Economics
Interesting Articles
- The New Wealth of Nations Remarks by Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers Hambrecht & Quist Technology Conference San Francisco, CA, May 10, 2000
- Antitrust in the New Economy, Address by Judge Richard Posner. Date: September 14, 2000.
- Small businesses left in lurch when local banks collapse
- How Hedge Funds Are Pushing Companies To Leave America
- How to turn a liberal hipster into a capitalist tyrant in one evening. The Guardian
- A Supply Side Nightmare Scenario, PBS Newshour, by Paul Solman September 26, 2013
- 5 lessons of the Great Recession:
Five years after the worst crisis since the 1930s,
America has devised safeguards and changed the rules of Wall Street.
But could the country really avoid another financial collapse?
By Mark Trumbull, Staff writer September 8, 2013
- Rovert Reich on Inequality on PBS Newshour: October 2013
- How Do We Build a Safer Car: The Engineer's Lament: Two ways of thinking about automotive safety. - Malcolm Gladwell - The New Yorker
- Gaming Mr. Darcy: What Jane Austen Teaches Us About Economics | The Business Desk with Paul Solman | PBS NewsHour | PBS
- The Big Business of Big Hits: How Blockbusters Conquered Movies, TV, and Music - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic, 2013-10.
An interview with Anita Elberse, the author of Blockbusters
and a professor at Harvard Business School
- The Housing Market Still Isn’t Rational by Robert J. Shiller - NYTimes (tiered subscription model), 2015-07-26.
- This graduation speech teaches you everything you need to know about economics in 297 words - Vox, 2014-04-19
Economic Inequality
- Disaster Capitalism: originally where the powerful exploited a crisis or disaster
to force concessions from the public,
further tilting the
playing field
in their favor.
Now, includes financial disasters and crises that were created, either intentionally or by carelessness.
Part of Privatize profits; socialize losses/costs.
in order to profit from it (by forcing concessions from the public).
- Piketty answers David Brooks: The best-selling economist sounds off to Salon
- Thomas Piketty Is Right About the Past and Wrong About the Future: Capital in the 21st Century deserves all of its praise, but it should not serve as gospel on inequality by Lawrence Summers
- The Political Roots of Widening Inequality, Prospect.org
- There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show by David Simon - The Guardian, 2013-12-08.
Capitalism in America has lost sight of its social compact.
The creator of The Wire delivered an impromptu speech about the divide between rich and poor
in America at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney,
and how capitalism has lost sight of its social compact. This is an edited extract.
- The American people are clueless: Why income inequality is so much worse than we realize. Salon
- The 1 percent are parasites: Debunking the lies about free enterprise, trickle-down, capitalism and celebrity entrepreneurs. Salon
- The Hard Truth About Economic Inequality That Both the Left and Right Ignore
- Executive Superstars, Peer Groups and Over-Compensation � Cause, Effect and Solution (PDF), by Charles M. Elson and Craig K. Ferrere. Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute
- The Rise of the New Global Elite - The Atlantic, 2011-01.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was right when he declared the rich different from you and me.
But today's super-rich are also different from yesterday's:
more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations
that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind.
Counter-point:
There Goes the Meritocracy - The Opinionator Blog - NYTimes (tiered subscription model):
What Jenna Bush Hager's new job for the Today Show
says about opportunity in America.
- Why Do the Super-Rich Keep Comparing Obama to Hitler? - The Atlantic, 2014-01 - Matthew O'Brien.
Legendary venture capitalist Tom Perkins became just the latest 1 percenter
to wonder whether higher marginal tax rates and Occupy Wall Street
might be the start of something far, far darker.
- The Wealthy and Powerful Discover Inequality | TIME.
Even the rich are admitting that inequality is bad for business.
- Society | Vanity Fair
- Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Vanity Fair, 2011-05.
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes
that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few.
Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income�an
inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
- Former Bush Economist Defends the 1 Percent | Making Sen$e | PBS NewsHour
- Corporate Profits Are Eating the Economy - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic, 2013-03.
In the last 30 years, there has been a great divergence between growth and workers' incomes.
- Redistributing Up - The Atlantic, 2012-12-18.
The federal government has emerged as one of the most potent factors behind
the rise in income inequality in the United States - especially in Washington, D.C.
- Yes, Culture Helped Kill the Two-Parent Family. And Liberals Shouldn't Be Afraid to Admit It by Jordan Weissmann - Slate, 2015-03-16.
For about a half-century now, two-parent families have been vanishing
from the United States.
And for nearly as long, Americans have been arguing over the reason why. …
Gaming the system/Uneven playing field
Corruption, Cronyism
- Our crony-capitalism index: Planet Plutocrat | The Economist.
America's Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, saw tycoons
such as John D. Rockefeller industrialise the country�and accumulate vast fortunes,
build palatial…
Capitalism
STEM Worker Shortage
Incentives
- The Uncertainties in Incentive Design aka The Heisenberg Principle in Evaluations
Further considersations on Goodhart's Law
- True costs of Cash for Clunkers revealed - SFGate
The 2009 federal Cash for Clunkers program is often hailed as a success
because it jump-started new-vehicle sales,
but a new study says it actually cost car dealers $3 billion in lost revenue
because its fuel-efficiency requirement caused people to buy cheaper cars
than they would have otherwise.
Instead of buying expensive hybrids such as the Toyota Prius,
most people fulfilled the fuel requirement by purchasing economy cars.
The goal of the program was to stimulate the auto sector by accelerating car sales
from the future, when the economy presumably would be stronger, into mid-2009,
when auto sales had veered off a cliff.
Pursuing both goals caused the program to fail, said Mark Hoekstra,
one of three Texas A&M University economists who authored the study,
entitled Cash for Corollas
.
The study compared vehicle purchases in Texas by people
who were barely eligible for the program (because their old car got 18 mpg)
to vehicle purchases by people who were barely ineligible for the program
(because their old car got 19 mpg).
When you adjust for the percentage of eligible households
that actually got the rebate, they estimate that on average,
each buyer in the program spent between $3,800 and $5,900 less on a new vehicle
than they otherwise would have.
A separate report, published in 2011 by the American Council for An Energy-Efficient Economy,
said that vehicles purchased under the program were in fact more efficient
than the typical vehicle in the market,
due to both superior fuel economy within vehicle class and shifts between classes.
Economics Education
Economic thinking (Freakonomics style)
- Bicycle helmet laws could do more harm than good - Health, New Scientist, 2009-04-27.
Forcing cyclists to wear protective headgear could cause people to stop cycling and
cost healthcare services billions of dollars, a new study claims
- Do Bike Helmet Laws Do More Harm Than Good? - WSJ (subscription), 2015-10-12.
Some cycling advocates argue that helmet regulations, even if they're well-intentioned,
can create long-term health problems.
Thumbnail of argument: The number of injury prevented or minimized by helmets is more than offset
by the health benefits of exercise lost as a result of reduction in cycling.
Economic thinking illustrated in sports