Month: November 2011
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Economists, Sign Here: Economists’ Statement In Support of Occupy Wall Street
Economists’ Statement In Support of Occupy Wall Street Related posts: More on American Inequality and (Lack of) Opportunity Occupy Wall Street Trouncing Tea Party, 54% to 27% Tea Partiers and OWSers: Who Needs to Get a Job? #OWS is Working Banks’ “Bigger Concern”: “Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”
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Job Satisfaction and Elasticity of Labor Supply
Thinking more about Steedman’s point, that how much people (don’t) enjoy their work has a massive effect on their “utility” and welfare, I wonder this: Wouldn’t the market for higher-end jobs — which tend to deliver more job satisfaction, hence utility, hence welfare — display much lower elasticity of supply? In other words, wouldn’t changes…
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Bleg: Studies of Confirmation Bias in Different Groups?
It’s no secret that humans are prone to confirmation bias: adopt a belief, then go seek out evidence that supports it. Rafts of books, articles, and blog posts have been published on the subject, over many decades. But so far (I haven’t searched comprehensively, by any means) I’ve been disappointed because they all tend to…
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Chinese VC Prefers Canada
When asked why he chose to emigrate to Canada even though he still runs his business in the Chinese mainland, Michael Li gave a simple answer: “protection.” Li, who works in venture capital, told the Global Times that the environment, food safety, social welfare and relatively small population in Canada give him a feeling of…
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Co-Founder of Reaganomics: The economic mess … is the direct consequence of too much economic freedom … the direct consequence of financial deregulation.
The economic mess in which the United States and Europe find themselves and which has been exported to much of the rest of the world is the direct consequence of too much economic freedom. The excess freedom is the direct consequence of financial deregulation. Paul Craig Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of Treasury in the…
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What You Do at Work Has No Effect on Your Utility or Well-Being. Oh, wait…
Various sources have been pushing me lately to read Ian Steedman‘s work. Right out of the gate, I come upon this aha! paper: The welfare of almost all employed people is significantly affected by how they spend their working hours — and not just by how long they work and what they can purchase with their earnings. Yet…
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Eugene Fama on the (Subprime) Meltdown
You have to face the following fact: all assets declined by about the same amount, and real estate around the world by the same amount, even in places where there were no subprime mortgages. Cause and effect is not very easy to disentangle. This argument seems to have legs (at least if this one does).…
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The Real Ponzi Scheme: Private Debt
Steve Keen was recently interviewed by Larry Elliott, Economics editor of the Guardian. Keen’s argument is that the sovereign debt crisis is merely a symptom of the real cause of the problem: an exponential increase in private debt as a share of national income. In the early stages of a credit cycle, the private sector borrows to…
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It Could Have Been My Kids. Or Yours.
I have two daughters in college, a freshman and a junior. You’d love them. Everybody does. So when I see this video of a policeman casually walking along a line of college kids who are just sitting there, pepper spraying them right in the face, …and I think about this: … I think how easily…
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Did I Mention That It’s the Wealth, Stupid?
No related posts.
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Banks’ “Bigger Concern”: “Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”
…”and might start running against them too.” What a nightmare that would be. This from the a sales pitch by lobbyist/strategy firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford to the American Bankers Association, trying to sell them on a $850,000 deal to plan the bankers’ response to OWS. HT: Barry Ritholtz Related posts: Stockman: How the GOP Destroyed the…
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Did CRA and the GSEs Cause the Housing Crisis? Uh uh.
areas disproportionately served by lenders covered by the CRA experienced lower delinquency rates and less risky lending. Similarly, the threshold tests show no evidence that either program had a significantly negative effect on outcomes. Emphasis mine. via The Subprime Crisis: Is Government Housing Policy to Blame? | The Big Picture. Related posts: Eugene Fama on…
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Conservatives Love to Point Out that Personal Incentives Matter
And their #1 stated goal is to beat Obama in the next election. They have very strong incentives to achieve that. With that as a given, take a look at the top two economic predictors of incumbent (i.e. Obama) victory, 1948-2008, according to prediction sage Nate Silver: Conservatives/Republicans have strong incentives to make the ISM…
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Hard-Working Germans vs Lazy Italians? Not so Much.
My buddy Ole has a great line that I’ve been following and quoting as a mantra for businesspeople for a couple of decades: Hire the lazy. By which he means (and I mean), hire people who will figure out how to streamline and automate the boring and repetitive parts of their jobs, so they can…
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More on American Inequality and (Lack of) Opportunity
The data is in, again, some more (follow links to related posts, below, for much more): high inequality correlates with low opportunity to climb (or descend) the ladder. The U.S.? Meritocracy resides elsewhere. (Think: Denmark.) the United States is among the most unequal and the least mobile of the rich countries, with about 50% of…
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“Riddle me this: did all of these countries have a Fannie/Freddie or CRA?”
The Bonddad Blog: About that GSE/CRA Causing the Bubble Argument ….. Related posts: Eugene Fama on the (Subprime) Meltdown Did Fannie, Freddie, and the Community Reinvestment Act Cause the Meltdown? Uh uh. Did CRA and the GSEs Cause the Housing Crisis? Uh uh. The Poor Get Poorer Explaining the Fed Credibility Argument
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The Legacy of Reaganomics in Two Graphs
’81. ’90. ’01. ’08. Does anyone else see a trend here? Chart Focus: How high unemployment lingers. Related posts: Length of Unemployment is Worst Since World War II There is Only One Trustworthy News Source: Fox. There is Only One Trustworthy News Source: Fox. There is Only One Trustworthy News Source: Fox. There is Only…
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Why People Vote: “Doing It” Together
PoliSci folks have been pointing out forever that voting is irrational. The odds that your vote will make any difference are miniscule, so taking the time and effort to fill out the form (much less learn about the issues) is a losing proposition. It seems that people believe in the power of collective action. Or…
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Monetary or Fiscal, Discretionary or Non? Think: Automatic Stabilizers
Richard Williamson and Lars Christensen are having an interesting discussion on the language of Market Monetarism (a moniker that Lars coined). Lars objects to Richard’s use of “monetary stimulus” because for him as an economist: o “Stimulus” smacks of discretion(ary fiscal policy). o One of the keys to Market Monetarism (actually of monetary policy, period)…
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Tea Partiers and OWSers: Who Needs to Get a Job?
In fact their employment level is about the same, but a lot more of the OWSers are working for a living. How can that be? Retirement. the Wall Street Journal found: … the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%). Professor Hector R. Cordero-Guzman and business analyst Harrison…
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Winterspeak is Right: Economists Don’t Understand that Debt Matters. And Inflation Does Too.
He’s not exactly right (in this case) that “Economists don’t understand accounting,” but they do have some very odd ideas about it. He quotes Steve Keen: I couldn’t convince several of the academics in the audience of the importance of private debt: they kept coming back to “one person’s debt is another person’s asset, therefore…