Over at CoreEconomics, Joshua Gans points out that Steve Levitt’s research is no longer judged to be normal economics. Or at least his work doesn’t belong with the “normal papers.” From the “content alert” for the latest edition of the European Economic Review: Or perhaps it’s our friend John List who is “special.”
Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy write today in The Wall Street Journal about their concerns regarding the stimulus package. There are no two economists in the world who I respect more than Becker and Murphy. Whatever your political bent, when these two write something, you should think hard about their arguments.
The gloves are definitely coming off. This piece by Chicago economist John Cochrane and another by Chicago’s Eugene Fama get under the skin of Brad DeLong and lead Paul Krugman to denounce Cochrane and Fama as barbarians.
A panel of Chicago economists convened to discuss their views on the stimulus package recently, and video of the event is now available online. All the speakers had something interesting to say (including Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas being surprisingly sympathetic to government intervention). Of particular interest, in my opinion, is Kevin Murphy‘s discussion, which comes in the middle of the . . .
For the more academically inclined among you, Princeton economist Angus Deaton offers his appraisal of the state of development economics. Deaton writes: The wholesale abandonment in American graduate schools of price theory in favor of infinite horizon intertemporal optimization and game theory has not been a favorable development for young empiricists. Empiricists and theorists seem further apart now than at . . .
What happens when Monty Python puts its videos on YouTube for free? It increases DVD sales by 23,000 percent. (Earlier) How much are your friends worth? (Earlier) It’s like online dating, except you’re seeking cities. (Earlier) Will Wilkinson asks: are economists clueless? (HT: Jarrod Hunt) (Earlier)
For the past month or so, I’ve made it a habit to ask fellow economists how the response to the financial crisis has been improved by the past few decades of macroeconomic theorizing. Dozens of conversations later, I don’t have much to report. Today’s big question is whether government spending can pull us out of this recession. We want to . . .
Charles Whelan, author of Naked Economics and a lecturer in public policy at the University of Chicago, launched his bid for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Blog readers did not get nearly as worked up about economists and garbage as they did about prostitutes and rice, at least as measured by hate mail. I received not a single piece of hate mail from an economist (although, in fairness, none of the hate mail I got on the prostitutes post was actually from a prostitute either). We . . .
Last week, we solicited your questions for Keith Hennessey, the outgoing White House chief economic adviser and director of the National Economic Council.
In his answers below, Hennessey explains (among other things) what he thinks are some of the “most absurd economic assumptions” by Washington politicians; where, exactly, the first few hundred billion dollars of the TARP money has gone; and why he had “the coolest job ever.” Thanks to all of you for the good questions and to Hennessey for his candid and thorough answers.
A few weeks back, I upset many people when I posed the question “How are prostitutes and rice alike?” You’ll have to read that old post to understand why I would ask that particular question.
Keith Hennessey Keith Hennessey is the outgoing chief economic adviser to President Bush and director of the National Economic Council. When Obama takes office, Lawrence Summers will take his place. “Our assumptions are that the economy will begin to recover early in the next president’s term,” Hennessey recently told CNBC, “but it’s too early to say exactly when.” (I can . . .
The American Economic Association meetings are taking place. There is a young economist whom I have never met, but who is doing some really interesting research. So I wrote him and asked if he wanted to get together over a beer to talk about his work. The first sentence of his response was: I would really like to be very . . .
The last thing in the world I would have predicted at that time (as I headed off to management consulting) was that I would be included as one of the rising stars of the profession in the follow-up article the Economist wrote 10 years later.
English is everywhere — the lingua franca (should be lingua anglica) of today’s world! Its universal usage minimizes transaction costs in an increasingly integrated world — and that integration has increased interest in learning the lingua anglica. I feel guilty about this, and all American economists should: It’s easier for us to write our scholarly papers than it is for . . .
Ronald Reagan famously described the distinction between a recession and a depression as follows: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.” Right now, a few more economists might be willing to use the D-word. The “help wanted” publication for Ph.D. economists is sporting a brand new section: suspended or canceled listings. . . .
Last week, President-elect Obama dominated the news — and perhaps moved the markets — by spending the three days before Thanksgiving introducing one economist after another to the American public. There were Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Austan Goolsbee; and don’t forget Tim Geithner and Paul Volcker, neither of whom are Ph.D. economists, but neither of whom are . . .
It has been argued previously here that John McCain, among others, seems to harbor a pronounced dislike for economists. Well, you don’t even have to be a politician to hate economists. Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, here’s a fascinating bit from an old paper by Robert Frank, Tom Gilovich (best known for his hot-hand refutation, and this fun book), and . . .
I recently happened upon one of George Stigler‘s humorous asides in the 1977 Journal of Political Economy — “The Conference Handbook.” In order to make discussions of research papers more efficient, Stigler suggested that one should simply interrupt the speaker by shouting the numbered objection, rather than the usual, overly long interjection. And as a public service, he gave a . . .
Hats off to economist Roland Fryer, Joel Klein, the rest of the folks in the New York City Department of Education, and Droga5 for taking home the Titanium Lion prize at the Cannes Lions advertising festival for their work on “Million.” Million is the innovative NYC schools program that puts a specially designed cellphone into the hands of every NYC . . .
There is a mini-controversy on the University of Chicago campus surrounding the announcement of plans to raise money for a Milton Friedman Institute here at the university. Some non-economists are concerned that the Friedman Institute will push a right-wing agenda and tarnish the reputation of the university. Some who knew Friedman well have the opposite worry: that the Institute won’t . . .
You probably recall Hillary Clinton turning anti-economist in the dying days of her campaign: “Well I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.” And more recently John McCain has jumped aboard: “I trust the people and not the so-called economists to give the American people a little relief.” Honestly, I don’t get it. So . . .
I’m currently in Sweden, spending a couple of weeks at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies. It is really a remarkable place. “The Institute” was founded under the directorship of Nobellist Gunnar Myrdal, it thrived under the great Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, and is now guided by Torsten Persson, a giant in political economy. By any measure, that’s quite . . .
A few years back Dubner and I wrote a piece on Slate heralding a remarkable young economist, Emily Oster. She has continued to do great work. She also has done something incredibly rare for an academic economist: she has admitted she was wrong. In places like India and China, there are many “missing women.” In other words, the sex ratios . . .
The Society of Labor Economists, a professional organization, gives awards to worthy scholars. One is for lifetime achievement, the other to a scholar who finished his/her education within the past 12 years. The American Economic Association does the same thing. Because most scholars — in economics and most sciences — do their best work while young, all these awards are . . .
I’m struck to find that we pointy-headed economists have become a symbol in the presidential campaign. No, not evil trickle-down, right-wing economists who manufacture an uncaring government, or lunatic left-wing, regulate-em-all central planners who want to destroy innovation — but all economists. Last week I issued a challenge to find a coherent economist who would support the gas tax holiday . . .
Election season is probably the best time for bad economic policies to garner support — and one of the roles of academic economists is to call the candidates out on terrible policy. From yesterday’s New York Times, we learn that: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan . . .
I became an editor at the Journal of Political Economy eight years ago. The J.P.E., as it is known within the economics profession, is one of the most prestigious academic journals in economics. Having a paper accepted or rejected at J.P.E. can make or break a young academic’s career. My guess is that having a paper published in the journal . . .
A reporter friend of mine recently asked me for a short list of academic economists he should call to better understand the current financial and economic mess. I found it a more difficult question than it should be. It really has been quite striking how silent most economists have been in this hour of need. There are, of course, a . . .
My friend Joshua Gans is one of Australia’s best young economists, and he is also a parent. And as passionate as Joshua is about economics, he’s just as passionate about parenting. While it has always been fun to follow Joshua’s economic musings on his blog, Core Economics, I have been having more fun following his parenting blog, Game Theorist, devoted . . .