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

An Economist Who Doesn’t Believe People Respond to Incentives

Ladies and gentlemen, Tyler (“So Right It Hurts“) Cowen presents the following, er, argument: Excessive bank regulation is another danger. To be sure, the regulatory structure for financial institutions failed in the current crisis, and change is in order. But we shouldn’t reform in a way that will discourage bank lending and weaken the tie […]

Should We Worry about Tyler Cowen?

Tim Harford (h/t Mark Thoma) presents the old trade-off between Rationality and Cooperation, with a curious parenthetic: Except, nobody really thinks this is the way players would behave in reality. The optimal strategy seems sociopathic; isn’t it worth playing cooperatively in the hope that the other player will do the same thing? (Unlike much real […]

Doing the Economy One Better

Seems there is a movement afoot to do the economy one better. There will be a conference Beyond GDP held in Brussels in November. GDP is the best-recognised measure of economic performance in the world, often used as a generic indicator of progress. However, the relationship between economic growth as measured by GDP and other […]

Money from money? Not good.

On September 28th Bill Moyers’ guest was John Bogle. You can see the interview or read the transcript from here. The setup for the interview is about private equity firms and he mentions the Sunday NY Times front page article: At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing. His introduction of Mr. Bogle is: It’s […]