John McCain’s Economic plan.

Hi I am Robert Waldmann. rdan has very kindly invited me to guest post here some. I have a blog of my own (to which he kindly linked in the announcement). I am officially an economist, but tend to blog about politics at my home blog. Here I will try to fit the interest in, […]

Robert Waldmann will be posting on topics. He will post and introduce himself. Here is a link to his site at Robert’s Stochastic thoughts.

Tim Harford (h/t Mark Thoma) presents the old trade-off between Rationality and Cooperation, with a curious parenthetic: Except, nobody really thinks this is the way players would behave in reality. The optimal strategy seems sociopathic; isn’t it worth playing cooperatively in the hope that the other player will do the same thing? (Unlike much real […]

AP reports on a PEW study on immigration and Americans taking jobs or not: The U.S. had 28 million immigrants _ legal and illegal _ age 16 and older in 2000, an increase of 61 percent from 1990. By 2004, there were 32 million. Immigrants tend to be younger and have less education than American […]

Ford a la Europe has a range of vehicles considered reliable with good gas mileage compared to US models. There are plans to sell here, but marketers are very cautious about how they might be received. Why might Americans be reluctant?

UPDATE: NYT Obituary here. Some book cover images added. Two years ago at Readercon, I found myself doing some hero-worship in the Green Room. Friday, we had discovered that my piece on Jorge Luis Borges was the first of the appreciations of that year’s Memorial Guest of Honor. (I assume this was because of its […]

Lets take a trip in Mr. Wizard’s Way Back Machine all the way to the year 2000. At that point we see Social Security geek Webb jumping in excitement (being one of the few people in history to get excited over Social Security financials). What is the source of this rather odd behavior? Well it […]

by rdan Calculated Risk discusses problems with certain reports concerning per centage of GDP being reported for energy costs as unrealistic, predicting real per centages to be as high as 14% of GDP if prices stay the same or rise. There is a human side to the increase a few months from now that will […]

by rdan Hat tip to reader Henry Cobb. Yahoo news has an article on new directions for globalization: In an effort to cut costs Steiff began outsourcing production to Chinese factories in 2004, and even sent 300 workers there to make sure the bears were up to scratch. But this week Steiff called time on […]