25*30 = 750 104/750 = 13.9% For those more conversant in the “disincentives of enforcement” literature than I, can you back into the Rational Expectation of Enforcement Practices that would lead nearly 14% of a population to conclude it is maximizing utility? And, given your calculation, what would that say about the Management Practices of […]

Andrew Samwick posts “one of the most depressing graphs [he has] ever seen.” Recall the simplest formula Tom used: Savings = Personal Income – Personal Taxes – Personal Consumption Expenditures [PCE]

Yes. This has been another version of Simple Answers to Simple Questions. Although, as some wag once noted, once is history, twice is parody, but the third time is a trend.

Mark Duggan and Fiona Scott Morton published a paper at NBER with this general conclusion: Using data on product-specific prices and quantities sold in each year in the U.S., our findings indicate that Part D substantially lowered the average price and increased the total utilization of prescription drugs by Medicare recipients. Our results further suggest […]

Tom’s working on explaining Savings 101, so this is specifically to deal with the “issue with” retirement accounts. Via Lawrence G. Lux, we find the A.P. (and maybe the NYT) highlighting a “study” by an investment management firm that “discovers” problems with the way people manage their 401(k)s: Some of the diversification problems stemmed from […]

I mentioned this at Marginal Utility, but agree with rdan that it’s worth mentioning to the (somewhat larger) AngryBear readership. Kathryn Cramer has done some work with Wikipedia’s External Links tool. The results are interesting, and I suspect the more tech-savvy (or persistent) than I will be able to leverage the work. Discuss amongst yourselves.

There are things that economists “know” that (let us be nice; economists, sometimes understandably, have delicate sensibilities) are not demonstrably true, and other things that economists Of A Certain Age may be motivated to believe, even if they are demonstrably untrue.

He’s more of an optimist than I am—but that isn’t difficult. Then again, he is also well aware that, were Hillary to drop out today, it wouldn’t be all peaches and cream from now until after the nominations are in place. People are saying that Hillary is “race-baiting” because she mentioned “blue-collar whites.” Save the […]

Since I’m trying to cut a 24-page paper down closer to 15 today, I’ll leave the Heavy Lifting to other. But two things probably should be discussed (or at least noted) here: Brad DeLong appears (to me) to confuse perceiving a move from Democratic Republic to Empire—and therefore away from any Competitive Advantage for the […]

I want to talk about something of which I know nothing: Wireless Internet Access. We spent the weekend in pgl-land (NYC), at a friend’s apartment. Since he’s a rather prominent computer graphics designer, I assumed, incorrectly, that he would have some form of Internet access at home.* So I did what I always do: opened […]