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 […]

We’re used to that line by now. Ross Perot—one of the more prominent people who got rich due to government contracts—used it, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are using it (while desperately hoping you don’t pay attention to how they ran Lucent/HP or eBay), and Aaron Sorkin even had Charles Grodin say it in Dave, […]

We can only hope that the special Infrastructure supplement in today’s edition of The Pink One was written and/or edited by a PwC, not an FT, employee.  Otherwise, how are we to explain Michael Peel’s curious declaration in “Unweaving a Tangled Web” that: …[there is a] continued prevalence of corruption around the complex, lucrative, and […]

One of the nice things about going to the Kauffman Foundation this year was meeting up again with Peter Klein of Organizations and Markets, who was my first economics professor.* (I liked him as soon as I found out one of his first publications dealt with “moral hazard” and the Designated Hitter.) Peter has a […]

by Bruce Webb It is I think a truism that in any economic enterprise all costs ultimately have to come out of price, that in the end ‘the customer pays’. But what is not true is that price is infinitely elastic, at some point price in and of itself will restrain demand, and while you […]

by cactus John McWhorter on James Patterson and Some Odd Numbers on Black Childhood Poverty I’m kinda in the home stretch for the fact checking on my book – we’ve revised and rewritten and rechecked so many times I’m ready to plotz, but even so, I’m willing to bet some mistakes will creep in. Its […]

So there are several comments to my previous post. Ignoring the a good one from Dr. DeLong, several people are taking umbrage at my unsubtle suggestion that the effect on employment being suggested is, to be polite about it, rather creative. kharris begins, “So let me see if I have this right. If anybody tries […]

So there was this big snowstorm that hit the East Coast a couple of weeks ago. (Not the one this weekend, that dumped about 2′ of snow on Upstate New York and a little more than a foot here in suburban New Jersey; the one that wiped out D.C. and gave the Party of No […]

I have been a Bad Blogger this week. (As opposed to my usual practice, which seems to be described as Blogging Badly.) While I intend to continue the New Tradition (think of me as Waylon, without the speed), following are Snow Day Links: D-Squared was on fire on Wednesday: both Bank Lending Channel and The […]

NBER paper of the day: We analyze asset-backed commercial paper conduits which played a central role in the early phase of the financial crisis of 2007-09. We document that commercial banks set up conduits to securitize assets while insuring the newly securitized assets using credit guarantees. The credit guarantees were structured to reduce bank capital […]