Andrew Ross Sullivan in Dealbook points to some benefits Looking at some corporate tax loopholes ordinary citizens may envy to acknowledge tax day…not very comprehensive, but a quick read. Two are listed here: U.S. PIRG highlighted a study conducted by the Government Accountability Office in 2005 that found that of 34 settlements worth more than […]
It is happening as I feared. Hilary Russ writes… Private money, public projects: More U.S. states doing deals. The movement has started for private funds to own public infrastructure. This is the entrenchment of inequality, which will be very hard to reverse. So why do I fear private ownership of public infrastructure? From what I […]
Maggie Mahar: You probably have seen headlines like this one: “O-Care premiums to skyrocket.” The warning, which was posted on The Hill, seemed designed to cheer conservatives distraught by Obamcare’s enrollment numbers. It began by announcing that next year, “premiums will double in some parts of the country. The sticker shock will likely bolster the […]
Chief Justice Roberts’ attempt to portray his decision in McCutcheon v. FEC as minimalist actually shows just how far from minimalist it is. According to the Chief Justice, no one should worry about the consequences of the Court’s decision because “there are multiple alternatives available” that would accomplish the Government’s asserted interest without, in the majority’s view, […]
Paul Krugman references a paper by NYU Stern School of Business Associate Professor Thomas Philippon that “puts it at several hundred billion dollars per year.” Three Expensive MillisecondsPaul KriugmanNew York Times Op-EdApril 13, 2014 (April 14th, 2014 Edition) …Mr. Philippon starts with the familiar observation that finance has grown much faster than the economy […]
The American Legislative Exchange Council — which authors ultra-conservative legislation and promulgates it to state legislatures nationwide — has a little index measure of states’ “competitiveness,” which supposedly results in greater prosperity for those states that rank highly. Does it? Let’s let the numbers speak for themselves: Source (PDF). Cross-posted at Asymptosis.
Reader Jan sends notice on the approval of the IPCC WGAR5 summary for policymakers pdf. (link fixed) Lifted from his e-mail, he muses: As for all IPCC reports, this one is a little thick, but can be parsed by the economically inclined. It is, on the one hand, lousy if unsurprising news. On the other […]
At the current INET conference, there was a forum presented for new ideas for teaching economics. One person who spoke was Oscar Landerretche. (begins speaking at 10:40 in video) He is the director of the School of Economics at the University of Chile in Santiago, Chile. I want to talk about his idea of […]
Yesterday, I noted that an expectations un-augmented Phillips curve fits data from the past two decades rather well. Here is an even simpler illustration of the point that lagged price inflation has not correlated with wage inflation for the past two decades. The figure is a scatter of lgwinfl — the percent annual rate of […]
Hmmm. Looks like I wasn’t the only one calling for people to use FedEx rather than UPS when given the option. Unless, of course, my new blog gets wayyyy more “page views” than I had thought.