EconTech

The HDI obviously has its problems. For the mortality numbers especially, the ‘value of life’ methods would be a lot more satisfying than the current methodology. In line with the poor linking practices of some bloggers (I suspect, the bigger the name, the fewer links provided for claims, say, conditional on the existence of a [...]

DeLong captures my thoughts pretty well. PK seems to be a bit hard on Greenspan on this issue.

Alan Greenspan: The Roots of the Mortgage Crisis (or, It Wasn’t My Fault)
Alan Greenspan defends monetary policy during his reign as Chair of the Fed. He says the Fed’s low interest rates did not play a major [...]

Mendacious Wacko of the Right Named Undersecretary Designate
Matthew Yglesias writes:
Jim Glassman, America’s New Salesman: One point people have tried to make over the past few years is that the Bush administration needs to stop thinking of public diplomacy as simply a need to put a better sales pitch on the same American policies. Our pitch [...]

Interestingly, this just came up as a topic of conversation recently, or something close to it.  I highly doubt this is an issue of cost. Is there some legal principle involved here? I cannot really think of strong objections to giving jurors information about the trial. On the other hand, there are a number of [...]

As I’ve said, I don’t really like getting involved in partisan politics. But this is interesting. A note for further reading.

Bush boom bah
You know you’re a serious wonk when you wait eagerly each year for the arrival of the CBO’s “Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates.” But it’s much more than a tax report — it’s [...]

Mozilla to addon developers: work on Firefox 3 compatibility
Mozilla wants addon developers to start updating their themes and extensions for Firefox 3. Lack of addon compatibility is a frequent complaint immediately following major Firefox updates because many users depend on the additional functionality that they get from third-party components.
While still holding off on the Firefox [...]

By Melissa R. Fledscher, Intern for Women for Obama.
‘Twas the night before Christmas and through Senate and House,
The future looked bleak for Bill Clinton’s spouse.
Her stockings were hung with the greatest of care,
But the votes out in Iowa just weren’t there.
John Edwards cursed with the luck of Bob Shrum,
Had visions of caucuses and sugarplum.
And Biden [...]

I often link to Wikipedia. No, it is not authoritative. Encyclopedias have not for a long time, probably at least the past 75 years, been an authoritative reference on the state of academic knowledge. They have instead transformed into a general reference, a starting point for further reference and research. There was a time, of [...]

I have a different definition of solved than they do. Ok, kudos to them for finding software that does LCC. The LCC system is clearly ideal for organization, at least for people in the US. Since I’m lingually handicapped, I’m not too worried about other countries’ book collections simply because I cannot read them. It [...]

Exciting news, right? No, the FT’s article title and lead paragraph is misleading. Clarification comes by the second paragraph, however. When India and China start talking about their future role in climate change policy, call me:
Asian leaders joined the United Nations on Wednesday in calling for developing countries to take greater responsibility for fighting climate [...]

Let me know what you think. I was looking for a 2 column layout that had some margins, but had a wider main content column. The other one was annoyingly narrow for any kind of moderately lengthy content.  I’m not sure, but I think the red here might be a bit harsh on the eyes. [...]

Geoff Stone gets shrill on religious America. The problem with some of the elders blogging habits is that they haven’t gotten in the habit of hyperlinking their non-obvious claims (becker-posner, I’m looking at you too). At least a bibliography with some footnotes. My point is that, if I wanted to conduct research into this question, [...]

No, not the pagan turned christian plastic eggs of theophagism, or whatever their relation to modern religious mythology is. Easter eggs in software are little gems of humor or entertainment typically found in what would otherwise be a monolithic, boring application. I know several in mozilla suite/seamonkey/iceape/firefox/iceweasel/phoenix/firebird/whatever/you/want/to/call/it. There is the classic about:mozilla (classic in the [...]

So, the Samuelson paper was kinda weird, and I have to take exception with Mankiw’s description of it here. While the paper did show that decreased trade would reduce national welfare (of course, that uses a simple national GDP to add over all individuals in a linear manner), it showed that by saying that technological [...]

Before starting, a quick overview of my position and why this pisses me off. Universal coverage is a laudable goal. I have not been convinced that a government-based, single payer system is the best. However, it is clear that the current system has costs that are rising too fast and covering too few people, with [...]