EconTech

Economic Principals » Blog Archive » A Brave Army of Heretics
(tags: economics growth statistics complexity chaos)

Can Chaoplexity Save Economics?

Civil rights groups blast à la carte cable
this seems silly. I suspect unbundling will help the long tail, not hurt it.

Economist’s View: “Who Gentrifies Low-Income Neighborhoods?”

I asked for some data on crane accidents and their supply and demand. Someone sent me a volley of links on accidents. However, I didn’t get data on crane supplies. However, there seems to be a pre-existing view that my hunch was right. This ABC article from January sums up what many others are saying:
The [...]

Healthcare Economist · Custom-made versus ready-to-wear treatment

Healthcare Economist · Sample Selection vs. Two-part Model

U.S. Withdraws Fulbright Grants to Palestinians in Gaza - NYTimes.com

Pharmaceutical Facts
Time to develop and market a new drug: 10-15 years
Average Cost to develop a new drug (2006): $1.318 billion
Total R&D spending on drugs in 2007: $58.8 billion

Generic share of market in 2007: 67%
Percent of marketed drugs that cover R&D costs: Only 20%
Total number of drugs approved in 2007: 23
R&D as a percent of [...]

There SEEMS to have been a lot of recent crane collapses, more than in any other time that I can think of. However, not being an automated data collector, I am not particularly confident in such memories. The reason I ask is that I am told that there is a global shortage of cranes. After [...]

Overcoming Bias: Intro to Innovation

FT.com / World - Ban on cluster bombs agreed

FT.com / Europe - Sweden calls for overhaul of EU fishing policy
when bother fishermen and environmentalists dislike a fishing policy, it is a good bet that there is room for improvement

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - More to it than ‘leaning [...]

Al Jazeera English - News - Nepal Set To Abolish Monarchy

FT.com / Europe / Brussels - Sweden wants changes to favour food safety

Postcard From Sweden - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog
A bit of Chicago in Sweden, only more comfortable seating. I would definitely take up an opportunity to study or work there.

Link by Link - This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix - NYTimes.com
xkcd just got too popular, in the NYT!
(tags: love unix internet humor culture)

Oxonomics: Inequality, Opportunity and Economic Growth

Economist’s View: “The Bush Administration’s Teapot Dome”

Economist’s View: Socially Unacceptable Externalities

Robbers and Cops - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Healthcare Economist · Decreased [...]

Prompted by Gabriel (that is, blame him for this):
113
Do you have any idea how hard it is to spell some countries? I didn’t get to most of Eastern and Southern Asia or Australia and the Pacific. 5 minutes is a lot shorter than I thought when visualizing maps and typing names I write out approximately [...]

Via Cowen:
What should be an allowable non-profit?

In a ruling last December that sent tremors through the not-for-profit world, the Minnesota Supreme Court said a small nonprofit day care agency here had to pay propery taxes because, in essence, it gave nothing away.
…Almost 88 percent of overall nonprofit revenues in 2005, the most recent year for [...]

I won’t bother with the full post, [Edit: Which you can find here: Trade and Inequality] but this caught my attention:
Samuelson — who btw is a Nobel Prize winner and very much a mainstream neoclassical economist — has also published an important paper which shows that, theoretically, under some (quite plausible) circumstances a productivity gain [...]

Sweden: Image and Reality
Sweden is often viewed as either social democratic paradise or lefty hell, depending on one’s political and economic orientation.
Parts of the popular image are true. Sweden has a strong political left; the Social Democratic party was in power continuously for more than four decades in the middle of the 20th century and [...]

Lazy Lineup Study
Thursday’s Nature suggests standard police line-ups may not be so bad:
The traditional US procedure is familiar to any fan of television cop shows. Witnesses are presented with a line-up that includes both the suspect and a number of innocent people, or foils’, and are asked to identify the perpetrator. In the early 1990s [...]

The Tree-Friendly Academic: Whither A Useful Free PDF Editor?
I’m a Linux user in need of a quality PDF reader with basic annotation tools, and I need it to be available for free. Think I’m asking for too much?
We’re at a point where the level of content available online dwarfs our ability to print it all [...]

Why Does This Prominent Amazon Researcher Face 14 Years in Prison for Biopiracy?

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches | Graphics | Smashing Magazine
(tags: visualization Data Design graphics information inspiration webdesign statistics research media)