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EconLog
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More Gangs, Less Crime
Posted: September 6th, 2010, 6:11am PDT by David Henderson
(September 6, 2010 01:11 PM, by David Henderson) Our analysis suggests not that gangs cause violence, but that violence causes gangs. In other words, gangs form in response to government's failure to protect youths against violence. The surprising implication of our insight is that efforts ... -
What I'm Reading: 2
Posted: September 6th, 2010, 3:24am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 6, 2010 10:24 AM, by Arnold Kling) Teach Like a Champion, by Doug Lemov. As a teacher, I find it helpful. However, with apologies to James C. Scott the book could have been entitled "Seeing like a teacher." An excerpt: the "plane" of your ... -
What I'm Reading: 1
Posted: September 6th, 2010, 2:53am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 6, 2010 09:53 AM, by Arnold Kling) Boomergeddon, by James A. Bacon. He sent me a copy after he saw my piece on guessing the trigger point for a sovereign debt crisis. Years ago, I read Boomernomics by William Sterling. That book also raised ... -
Knowledge-Power Discrepancy
Posted: September 6th, 2010, 1:42am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 6, 2010 08:42 AM, by Arnold Kling) I discuss knowledge and power with Russ Roberts. The central theme of Unchecked and Unbalanced is that we live an a world with increasingly important dispersed knowledge and yet in a structural sense power is becoming more ... -
The Medicare Fraud in Our Future
Posted: September 5th, 2010, 6:36pm PDT by David Henderson
(September 6, 2010 01:36 AM, by David Henderson) In tonight's 60 Minutes episode, the lead item was on the huge amount of Medicare fraud that takes place. Scam artists get lists of patients, lists of expensive items they can bill to Medicare, and a bank ... -
Education and Signaling: Rejoinder to Bill Dickens
Posted: September 5th, 2010, 5:06pm PDT by Bryan Caplan
(September 6, 2010 12:06 AM, by Bryan Caplan) Today I'm celebrating Labor Day by continuing my exchange with Bill Dickens on the signaling model of education. (Previous rounds here, here, and here). What's the Labor Day connection? Simple: If I'm right, we'd be collectively better ... -
Government in the Mortgage Business
Posted: September 5th, 2010, 4:17am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 5, 2010 11:17 AM, by Arnold Kling) The New York Times reports, "This is subprime lending done right," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an umbrella group for 600 community organizations, and a staunch critic of the lending industry. He ... -
Government in the Mortgage Business
Posted: September 5th, 2010, 4:17am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 5, 2010 11:17 AM, by Arnold Kling) The New York Times reports, "This is subprime lending done right," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an umbrella group for 600 community organizations, and a staunch critic of the lending industry. He ... -
Stop Calling it the Retirement Age
Posted: September 5th, 2010, 3:58am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 5, 2010 10:58 AM, by Arnold Kling) Ezra Klein writes, there is one thing that both parties increasingly seem to agree on: You should work longer. Klein's thinking is that people do not want to work longer, so raising the Social Security "retirement age" ... -
Should I Take to Drink? The Latest Evidence
Posted: September 5th, 2010, 3:21am PDT by Bryan Caplan
(September 5, 2010 10:21 AM, by Bryan Caplan) The last time I asked "Should I take to drink?," the best evidence seemed to say "Don't bother." Now Hanson and Crampton say the totality of the evidence is indeed in favor of moderate drinking, confounds notwithstanding. ... -
Tax Rates, 1990 to Now
Posted: September 5th, 2010, 3:00am PDT by David Henderson
(September 5, 2010 10:00 AM, by David Henderson) In a comment on my post, "From the Vault: My Review of Krugman," commenter David C writes: I'd like to point out that on taxes at least, Krugman's position hasn't changed from 1990. He still thinks the ... -
WSJ Survey Biases the Options
Posted: September 4th, 2010, 3:49pm PDT by David Henderson
(September 4, 2010 10:49 PM, by David Henderson) Greg Mankiw posts about how some economists responded to a Wall Street Journal poll about whether the Bush tax cuts should be extended. According to Greg: 6 percent said no, all the tax cuts should be allowed ... -
Mandatory Bad Customer Service
Posted: September 4th, 2010, 2:18pm PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 4, 2010 09:18 PM, by Arnold Kling) Uwe E. Reinhart writes, The recently passed Affordable Care Act requires heath insurance issuers to use at least some minimum fraction of revenue from the premiums it receives on medical services. While the idea might sound straightforward, ... -
Good News about the Oil Spill
Posted: September 4th, 2010, 4:05am PDT by David Henderson
(September 4, 2010 11:05 AM, by David Henderson) Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who published a groundbreaking study of microbial activity Tuesday in the online research journal Science Express, has had a team of researchers out in the Gulf ... -
Payroll Tax Holiday and the Trust Funds
Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 8:10am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 3, 2010 03:10 PM, by Arnold Kling) Megan McArdle writes, Politically, this has one major drawback: it's going to put huge holes in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Since I think those trust funds are meaningless accounting devices, I don't think this ... -
Immigrants and American Culture
Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 7:43am PDT by Bryan Caplan
(September 3, 2010 02:43 PM, by Bryan Caplan) While preparing for my upcoming talk on immigration, I decided to flesh out my claim that states with lots of immigrants are cultural beacons, and states with few immigrants are boring cultural wastelands. It's even more true ... -
Mortgage Credit and the Housing Bubble
Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 2:46am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 3, 2010 09:46 AM, by Arnold Kling) Adam J. Levitin and Susan M. Wachter write, the bubble was a supply-side phenomenon, attributable to an excess of mispriced mortgage finance: mortgage finance spreads declined and volume increased, even as risk increased, a confluence attributable only ... -
Technocratic Fundamentalism
Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 1:49am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 3, 2010 08:49 AM, by Arnold Kling) Barry Eichengreen writes, Those root causes were an ideology of market fundamentalism and the policies flowing from it. The idea that markets get it right and governments only get in the way, what I refer to here ... -
Bond Bubble Watch
Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 11:40am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 2, 2010 06:40 PM, by Arnold Kling) Jonathan D. Ostry, Atish R. Ghosh, Jun I. Kim, and Mahvash S. Qureshi write, at 5 percent of GDP below the debt limit, the government should be able to borrow at the risk-free rate; but as debt ... -
From the Vault: My Review of Krugman
Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 10:17am PDT by David Henderson
(September 2, 2010 05:17 PM, by David Henderson) I was web searching this morning in the Fortune archives--I wrote a lot of articles and books reviews for Fortune between 1983 and the late 1990s--and I came across my December 31, 1990 review of Paul Krugman's ... -
Selfish/Self-Interested
Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 4:48am PDT by Bryan Caplan
(September 2, 2010 11:48 AM, by Bryan Caplan) Agree or disagree: "Selfish" is to "self-interested" as "cheap" is to "thrifty."Please explain your answer....... -
If I Taught Greg Mankiw's Seminar
Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 3:54am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 2, 2010 10:54 AM, by Arnold Kling) His list of books for a freshman seminar in economics includes a diverse selection, including Bryan's Myth of the Rational Voter, which is the only one that I would duplicate. Offhand, I would pick 1. Jerry Muller, ... -
Unchecked and Unbalanced Watch
Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 3:32am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 2, 2010 10:32 AM, by Arnold Kling) Pete Peterson writes, the Los Angeles City Council is expected to overturn the 36-year-old policy of city-funded sidewalk repair, returning responsibility to property owners. The city is attempting to narrow a nearly half-billion-dollar budget gap. The sidewalk ... -
Is the Taylor Rule Really a Rule?
Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 12:14am PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 2, 2010 07:14 AM, by Arnold Kling) John Taylor writes, The Taylor rule says that the federal funds rate should equal 1.5 times the inflation rate plus .5 times the GDP gap plus 1. Currently the inflation rate is about 1.5 percent and the ... -
Lawrence Lindsey Vs. Christy Romer
Posted: September 1st, 2010, 11:33pm PDT by Arnold Kling
(September 2, 2010 06:33 AM, by Arnold Kling) She says, by June, before the Recovery Act could have had much of an impact, it was 9½ percent. That is, our projection turned out to be wrong even before the Recovery Act had a chance to ...