EconTech

I have some interest in agent based modeling. Most of the narratives of economic logic are agent based, yet very few of the models are. I find this to be one of the major annoyances (I won’t go so far as to call it a shortcoming) of economics as I have found in my courses [...]

PK wonders:
The North Atlantic conspiracy

Is Iceland the victim of a financial conspiracy?
Such things really do happen. During the 1997-1998 financial crisis there was, almost certainly, a financial conspiracy against Hong Kong. According to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, several major hedge funds engaged in a “double play”, shorting both the city-state’s stock market and its [...]

Paul Krugman (among others) has been saying that the growth in inequality in America is in large part due to policy differences in various administrations. Obviously and with good reason, Krugman believes that Republican administrations create policies and institutions that favor the rich over the poor while Democrats do a better job of equalizing the [...]

Or, at least I believe that is a reasonable interpretation of the papers he references. I will read need to read them in depth. This is an important point on how we go about implementing a new health care system.
Calculemus!

“The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of [...]

Well, food prices have been rising for some time, as I’m sure you have noticed at your local mega-mart. Unfortunately (the dismal in dismal science), these prices reflect the reality of world prices, and the world’s poor are feeling it much more than you. Even rice prices are going up, as global rice reserves are [...]

People are getting all excited because Opera and Webkit are passing the Acid3 tests. This is similar to the hype for the past couple of years over Acid2. These tests largely get their backing due to the fact that the original Acid test was included as a reference test in the CSS1 specification. The same [...]

Well, basically he does. With the way textbook prices are these days, it is hard to disagree. However, I have a few comments on his recommendation for DjVu over CHM over PDF.
Let’s discuss CHM for a moment. All it is is a compilation of HTML data (images and html text) into a proprietary, hard to [...]

Well, that is one tack at least. I don’t consider myself one, though. I believe that once a framework is in place, utilitarian considerations can get us considerably far along in judgment. Anyway, this is amusing:
 
 
Are economists brain damaged?
 
Many economists espouse utilitarianism as a superior ethical framework to proposed alternatives. A paper in Nature magazine [...]

Growth slows, that is. Trade levels have not shrunk.
World trade decelerates almost to standstill
Global trade slowed almost to a standstill over the new year, threatening to shrink for the first time since the US economy went into recession in 2001.
An indicator produced by the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, a Dutch research institute, showed that [...]

First of all, sorry for the downtime, if you were trying to get to the site. Moved the server, didn’t go as well as expected. Hopefully now it will be better. There is a good chance of another period of downtime within the week, depending on how my apartment mates react to the cable running [...]

I have to agree with Gelman on this one. Ceteris paribus, Levitt should have pointed out the endogeneity problem with this one.
The “all else equal fallacy,” one more time (this time using econ jargon), and also a discussion of the perils of “crossover” arguments
I was sorry to see Steven Levitt repeating the claim about driving [...]

This is more of an intro. Hopefully, his rather absurd characterizations of the left will improve[1] , but I look forward to the piece. While I did not really agree with the decision, as a matter of policy, to seize the property for economic development in the Kelo v City of New London case, I [...]

I’ve recently moved, and my desk setup has changed from my routine for the past year or so (though back to the setup I had for the previous several years). I started getting pains in my back, and since I hadn’t done much to stress my back, I went out looking to see what I [...]

“Bush’s Market-Liberal Scam”

This is from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. They are pleased Bush wasn’t able to get his Social Security plan implemented because it would have undermined free market capitalism:
Bush’s Market-Liberal Scam, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.: President Bush began his second term with a big push for “Social Security [...]

Well, maybe. I just saw this article over at the BBC saying that 2025 candidates were required to secure the Democratic nomination. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, the BBC is more reliable than most American news sources, I went over to the DNC’s website, and I see this image (Original Screenshot of DNC Website). Cropped [...]