Ed Glaeser, the Harvard economist who has dazzled Freakonomics listeners and readers with his insights on cities (and a zillion other things) is offering a free, online HarvardX course called “Cities X: The Past, Present and Future of Urban Life.” Here’s the blurb: For the first time in human history, more than fifty percent of […]
... with a very good column, including these useful words:
Positive economics attempts to understand the world as it is; normative economics describes how the world should be. Most economists spend most of their time doing positive economics, but most economics columns advocate particular policies, which is implicitly normative economics.
It's a good bookend to Greg Mankiw's column from a couple days ago.
New Census data shows that Detroit lost a quarter of its population in the last decade, some 273,000 people. That's the fastest decline in the history of an American city with more than 100,000 people, leaving Detroit smaller than it was in 1920.