tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2876858362283591572024-03-13T23:17:19.882-07:00TURO Y BEBAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.comBlogger575125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-86386479519712579922014-02-15T09:42:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.052-08:00Defending the One Percent (Again)Click here to read my column in Sunday's NY Times. I expect this one will generate more than its share of irate letters.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-14510202887154652502014-02-14T13:53:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.059-08:00Obamacare versus RomneycareOne of the themes that we have all heard over the past few years is that President Obama's healthcare reform is merely bringing the kind of changes Massachusetts had under Governor Romney to the nation. If that were really true, you would think that these national reforms would have minimal impact on the state of Massachusetts. Well, here is a story from today's Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-4739169781206585322014-02-14T05:02:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.065-08:00Happy Valentine's DaySource.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-33115239433949585322014-02-11T11:22:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.072-08:00If Obamacare reduces labor supply, will it raise wages?In a couple of recent articles written by smart economists, I have read the following claim: CBO says the incentives in the Affordable Care Act will reduce labor supply. If it does, then real wages will increase.That sounds like reasonable, textbook economics. But I don't think it is true. The problem is that the logic is entirely partial equilibrium. It is holding everything else constant. But Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-90037945674948914762014-02-10T07:24:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.078-08:00The Economics of Downton AbbeyFrom The Washington Post.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-28940761504235024922014-02-05T08:00:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.084-08:00Solow vs Mankiw on the One PercentReaders of this blog will be familiar with my recent article Defending the One Percent. In the new released issue of JEP, you can read a letter by Bob Solow commenting on the article as well as my response.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-25288012295084359102014-02-05T05:38:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.091-08:00Sentence of the DayFrom the Congressional Budget Office:CBO estimates that the ACA [Affordable Care Act] will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor—given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive.Implicit in Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-29176452779340039252014-02-04T07:40:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.099-08:00Econ Summer CampGrad students with an interest in the history of economic thought should click here.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-75939955818460666222014-02-01T10:32:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.106-08:00Humility-based LibertarianismOn the suggestion of Bryan Caplan, I just read In Praise of Passivity by philosopher Michael Huemer. A lot in the article makes sense to me. As a social scientist, I think there is much we don't know about how the world works, and that intellectual humility goes a long way to explaining my skepticism about many governmental interventions into private Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-18643639429000354732014-01-31T04:21:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.119-08:00An Econ Conference for UndergradsIn April in Washington, DC.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-57657186331308065602014-01-30T15:08:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.125-08:00My Proposed (but not accepted) Bet with Paul Krugman on the Obama ForecastScott Sumner declares that I would have been the winner.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-2613929207193607092014-01-30T14:14:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.197-08:00What worries Americans?When Gallup recently asked Americans what the biggest problem facing the United States is, the four most common answers were dissatisfaction with government, the economy in general, unemployment, and healthcare. Each was mentioned by more than 15 percent of those polled. The gap between rich and poor was mentioned by only 4 percent.If President Obama wants to make the Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-43826481452859122382014-01-29T13:22:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.268-08:00How an Economist Helped Inspire the Movie Dr. StrangeloveThomas Schelling, of course.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-74571026853886590402014-01-29T00:33:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.339-08:00Does income inequality increase mortality?In his recent Times column, Paul Krugman writes:Rising inequality has obvious economic costs: stagnant wages despite rising productivity, rising debt that makes us more vulnerable to financial crisis. It also has big social and human costs. There is, for example, strong evidence that high inequality leads to worse health and higher mortality.The links are from the online version of Paul's column.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-82992231586792689422014-01-27T08:40:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.411-08:00On Assortative MatingA new working paper concludes: "Data from the United States Census Bureau suggests there has been a rise in assortative mating....[I]f matching in 2005 between husbands and wives had been random, instead of the pattern observed in the data, then the Gini coefficient would have fallen from the observed 0.43 to 0.34, so that income inequality would be smaller"Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-85977127556227258102014-01-24T14:26:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.483-08:00How much income inequality is explained by varying parental resources?When people think about inequality of incomes, a key issue is inequality of opportunity. Some people are born to rich parents who can afford private schools, summer camp, SAT tutors, etc., while others have poorer parents who cannot easily afford such things. One might wonder how much of the income inequality we observe can be explained by differences in the resources that people get because ofAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-78861673787116341932014-01-23T07:45:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.555-08:00Has economic mobility declined?No, says a new paper by Raj Chetty et al.:"We present new evidence on trends in intergenerational mobility in the U.S. using administrative earnings records. We find that percentile rank-based measures of intergenerational mobility have remained extremely stable for the 1971-1993 birth cohorts....[C]hildren entering the labor market today have the same chances of moving up in the income Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-78043653183343334512014-01-21T12:02:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.627-08:00Do department chairs have real effects?Apparently we do: "There is one robust predictor of a department’s future research output. After adjustment for a range of personal and institutional characteristics, departmental research productivity improves when the incoming department Chair’s publications are highly cited."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-19115733251617954402014-01-21T07:14:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.699-08:00A Summer Opportunity......for graduate students with an interest in matching theory, especially as applied to market design. Click here to learn more.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-5379284650945680992014-01-18T07:26:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.770-08:00How much is a Lars Hansen autographed reprint worth?A student is trying to find out. He emails me:I'm a 1st year MBA student at Chicago Booth -- where even the Marketing Professors have a PhD in Economics. I'm taking a class this quarter called Entrepreneurial Selling (more info here). One of the coolest assignments is a bartering challenge: Prof. Wortmann gives everybody a simple Chicago Booth pen and we need to barter it for Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-15017237540460666472014-01-13T12:14:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.841-08:00Minimum Wage as an Antipoverty ToolDavid Henderson reports:If the federal minimum wage were increased to $9.50 per hour: Only 11.3 percent of workers who would gain from the increase live in households officially defined as poor. A whopping 63.2 percent of workers who would gain were second or even third earners living in households with incomes equal to twice the poverty line or more. Some 42.3 percent of workers Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-24022010351374913852014-01-10T13:15:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.912-08:00Stanley Fischer as the Fed's Vice ChairPresident Obama just nominated Stanley Fischer to become vice chair of the Federal Reserve.Stan is a great choice: smart, sensible, open-minded, and experienced. He also has first-rate people skills, which will come in useful handling the many personalities on the FOMC and in Washington. He will be a perfect #2 to Janet Yellen.In related news, Stan recently became a Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-40561626949695870472014-01-09T08:11:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:51.984-08:00On Corporate Tax ReformAn article out of the Richmond Fed offers a nice overview of the issues.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-89750337052875169252014-01-07T14:29:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:52.055-08:00H index and H UniversityA friend writes:Glen Ellison has a very neat study (ungated version) of adjusted h-index measures of citation performance that he shows have great predictive power for where people end up getting tenure (among other things). What I thought you would find more interesting is that:i) Harvard comes out first in citations to its faculty members. See table 5 page 84.ii) Table 6, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287685836228359157.post-8462098660151129522014-01-07T09:32:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:35:52.127-08:00Don Cheadle on Inferior GoodsA friend emails me:Entertainment Weekly asked Don Cheadle what his last splurge was. Here is his reply: "I went to Giorgio Baldi restaurant [in Santa Monica]. When I was a broke student and a very poor actor, I made a deal with myself that when I started to make money, I would spend it on meals so I didn't have to just eat ramen, potatoes and Kraft mac and cheese." Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078261115326457380noreply@blogger.com0