About the economics of natural disasters.

Selecting the top 20 articles from (pdf) the AER since it started. About that selection.

Great talk by Deidre McCloskey on economic history and optimism.

About aggregate supply and aggregate demand.

Nice post on the success of Swedish monetary policy - by a Czech physicist.

About productivity in recent ( Read more... )

The history of a spurious statistical indicator that began as satire and refuses to die.

I, Toaster: trying to make a toaster from scratch: a lesson in division of labour, specialisation and commerce. The toaster project.

Evidence that culture matters.

Hans Rosling doing 200 years of progress in great graphics. About economic optimism being a ( Read more... )

About a search for new economic ideas. An interview with Deidre McCloskey about economics for grownups:
No science can predict its own future, which is what predicting business cycles entails. Economists are among the molecules their theory of cycles is supposed to predict ( Read more... )

Estimating the demographic cost of socialist policies in India:
These policies yielded economic growth of 3.5 percent per year, which was half that of export-oriented Asian countries, and yielded slow progress in social indicators, too. Growth per capita in India was even slower, at 1.49 percent per year. It accelerated after reforms started ( Read more... )

Critiquing a study of how (pdf) Hitler garnered popular support and paid for Germany’s war.

The Woolworths heirs were a classic case of from riches to rags.

Another review of Gregory Clark’s “bred for prosperity” theory of the industrial revolution takeoff.

Developing an economic model of (pdf) religious commitment among Orthodox Jews. The ( Read more... )

About the effect of family structures and cosmological beliefs on long-run economic outcomes.

Suggesting investment in nutrition would be the most cost-effective way of improving human wellbeing.

Wondering if inequality of status is not greater in Europe than the US.

The US Senate has decided to privatise its cafeteria, which has been running at ( Read more... )

Constructing estimates of world GDP over the last million years.

The occurrence of economic “singularities” and predicting another one around the middle of this century. The author’s suggested next singularity I find deeply implausible in both type and alleged effects; it is far more likely to come from another breakthrough in the manipulation of ( Read more... )

Critiquing a counter-history against free trade by Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang. I have come across his writings before: his history does tend to be tendentious. For example, citing Japan’s postwar economic success without noting that it had stopped spending a huge proportion of its GDP on military expenditure and empire building. Many ( Read more... )

Singapore has a health care system with very impressive results.

An interview with Oded Galor about developing a unified theory of economic growth (pdf).

A rather good evidence based blog. For example, there is no evidence that income inequality helps economic growth. (Actually, I can think of some evidence the other way - Western countries ( Read more... )

A lovely, clear rendition of the theory of the firm: Now, the manager does buy this equipment on the market, and pays real prices. But he doesn't sell the computer time to the staff. He gives it away. Is it worth it, in terms of somehow increasing profits or raising the company's share values? The boss has to guess. Many different bosses, in many ( Read more... )