Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Men, Woman, Cooperation and the Gender Pay Gap

Here is a working paper by Leonie Gerhards and Michael Kosfeld entitled I (Don’t) Like You! But Who Cares? Gender Differences in Same Sex and Mixed Sex Teams. The abstract reads as follows: We study the effect of likability on female and male team behavior in a lab experiment. Extending a two-player public goods game […]

May industrial production: no change in trend

May industrial production: no change in trend This was a post I meant to put up Friday, but was pre-empted by the important housing news. May industrial production came in unchanged. But that didn’t stop Doomers, who had been silent about April’s big increase in manufacturing, from trumpeting its 0.4% decline (go ahead, just try […]

Kaiser Health News on lead and baby foods

From Kaiser Health News points to other general sources of lead than paint and water: The Environmental Defense Fund, in an analysis of 11 years of federal data, found detectable levels of lead in 20 percent of 2,164 baby food samples. The toxic metal was most commonly found in fruit juices such as grape and apple, […]

PBS and school privatization

Via Naked Capitalism comes Brett Robertson’s Why Is PBS Airing Right-Wing-Sponsored School Privatization Propaganda? (Media Matters).  I like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and sometimes Car Talk while driving to places, if they happen to be on. Otherwise I tend to avoid listening to Marketplace and the news segments. This has been true for me for a […]

The Hidden Cost of Privatization

The Hidden Cost of Privatization by Nina Shapiro at Institute for New Economic Thinking  is an excellent read. This conception of government, of course, is not new. “Small government” has been a hallmark of the Republican Party for decades, and the privatization of government properties and services has been increasing worldwide since the 1980s. In the […]