EconTech

Yet another Sheep: Cowles Foundation Monographs
lots of important economic books

Marginal Revolution: Back of the envelope
A measure of time input to wikipedia => TV watching is equivalent to 2000 wikipedia projects.

Crooked Timber » » More Kindle & etc.
(tags: piracy copyright kindle fair_use)

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong’s Fair, Balanced, and Reality-Based Semi-Daily Journal
(tags: lender_of_last_resort finance bernanke)

I’ve long thought that licensed ‘purchased’ materials is an asinine business plan that some day some hero will come through and shatter. Much of our cultural history has been created through sharing and reshaping. Now that the technology has come along to do it, companies and governments are attempting to create technological and legal barriers [...]

A ringing endorsement:
On the other hand, a shallower analysis may be more stimulating: there’s nothing like a fallacious argument to stimulate your research [1]
[1]But which sources to read? I read The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist; these are probably good places to start.”
Pet research:
So at this point you’ve got to [...]

Dani Rodrik’s weblog: The free trade reduces prices fallacy, yet again
(tags: trade prices food poverty)

FT.com / In depth - IMF bid to help Africans on food prices
(tags: food prices poverty)

FT.com / In depth - Hunger stalks millions of poor Americans
(tags: food prices poverty)

FT.com / Companies / Financial services - Trader charged with spreading false rumours
(tags: [...]

I got some complaints (why do people email, isn’t it easier to comment?) that my algebra leaved something to be desired in my previous post on this. I thought the details were rather obvious, and I left H and L as being the real expenditure for a single unit of a high and low quality [...]

Not enough discrimination?
Aleks pointed me to this article by Stan Liebowitz on the recent financial crisis:

At the crisis’ core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards - no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment. Most people instinctively understand that such loans [...]

I grew up in a state where things like milk were labeled with a “Use by” date. This was a great system. The dates were quite accurate, usually within about 36 hours of the label the product would sour. Now I live someplace that has a “Sell by” label. This is worthless. I have seen [...]

Andrew Gelman seems to be writing a lot about these kinds of things lately. But that’s ok:
Is a 65-hour story better than a 3-hour story?
Jane Dark writes here about movies taking only 100 minutes whereas, on TV, “The Wire is about 65 hours long, divided graciously into five location-based chapters. Movies are now the short [...]

Charm Beats Accuracy
Freakonomics:
A seven-month study of weather forecasting at Kansas City television stations was conducted over 220 days … One [station manager] said, “There’s not an evaluation of accuracy in hiring meteorologists. Presentation takes precedence over accuracy.” And when discussing accuracy (or the lack thereof) of a seven-day forecast, another station manager stated, “All viewers [...]

Blaming The Unlucky

A recent working paper finds that we call the same decision immoral when it leads to a bad outcome, but moral when it leads to a good outcome:
Two studies investigated the influence of outcome information on ethical judgment. Participants read a series of vignettes describing ethically-questionable behaviors. We manipulated whether those behaviors were [...]

I am a fan of reading occasional economic histories. They are amazingly fascinating (really, just fascinating, but even I would expect them to be boring, yet they are not, thus the amazing). However, not a whole lot has been produced as of late. Nevertheless, there is talk that there will be a resurgence in economic [...]

Trade and inequality, revisited — Rooftops edition

Another way of investigating the relationship between inequality and trade with poor countries implies that China may actually help the poor, suggests new work from University of Chicago economists Christian Broda and John Romalis.
Instead of focusing purely on what’s produced outside of the country, Broda and Romalis turn their [...]

Andrew Gelman had this to say on concepts versus skills. It was certainly a technique I used in tutoring students that was extremely successful. More so because the ‘tricks’ approach to math, and some other subjects, is a dismal approach to teaching someone how to think about math. A couple days of being shown how [...]

Krugman is still using the term tax cut too generously, but the point remains:
McCain the destroyer

One of George W. Bush’s lesser but still important talents is his uncanny ability to destroy peoples’ reputations: from John DiIulio to Michael Mukasey, well-regarded figures have entered the Bush administration’s doors, only to reemerge soiled and diminished.
Early signs indicate [...]