Chris Blattman highlights the latest version of Janet Currie and Reed Walker’s research on a positive externality of the shift to E-Z Pass (PDF link). From the Abstract: We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza […]

From the Lex column in today’s FT: Tim Geithner’s extraordinary denial that the US is deliberately weakening its currency is a reminder that the [Hong Kong Monetary Authority] should no longer talk blithely of the “unparalleled credibility” of US monetary policy.

I took a couple of days to let life interfere with blogging, but none of the standard politics/economics bloggers seems to have highlighted this note from the Lex column of last Wednesday’s (13 October 2010) FT (again, no link; feel free to provide in comments) under the heading “Defence M&A”: Lockheed has two small services […]

When the question is asked whether the Obama Administration are fools or liars—and a certain Chicago mayoral candidate is often nominated as both—you can be certain discussion of “the public option” will come up. It doesn’t come up directly in today’s FT (page 4 of the print edition; no link; I get the paper edition, […]

I’ve been working on White Paper on Liquidity and the idea of a “market,” and plan to post some pieces of it here over the next week or so. But this is too good to pass up, and I’m late to the game as is. On 15 September, the CFTC and the SEC held a […]

Via David Roodman‘s Twitter feed, the Economic Development video to watch if you’re watching only one: Pull Quote: “We have several unintended consequences that show that while we were growing Pakistan economically, we retarded our community, we retarded our ability to innovate, we retarded our ability to think. Those things are coming back to haunt […]

The kids in the next town over don’t.  Indeed, the place where my Eldest Daughter’s swim team practices is closed because it’s a holiday, and their schools are.  But not here: the banks are closed, the government offices are closed, the local libraries are closed. (Heck, the New York Public Library is closed.)  But the […]

Let us first stipulate that houses themselves are unique entities, but similar enough that we can consider them comparable if not fungible. (In this, they are like any financial asset.) Let us further restrict them in acknowledging that there are significant transaction costs: one’s liquidity preference should not prefer housing to, say, cash-equivalents or marketable […]

Moderator is John Holdren, Science and Technology Advisor to President Barack Obama and Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Participants are: Nadia K. Al Dossary, Chief Executive Officer and Partner, Al Sale Eastern Co. Ltd Gary Hattem, President, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, Deutsche Bank Tri Mumpuni, Executive Director, IBEKA Conrad van Oostrom, […]

The panel is preceded by this video. Dr. Sanjay Gupta (Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN) leads the panel, featuring: Charles-Patrick Almazor, Director, Public Sector Partnership, Artibonite Department, Partners In Health Lance Armstrong, Founder and Chairman, LIVESTRONG Paul Farmer, Co-Founder, Partners In Health; Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Chief […]