your state were running the budget show, you might be in for a surprise. Likely as not the federal courts are more powerful budget authorities than the state's legislature or executive. A few consent decrees can easily cripple any attempt to pass a balanced budget requirement in a state legislature, and overturn the act itself in federal court if it does happen to pass.
California as a particularly toxic case of the problem:
… that the permanent government has disqualified itself from superintending California's welfare state, ostensibly its reason for existence. When parents can't enroll their children in healthcare programs online because it is more important to protect clerical jobs, the humane purposes of the welfare state are mocked. When teachers unions proudly commend themselves for making it effectively impossible for schools to discipline or fire faculty members who are burnouts and creeps, the endless, cynical talk about putting children first becomes an indictment. If the rhetoric determined the reality of the welfare state, the needs of its clients would always take precedence over the demands of its personnel. It is a scandal that the politicians who ought to be most deeply concerned about using California's tax dollars as efficiently as possible to assist the state's neediest residents are, instead, complacent and often insistent about diverting billions of those dollars to the government workforce.
A lot of the stimulus money is making things worse for states (hence Indiana and Texas refusing some of the offerings):
For example, the stimulus offered $80 billion for Medicaid to cover health-care costs for unemployed workers and single workers without kids. But in 2011 most of that extra federal Medicaid money vanishes. Then states will have one million more people on Medicaid with no money to pay for it.
Nice post on private management of public parks from someone whose business that is:
The typical lifecycle of this business is that a public agency runs to us begging to take something over to keep it open. We do so on a quickly negotiated contract, and then find ourselves spending a ton of money to fix all the deferred maintenance problems left by the public agency. About when we finally get the place cleaned up and public trust restored and finally have the prospect to make a little money at the location, the public agency decides it is time to seek competitive bids. Everyone who refused run the place when it was a mess now come out of the woodwork to bid on running the facility now that its fixed up, several of whom seem to have oddly close relationships with senior officials of the public agency. We bid, some of which we win and some of which we lose. If we win, we get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. If we lose, we shrug and try again.
The Obama Administration’s foreclosure relief program is being criticised for doing more harm than good.
Evidence that economists tend to be cheapskates.
A nice, enlightening post on trade and current account deficits: the basic point is that countries do not trade, individuals and firms do.
Someone who knows exactly what they are worth: 20 tons of wheat, wholesale. More here.
Deconstructing a Secretary Clinton speech on development as manifesting the political incentives to babble.
Seeing the hidden hand of government in the restaurant toilet disaster: we do not have this problem in Oz. Further comments here.
Spruiking a book covering for and against arguments about randomised evaluation of aid projects. (As one of the comments notes, much the same issues apply to stimulus and bailout spending.)
Much of the world did well economically over the last 10 years. Listing African successes over the last 10 years. Developing countries have emerged relatively quickly from the recession:
A year after the West’s slump began to spread to emerging markets, it has become clear that the recession has been a moment of tectonic slippage, a brief but powerful acceleration in the deep-seated movement of economic power away from rich nations towards emerging markets.
Investments by Somali pirates are suspected of causing a property boom in Kenya.
The internet is making “black” markets easier to operate in Cuba.
About which American economics textbooks way over-estimated Soviet growth rates and which did not. More. The paper. Rather better use of production possibility frontier analysis on the Soviet economy than in the earlier textbooks.
The first decade of the C21st was a lost decade for US job growth, in stark contrast to preceding ones. Interactive map of the spread of unemployment across the US during the recession.
How US federal taxes are raised and from whom: the top 1% of US taxpayers pay 40% of all US Federal taxes. Almost half of US “tax units” have no US Federal tax liability.
US Federal Reserve Chair is open to monetary policy as a tool against bubbles according to a recent speech:
Although the house price bubble appears obvious in retrospect--all bubbles appear obvious in retrospect--in its earlier stages, economists differed considerably about whether the increase in house prices was sustainable; or, if it was a bubble, whether the bubble was national or confined to a few local markets. Monetary policy is also a blunt tool, and interest rate increases in 2003 or 2004 sufficient to constrain the bubble could have seriously weakened the economy at just the time when the recovery from the previous recession was becoming established.
The speech reviews evidence that monetary policy was not the main cause of housing bubbles.
Democratic Congressional districts received on average nearly twice as much stimulus money as Republican ones. This, may, of course be explained purely by relative need …
Agitating against the burgeoning costs of public employees. US states and localities have a looming underfunded public pension problem. US states have very limited control over their own budgets:
If you thought elected officials in your state were running the budget show, you might be in for a surprise. Likely as not the federal courts are more powerful budget authorities than the state's legislature or executive. A few consent decrees can easily cripple any attempt to pass a balanced budget requirement in a state legislature, and overturn the act itself in federal court if it does happen to pass.
California as a particularly toxic case of the problem:
… that the permanent government has disqualified itself from superintending California's welfare state, ostensibly its reason for existence. When parents can't enroll their children in healthcare programs online because it is more important to protect clerical jobs, the humane purposes of the welfare state are mocked. When teachers unions proudly commend themselves for making it effectively impossible for schools to discipline or fire faculty members who are burnouts and creeps, the endless, cynical talk about putting children first becomes an indictment. If the rhetoric determined the reality of the welfare state, the needs of its clients would always take precedence over the demands of its personnel. It is a scandal that the politicians who ought to be most deeply concerned about using California's tax dollars as efficiently as possible to assist the state's neediest residents are, instead, complacent and often insistent about diverting billions of those dollars to the government workforce.
A lot of the stimulus money is making things worse for states (hence Indiana and Texas refusing some of the offerings):
For example, the stimulus offered $80 billion for Medicaid to cover health-care costs for unemployed workers and single workers without kids. But in 2011 most of that extra federal Medicaid money vanishes. Then states will have one million more people on Medicaid with no money to pay for it.
Nice post on private management of public parks from someone whose business that is:
The typical lifecycle of this business is that a public agency runs to us begging to take something over to keep it open. We do so on a quickly negotiated contract, and then find ourselves spending a ton of money to fix all the deferred maintenance problems left by the public agency. About when we finally get the place cleaned up and public trust restored and finally have the prospect to make a little money at the location, the public agency decides it is time to seek competitive bids. Everyone who refused run the place when it was a mess now come out of the woodwork to bid on running the facility now that its fixed up, several of whom seem to have oddly close relationships with senior officials of the public agency. We bid, some of which we win and some of which we lose. If we win, we get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. If we lose, we shrug and try again.
The Obama Administration’s foreclosure relief program is being criticised for doing more harm than good.