There is a small cadre of Economists — original thinkers, contrarians, out of the box theorists — whom I respect a great deal. It is a modest list ranging from Richard Thaler to David Rosenberg to Robert Shiller, with lots of smart econ wonks in between.
This morning, [...]
“Our conclusion is that if small firms aren’t captured well in the advance GDP data, the economy may be growing less quickly than suggested by the recent official data.”
-Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs economist
>
This certainly comes as no surprise to us:
“The U.S. government is having a tough time guesstimating how many [...]
NYT: New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step
Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.It [...]
"Also, I don't think von Mises and Hayek and the other Austrian economists have gotten enough credit for.. . their theory of the business cycle. I really do think we are experiencing. .. what Austrian business cycle predicts. If you print a lot of money and you send it through'" [...]
Economist Tsung-Mei Cheng has developed three Universal Laws of Health Care Systems. These are:
No matter how good the health care in a particular country, people will complain about it. No matter how much money is spent on health care, the doctors and hospitals will argue it is not enough. The last reform always failed.Source: [...]
So the American Economic Association has produced the "Economists Calendar" in celebration of the 125th Anniversary of it founding.
Many readers of this blog (both those who consider themselves critics and those who consider themselves friends) have often asserted three things: (1) Austrian economists are ignored in the profession; [...]
To paraphrase Churchill, accountants and economists are divided by a common language. We seem to be using the same words to talk about the same things, but we don't understand what the other is saying. This is my attempt to provide an economist's perspective on the relation between accounting and [...]
I’m attending now the 27th annual Cato Institute Monetary Conference.
Just before the conference kicked off this morning at 9am (EST), The Economist’s Zanny Minton Beddoes suggested that I do some live blogging while here. I hadn’t thought to do that. (I’m here to moderate one of the afternoon panels.)
But, [...]
Given our dismal reputation, I am happy to report that some economists' recent defenses of the efficient-markets hypothesis are laugh-out-loud funny. Just watch EMH economists try to defend their theory from either refutation or triviality. FULL ARTICLE by Robert P. Murphy
That's the title of the new and self-recommending book by Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz. This work has text by the authors, interspersed with interviews with famous economists, including Robert Fogel, Robert Solow, Joel Mokyr, Doug North, Bill Easterly, Edmund Phelps, Amar Bhide, William Lewis, and Bill Baumol. Here is [...]
Economists will be arguing over this for years, so we might as well get started now. Have Obama's economic policies helped? (We could detour at this point into a Clintonesque discussion of what "help" means, but let's not for now.) The issue was joined up at New York University the [...]
The best of the rest of the economics web
TODAY'S recommended economics writing:• Say's Law in China—is it really so crazy to build a big empty city? (Scott Sumner) • Economists on some key principles for health care legislation (but why'd they send the letter to the president?). (Economix) [...]
Mark Thoma is alarmed by our president:
Economist's View: Obama's Wrong-Headed Thinking on the Deficit: Edward Harrison catches this quote from Obama....
Obama warned the United States' climbing national debt could drag the country into a "double-dip recession," though he said he's still considering additional tax incentives [...]
I think of the biographer as standing up and demanding that economists take their own method seriously. Surely the economist should at some point be required to explain something in the life of an actual human being.
That is from my (favorable) review of E. Roy Weintraub and Evelyn L. Forget, [...]
Which country will have the best 2010?
THE ECONOMIST has cranked up its World in 2010 blog (which, shockingly, is not about the distant future but next year), and today there is an entry asking for nominations for "Best Country in the World, 2010". (Somalia has already won the [...]
Nothing gets an economist's adrenalin flowing like a correlation. These folks appear to have found a juicy one, and I suspect we'll be hearing more about it soon.
Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior
...We test this hypothesis using data on police reports' [...]
