Robert Waldmann has been playing hooky. Look it’s the end of the semester. My actual job involves some actual work these days (ETA of a Thesis defense 40 minutes). Also, I note no popular demand for my opinions on the Obama administration plan to reform financial regulation, and I still know jack about finance. So […]

Robert Waldmann Will Wilkinson* demonstrates his absolute inability to understand the concept of “opportunity cost” and complete lack of common sense after the jump. * update: spelling Kirrected. Cash for Clunkersby Will Wilkinson on June 10, 2009 OK. Let me get this straight. I can get $4500 toward a new car as long as my […]

Robert Waldmann Tilman Tacke and I wrote this manuscript looking at income inequality and infant mortality (I’ve discussed it here before). I am going to indulge myself describing the paper I wanted to write but couldn’t because the data didn’t cooperate (gave essentially no empirical support for my pet theory). After the jump, my pet […]

Robert Waldmann I think I should explain a claim I made in the post below. I assert that the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) does not imply the rational expecations hypothesis (REH). The EMH states that asset prices are the same as they would be if everyone had rational expectations. The strong form EMH adds the […]

Robert Waldmann I usually try to be semi polite. I especially don’t usually deliberately write rude things about smart economists. However, here goes. Evidently Tyler Cowen* wrote In a strict rational expectations model, we might expect some people to overtrust others and one view of rational expectations is that investors’ errors will cancel one another […]

Robert Waldmann Casual discussion of macroeconomics suffers from the fact that one can get any result one wants by playing with lags. I’m not saying that I think formal econometrics adds much. However, things could be worse. Discussion of the ups and downs of the stock market is even weirder. Courtney Schlisserman at Bloomberg seriously […]

Robert Waldmann Everyone is commenting on how, according to the New York Times, critics of the health care public option claim that it will provide the same health insuranceas private plans at lower cost to consumers and that this is a problem “unfair competition”. (simple rule when they say “unfair competition” they mean “competition”). As […]

Robert Waldmann So, in the end, it turns out that the FDIC trust fund will not be raided in order to bail out banks by buying overpriced legacy loans. The FDIC retained control, and has no inclination to blow its trust fund, that is, it refused to make no recourse loans to make it possible […]

Robert Waldmann So I’m reading “Aid Ironies” by Jeff Sachs and nodding my head vigorously. “The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, and the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunizations are both saving lives by the millions, and at remarkably low cost.” Yes “Americans … overestimate the actual aid from the US by […]

Robert Waldmann Brad DeLong wrote a brilliant little essay on “The Hidden Purpose of High Finance” This is a “project sindicate” project, so I think fair use requires me to only quote Brad when he is quoting Keynes except for 3 words, 2 in the quote below and “eggplant.” He dismisses the efficient markets hypothesis […]