Brad DeLong’s famous rule (Originally: “If you think Paul Krugman must be wrong, you severely overestimated Niall Ferguson“) needs a corollary. If Olivier Blanchard says your macroeconomic policy doesn’t work, and that you should double your inflation target to make it reasonable, it’s worth trying: The International Monetary Fund’s top economist, Olivier Blanchard, says central […]
UPDATE III: The Daniel Kaufmann of the Kaufmann Governance Institute lays out the details: This misses another huge challenge altogether, totally absent in the reporting by the New York Times and other main outlets: Amy Bishop had walked into the Faculty meeting, and sat quietly for a long while during its proceedings, with a fully […]
Michael Swanwick explains how a monopoly can destroy itself: Nowadays, times are much easier but a lot scammier. Last week I had to buy a new palmbook/laptop. Which, I discovered on my first and only day of possession, was preloaded with Windows 7 Starter, a not-fully-functional OS. When I tried to change the image on […]
Chris Christie moves New Jersey into the 17th century: Christie is cutting $475 million in aid to school districts, $62 million in aid to colleges and $12 million to hospital charity care. He is pulling all funding from the department of Public Advocate….He is cutting state subsidies for NJ Transit, a move Christie said could […]
David Wessel goes to a familiar source: One big reason is that his efforts have made borrowing easy for big companies, those that can sell bonds, but not for consumers or smaller firms that rely on banks to borrow. “If you’re a large corporation relying on capital markets, the Fed and Treasury saved you,” says […]
While several good people—including several of my wife’s relatives and one of our bloggers—graduated from Pravda-on-the-Chuck, I am saddened to note that their faculty’s efforts in creating the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has been muted. Such, at least, can be fairly concluded by the nominees and final ballot for The Dynamite Prize in Economics, being […]
The Rude Pundit does what Obama Administration doesn’t have the will to: “United Health Care in Colorado turned down 2-year old Aislin Bates of Denver, Colorado for coverage because they said she was too thin.” … “8-month old Jaxon Thornburgh of Dallas, Texas was denied health insurance because he needed simple therapy to help with […]
Many months ago, I quoted the brilliant Janet Tavakoli‘s book Credit Derivatives and Synthetic Structures: The trader then went on to tell me that Commercial Bank of Korea would sell credit default protection on bonds issued by the Commercial Bank of Korea.“That’s very interesting,” I countered, “but the credit default option is worthless.”“But people are […]
Or, nothing to see here. (via Felix’s Twitter feed)
Favorite papers from the 2008 AEA in New Orleans (all PDF, ungated): Emily Haisley on lottery tickets and perception. I heard about this paper before reading it. Such a simple idea, such a direct experiment. Michele Tertilt: Women’s Liberation: What’s in it for Men (with M. Doepke). The next step is to figure out why […]