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2012-05-28

• ¿Es Richard Cantillon el Padre de la Economía?
  by Adrián Ravier in Punto de Vista Economico, 2012-05-28 18:46:14 UTC

  Vuelvo a hacer la misma pregunta, pero ya no referenciando a Adam Smith, sino a Richard Cantillon, con el objetivo de reenfocar el debate. Tanto en la entrevista de Carlos Rodriguez Braun como en los comentarios que le siguen en el post, quedaba claro que la pregunta es difícil de responder, o incluso puede estar mal planteada (como decía Gabriel Zanotti). En defintiiva, la ciencia se explica precisamente a través de la teoría del orden espontáneo que el propio Adam Smith ayudó a desarrollar, y que es fruto del designo humano, más nunca de la acción humana. Muchas personas han contribu [...]

• Does Monetary Policy make Austerity Irrelevant?
  by Mainly Macro in Mainly Macro, 2012-05-28 17:52:00 UTC

  � � � � � � � ��There are three variations of this question that I have come across in recent posts and comments. 1) If monetary policy had targeted nominal GDP, it could have been successful whatever fiscal policy had been. 2) Even within the context of inflation targeting, Quantitative Easing (QE) allows monetary policy to overcome the problem of the zero lower bound (ZLB) for nominal interest rates. So inadequate demand can be put down to not enough QE. 3) Less austerity would have led to higher inflation, which given the recent behaviour of monetary policy makers �would have led to higher [...]

• Gender and Well-being Around the World: Some Insights from the Economics of Happiness
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2012-05-28 17:16:18 UTC

  By: Carol Graham (The Brookings Institution) and Soumya Chattopadhyay (The Brookings Institution) URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2012-010&r=ltv A wide body of research explores gender differences in welfare outcomes, and their implications for economic development. We aim to contribute to this work by looking at differences in reported well-being (happiness) across genders around the world. We examine differences across genders within countries, comparing age, income, education, and urban versus rural cohorts, and explore how those same within country differences vary in countrie [...]

• Empowering Women Through Education: Evidence from Sierra Leone
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2012-05-28 17:12:59 UTC

  By: Naci H. Mocan and Colin Cannonier URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18016&r=ltv We use data from Sierra Leone where a substantial education program provided increased access to education for primary-school age children but did not benefit children who were older. We exploit the variation in access to the program generated by date of birth and the variation in resources between various districts of the country. We find that the program has increased educational attainment and that an increase in education has changed women’s preferences. An increase in schooling, triggered by t [...]

• Are Cities and the Internet Complements or Substitutes?
  by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2012-05-28 15:20:00 UTC

  Glaeser has argued that they are complements while this NY Times Piece suggests they are substitutes. Dear Diary: METROPOLITAN DIARY More Reader Tales From the City� While sitting on a bench in Central Park on a recent Sunday afternoon, I started to experiment with my new iPhone. I was interested in Siri, the feature that allows you to ask a verbal question and get a response from the phone. To see if its answer would be correct, I would ask it something I knew. I placed the phone to my ear and said, “Where is Zabar’s?” Before the phone could respond, a woman on the other end of the benc [...]

• Seventy Years Ago: The Week the Tide Began to Turn by Mark Harrison
  by Mark Harrison in Mark Harrison's blog, 2012-05-28 13:00:17 UTC

  Writing about web page http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/midway/midway.htm Seventy years ago this week, the world looked unspeakably grim. By the end of May 1942, Germany had occupied France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxemburg; all of Eastern Europe not already under control of its allies Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, including the Baltic, the Ukraine, and a large chunk of Russia; Greece and Yugoslavia; and the former Italian colonies of North Africa. Italy wasn't helping much, but in the Far East Japan had occupied much of China, all of Indochina, Indonesia, Malaya (inc [...]

• Inequality and constitutional change
  by Brian Ashcroft in Scottish Economy Watch, 2012-05-28 11:53:58 UTC

  In an earlier post I noted the evidence on the rising degree of income inequality in the UK. The key chart from the OECD's recent report Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising is below The high and rising level of income inequality in the UK was, I suggested, put into sharper focus by recent political developments. Specifically, the UK government's austerity programme with associated rising unemployment and real income constraint, and the concern about banker's bonuses and CEO pay. It was therefore a surprise to learn from an excellent article by Alf Young [...]

• La Fuerte Demanda por Charlatanes
  by Alejandro Villagomez in Tintero Económico Diario, 2012-05-28 00:14:00 UTC

  Revisando el Blog Stumbling and Mumbling me encontré este post que hace referencia a un paper que analiza el tema de los charlatanes, expertos, consejeros, etc. El paper que comenta es Why Do People Pay for Useless Advice? Implications of Gambler's and Hot-Hand Fallacies in False-Expert Setting Abstract: We investigated experimentally whether people can be induced to believe in a non-existent expert, and subsequently pay for what can only be described as transparently useless advice about future chance events. Consistent with the theoretical predictions made by Rabin (2002) and Rabin and V [...]

2012-05-27

• Thinking about the firm-size distribution
  by jdingel in Trade Diversion, 2012-05-27 13:05:07 UTC

  [Note: This post isn't about international economics. I'll use an example from trade to comment on a feature of the US real-estate market.] In a letter to the Economist , the president of the National Association of Realtors writes: [I]t is not true that large brokers dominate the industry. In fact, the real-estate industry consists mostly of independent contractors and small firms. Eight out of ten realtors work as independent contractors for their firms. The second sentence appears to be a non-sequitur, unless one thinks that existence is informative about dominance. It’s not. In their fir [...]

• Aid wars
  by Johan Fourie in Johan Fourie's Blog, 2012-05-27 07:03:12 UTC

  Food for thought: Will food aid help or hurt these Lesotho farmers? The debate about the impact of aid on African countries has divided scholarly opinion, with proponents, such as Jeffrey Sachs, saying that more is needed if we are to see an impact, and opponents – such as William Easterly and Dembisa Moyo – proclaiming that aid can do very little, and that in many cases it can actually do more harm than good. Sachs’s The End of Poverty , for example, argued that development aid can help countries exit the poverty trap of low savings, low investment (in physical and human capital), low product [...]

• Yes, planning law is red tape that we want to get rid of
  by tim in The Pin Factory Blog, 2012-05-27 06:00:30 UTC

  Tim Worstall We know that everything has a price: no, not that you can buy any and everything, rather, that whatever it is that is done there is a price to that being done. Good old Bastiat and what is unseen and all that. And of course, this applies to planning laws just as much as anything else. The difficult thing is trying to work out what those unseen costs are, not their mere existence. So, here is some research showing what the costs are of the planning laws that we impose upon supermarkets : We use unique store-specific data for a major UK supermarket chain to estimate the impact of pl [...]

2012-05-26

• Climate Change and Global Politics
  by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2012-05-26 23:04:00 UTC

  Mark Thoma's post �offers me the opportunity to mention the publication of my 2012 Economic Inquiry paper on this topic.�� I wrote my 2010 climate change adaptation book titled Climatopolis , because it was clear to me that there is a voting bloc in Congress (namely Conservatives from poor, high carbon areas) who will oppose any carbon legislation. ��I've been quite pessimistic that a global deal on carbon can or will happen in the short term. � I predict that individual initiatives such as California's AB32 will teach useful lessons and that the host of low carbon technologies will become mor [...]

• “The Nash Bargaining Solution in Economic Modeling,” K. Binmore, A. Rubinsten & A. Wolinsky (1986)
  by afinetheorem in A Fine Theorem, 2012-05-26 21:50:41 UTC

  If we form a joint venture, our two firms will jointly earn a profit of N dollars. If our two countries agree to this costly treaty, total world welfare will increase by the equivalent of N dollars. How should we split the profit in the joint venture case, or the costs in the case of the treaty? There are two main ways of thinking about this problem: the static bargaining approach developed first by John Nash, and bargaining outcomes that form the perfect outcome of a strategic game, for which Rubinstein (1982) really opened the field. The Nash solution says the following. Let us have s [...]

• Economists and the General Public bias
  by Inaki Villanueva in Applied economist, 2012-05-26 16:12:00 UTC

  Who is the most important economist nowadays? Logically depends on who you ask. Davis, Bob Figgins, David Hedengren and Daniel B. Klein asked 300 academic economists who is their favourite economist nowadays under 60 years old and below. Not surprisingly, results for nowadays economist under 60 years old showed the following list: The top-16 list for economists older than 60 years old: Davis et. al. paper also asked surveyed economists to quantified liberalism for some famous economist in a 1-4 scale. Results are shown in the last columns above. Then I wondered how close this list would [...]

2012-05-25

• The costs in buying versus the costs in selling
  by Ajay Shah in Ajay Shah's blog, 2012-05-25 20:48:00 UTC

  All models are wrong, some models are useful. A model reduces complications that are true in return for tractability and insight. In finance, all too often, one complication which has been wished away is transactions costs. A great deal of what we see in the world around us is caused by the costs of transacting. Some of the most important finance is about analysing the causes and consequences of the costs of transacting. The bid offer spread as a measure of transactions costs The first flush of the literature draws on markets with market makers, and treats the bid-offer spread as the measu [...]

• Financial Constraints, Endogenous Markups, and Self-fulfilling Equilibria
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2012-05-25 20:35:50 UTC

  By Jess Benhabib and Pengfei Wang http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18074&r=dge We show that self-fulfilling equilibria and indeterminacy can easily arise in a simple financial accelerator model with reasonable parameter calibrations and without increasing returns in production. A key feature for generating indeterminacy in our model is the countercyclical markup due to the procyclical loan to output ratio. We illustrate, via simulations, that our financial accelerator model can generate rich business cycle dynamics, including hump-shaped output in response to demand shocks as well as se [...]

• Why Indian immigrants earn higher than others in America?
  by Murtaza Haider in eKonometrics, 2012-05-25 19:49:00 UTC

  Immigrants born in India outdo others in achieving economic success in the Untied States. At the same time, Pakistan-born immigrants, while trailing behind Indians, do better than the native-born Americans. While both immigrant groups originate in South Asia, huge disparities in their economic success exist in the US that needs further exploration. The estimates reported in the 2010 American Community Survey revealed that the median salaried household income of India-born immigrants was around $94,700. In comparison, the median household income of native-born Americans was estimated at $51,7 [...]

• Channel 4 Secret Eaters
  by Liam Delaney in Economics, Psychology and Policy, 2012-05-25 17:50:00 UTC

  The modern fly-on-the-wall type documentary isn't usually my thing but I really enjoyed the Channel 4 documentary " Secret Eaters ". A family agrees to both fill out food diaries tracking calorie consumption and also to be tracked using hidden cameras. The basic gist of the show is that almost all family members report consuming something around the recommended 2,000 or so calories on any given day. However, these estimates turn out to be wild underestimates largely due to ignoring portion sizes, not counting alcohol, not tracking soft-drink monitoring and other factors. In the case of both pa [...]

• Put some economics back into spatial econometrics
  by Economic Logician in Economic Logic, 2012-05-25 14:54:00 UTC

  One of the hot areas for econometric research in recent years has been spatial econometrics. Think of it, at least initially as time series econometrics in a different dimension. One interesting aspect of it is that instead of being single-dimensional like time series, it can be two-dimensional, or even more I guess. This field brings interesting new challenges, and it must be exciting working in this field. However, as too often in econometric theory, research becomes quickly detached from reality, and more specifically from the needs of empiricists. N never goes to infinity, for example. Lui [...]

2012-05-24

• How integrated are Eastern and Western Europe now?
  by Economic Logician in Economic Logic, 2012-05-24 14:10:00 UTC

  25 years ago, it was very rare to see a car with Eastern European plates in Western Europe. Now, they are all over the place, including trucks (why are there so many from Romania?). This is a clear indication, even if you ignore history, that the East-West integration is stronger than it has been for a long time. But there are more aspects to integration than the movement of cars. Catherine and Klaus Prettner basically look whether the two regions are cointegrated. They build two national aggregates, one with 12 European Community countries (unfortunately no UK) and 5 Central European countrie [...]

• Los dos caminos de los jóvenes
  by Octavio Medina in Politikon, 2012-05-24 14:06:52 UTC

  Hace una semana Glenda Quintini, de la OCDE, publicaba un  artículo  en VoxEU sobre las trayectorias de los jóvenes en Estados Unidos y en Europa. Su  conclusión  es que los chicos y chicas en Estados Unidos tienen bastante más éxito que sus equivalentes europeos a la hora de entrar en el mercado laboral. En concreto, el porcentaje de jóvenes que tiene problemas a la hora de encontrar o mantener un trabajo es 18 puntos más alto en Europa.  Aquí tenéis la gráfica: No obstante, estos datos varían mucho dentro de la Unión Europea. Hay países como Alemania o Austria donde el de [...]

• Measuring the merits of wind energy: How wind lowers power prices
  by Richard W. Caperton in reneweconomy, 2012-05-24 12:00:00 UTC

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• [経済]不況期に学位を取得した経済学者は優秀
  by himaginary in himaginaryの日記, 2012-05-24 00:00:00 UTC

  という 論文 がEconomic Logicブログで 紹介されている （ EconAcademics blog aggregator 経由）。 以下はその要旨。 It is well documented that graduates enter different occupations in recessions than in booms. In this article, we examine the impact of this reallocation for long-term productivity and output across sectors. We develop a model in which talent flows to stable sectors in recessions and to cyclical sectors in booms. We find evidence for the predicted change in productivity caused by the business cycle in a setting where output can be readily measured: e [...]

2012-05-23

• Greece: Can’t Pay/Won’t Pay? by Mark Harrison
  by Mark Harrison in Mark Harrison's blog, 2012-05-23 16:54:58 UTC

  Writing about web page http://www.erim.eur.nl/ERIM/Research/Centres/Business_History/News/News_Detail?p_item_id=7362016&p_pg_id= How much can one country squeeze out of another? I was prompted to think about this on Monday, when I spoke in Rotterdam at the launch of a major new book: Occupied Economies: An Economic History of Nazi-Occupied Europe, 1939-1945, by Hein Klemann (a Dutch historian) and Sergei Kudryashov (a Russian historian). The main story of the book is how Germany extracted resources from occupied Europe that paid for one third of its war costs – and the consequences for the c [...]

• Air conditioners on the rebound
  by Economic Logician in Economic Logic, 2012-05-23 14:54:00 UTC

  The various cash for clunkers programs during the last recession had two objectives in mind: create aggregate demand (or shift it from good to bad times) and improve the stock of capital. In the case of cars, it was expected that this would lower pollution. Other programs outside of recessions have had the same goal, for example subsidies to replace light bulbs or appliances for more energy efficient ones. But it does not always work out as expected. Lucas Davis, Alan Fuchs and Paul Gertler look at a recent and large appliance renewal initiative in Mexico. A staggering 1.5 million households c [...]

• Europa: una crisi di debito o di bilancia dei pagamenti?
  by keynesblog in Keynes Blog, 2012-05-23 14:01:03 UTC

  da: Altra Finanza – 21 maggio 2012 Per uscire dalla crisi bisogna capirne bene la natura. Se si tratta di una crisi dei debiti sovrani, allora si fa bene a combatterla con politiche di rigore. Ma se il problema sono i debiti esteri e gli squilibri commerciali fra i paesi europei, allora concentrarsi sul risanamento delle finanze pubbliche potrebbe essere insufficiente, o addirittura controproducente. Per questo, torniamo sull’argomento con un intervento di Andrea F. Presbitero (Università Politecnica delle Marche). L’attacco speculativo contro i debiti sovrani di alcuni paesi membri dellâ [...]

• Respuestas a diez objeciones al patrón oro
  by Adrián Ravier in Punto de Vista Economico, 2012-05-23 13:06:50 UTC

  Son varios los economistas que han presentado objeciones a un posible retorno al Patrón Oro, desde Presidentes de la Reserva Federal como   Alan Greenspan y Ben Bernanke , economistas de renombre como Tyler Cowen y Paul Krugman , y analistas como Eduardo Porter , Jesús Fernández Villaverde y tantos otros . A modo de respuesta, a continuación me propongo –siguiendo a Lawrence H. White - analizar diez argumentos centrales contra el Patrón Oro. Como decía Friedrich Hayek (1943): El patrón oro, como sabemos, tuvo indudablemente grandes defectos, pero corremos el gran peligro de que su [...]

• Regional Integration or Transit Corridor?
  by Michael Fuenfzig in The ISET Economist, 2012-05-23 11:35:46 UTC

  � This research paper  by Tony Venables has some interesting implications for the South Caucasus:  Better integration with a resource-rich economy is extremely valuable for the resource-poor. Remote and land-locked developing countries have very limited export potential with the external world … Regional integration enables them to earn foreign exchange via their exports to the resource-rich partner. The benefits arise as the prices of these regionally traded goods are bid up, raising wages and creating a terms of trade gain for the resource poor economy. However, resource-rich economies [...]

• Less austerity = more growth and less unemployment
  by laurence-df in OFCE le blog, 2012-05-23 10:12:36 UTC

  Eric Heyer and Xavier Timbeau The European Commission has just released its spring forecast , which anticipates a recession in 2012 for the euro zone (“mild” in the words of the Commission, but still -0.3%), which is in line with the OFCE’s economic analysis of March 2012 . The brutal fiscal austerity measures launched in 2010, which were intensified in 2011 and tightened even further in 2012 virtually throughout the euro zone (with the notable exception of Germany, Table 1 and 1a), are hitting activity in the zone hard. In 2012, the negative impact on the euro zone resulting from the co [...]

• Cum stai cu...starea de bine?
  by Alina Botezat in Alina Botezat Blog, 2012-05-23 09:49:00 UTC

  Astăzi OECD a lansat o nouă versiune a indexului Yo ur Better Life , lansat pentru prima dată anul trecut. Well-being-ul unui individ este apreciat�în funcţie de�11 factori: locuinţă, venituri, job, comunitate, educaţie, mediu, guvernanţa, sănătate, satisfacţia cu viaţa, siguranţa şi echilibrul dintre muncă şi viaţă. Oricum, conform studiului OECD, ţara în care locuieşti nu prea contează în atingerea unui nivel ridicat al satisfacţiei cu propria ta viaţă. Cu datele de anul trecut, deja au apărut studii economice pe tema well-being-ului : aici şi aici . Dacă- [...]

• ¿Por qué Argentina va cuesta abajo? ¿Cómo pudo pasar de ser la 4ª economía del Mundo a ocupar lugar 59?
  by Rafael Pampillón in Economy Weblog, 2012-05-23 08:30:27 UTC

  A raíz de la expropiación de YPF por parte del gobierno argentino desde este blog nos venimos preguntando: ¿Por qué unos países son preferibles a otros para hacer negocios? ,   ¿En qué se parecen Argentina y Andalucía?  y ¿Qué es e l nuevo populismo de América Latina ?. Todos estos posts han propiciado muchos comentarios a favor y en contra del gobierno de Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. En el post de hoy nos preguntamos ¿A qué se debe el deterioro económico de un país (Argentina) que en 1.900 tenía la 4ª renta per cápita del Mundo y en 2010 se situó en el lugar 59º [...]

2012-05-22

• Log Transformations & Forecasting
  by Dave Giles in Econometrics Beat: Dave Giles' Blog, 2012-05-22 19:20:00 UTC

  I enjoyed reading the lead article in the latest issue of Empirical Economics , by Helmut�Lütkepohl and Fang Xu. It�assesses the quality of forecasts obtained from an ARIMA model that is estimated using the levels of the data in question, as opposed to forecasts that are generated from a model estimated from the logarithms of the data. Should we use apply a log transform to time-series data before estimating an ARIMA model or not? Some authors resort to this as a way of stabilizing the variance of the series prior to estimation. However, as�Tom Reilly pointed out correctly in a comment o [...]

• Building Wind Energy Can Save Midwestern Consumers $200 Per Year
  by Climate Guest Blogger in Think Progress, 2012-05-22 19:02:36 UTC

  By Richard W. Caperton We’ve all heard that wind energy is too expensive, and that massive investments in wind will drive up electricity rates for consumers.  This argument is based on the belief that wind energy is more expensive on a per kilowatt-hour basis than traditional fossil fuels.  While even this premise is up for debate (for example, wind is now the least expensive option for new generation for some utilities in the upper Midwest), the bigger problem is that this argument ignores how electricity markets actually work. According to a study by Synapse Energy Economics that was re [...]

• Rising Food Prices and Children’s Welfare
  by Maximo Rossi in Wikiprogress América Latina, 2012-05-22 16:40:00 UTC

  By: Nora Lustig (Division of Policy and Practice,UNICEF) URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc: uce:wbrief:1201&r= lam After three consecutive decades of decline, world prices of food commodities have risen over the past few years at an alarming pace. Rising food prices are a cause of major concern because high food prices bring significant and immediate setbacks for poverty reduction, nutrition, social stability, inflation and a rules-based trading system. Food prices are unique since food is unlike any other good. Food is essential for survival; it is the most basic of basic needs Keywords: chil [...]

• Health Perceptions in Latin America
  by Maximo Rossi in Wikiprogress América Latina, 2012-05-22 16:39:00 UTC

  By: Eduardo Lora URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc: idb:wpaper:4757&r= lam This is the first study that uniformly analyzes health perceptions in all of Latin America and tests in a systematic way their relation to economic conditions at the country, income group and individual levels. The study uses three types of health self-assessment questions: i) health satisfaction; ii) health status on a scale of 0- 10; and iii) the EuroQol 5D instrument (EQ-5D), which asks about mobility, self- care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression. The empirical analysis finds support for the [...]

• Protecting Workers against Unemployment in Latin America and the Caribbean: Evidence from Argentina
  by Maximo Rossi in Wikiprogress América Latina, 2012-05-22 16:38:00 UTC

  By: Martín Gonzalez Rozada Lucas Ronconi Hernan Ruffo URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc: idb:wpaper:4759&r= lam This paper takes advantage of several reforms that provide time and cross sectional variation to identify the effects of unemployment insurance and severance payments on the duration of unemployment and on the separation probability in Argentina. Administrative data permits analysis of the duration of unemployment of covered spells with detailed information about transfers and their duration, while household surveys permit the study of separation probability and transitions to infor [...]

• The impact of the occupations and economic activities on the gender wage gap using a counterfactual framework
  by Maximo Rossi in Wikiprogress América Latina, 2012-05-22 16:37:00 UTC

  By: Dusan Paredes (IDEAR - Department of Economics, Universidad Católica del Norte - Chile) URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc: cat:dtecon:dt201208&r= lam This paper presents a methodology to estimate the individual gender wage gap as the difference between wages of the women and their counterfactuals defined by Coarsened Exact Matching. If the women show a higher wage than comparable men, then it is called positive gap. Using eight surveys between 1992 and 2009 for Chile, a stable average of 44% of women show positive gap. This group is considered interesting from the policy perspective becau [...]

• Unemployment in Bolivia: Risks and Labor Market Policies
  by Maximo Rossi in Wikiprogress América Latina, 2012-05-22 16:37:00 UTC

  By: Werner Hernani Maria Villegas Ernesto Yanez URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc: idb:wpaper:4758&r= lam This paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of Bolivia’s labor market institutions, particularly the Plan Nacional de Empleo de Emergencia (PLANE). It is found that unemployment as conventionally defined may not be the most important problem in Bolivia’s labor market, as the non-salaried market is always an alternative. While un- employment durations and unemployment scarring consequences are relatively low, labor market regulations and labor market programs do not help to increa [...]

• Trends in Occupational Segregation by Gender 1970-2009: Adjusting for the Impact of Changes in the Occupational Coding System
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2012-05-22 16:35:57 UTC

  By: Blau, Francine D. (Cornell University) Brummund, Peter (Cornell University) Liu, Albert Yung-Hsu (Mathematica Policy Research) URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6490&r=ltv In this paper, we develop a gender-specific crosswalk based on dual-coded Current Population Survey data to bridge the change in the Census occupational coding system that occurred in 2000 and use it to provide the first analysis of the trends in occupational segregation by sex for the 1970-2009 period based on a consistent set of occupational codes and data sources. We show that our gender-specific crosswal [...]

• The impact of recessions on economist productivity
  by Economic Logician in Economic Logic, 2012-05-22 14:14:00 UTC

  In recessions, those who have the hardest time finding jobs are those who try for the first time. Facing these difficulties, many decide to pursue their studies in graduate school. From this, one should expect future productivity to be higher in the future, because of the higher level of human capital. But for a given level of human capital, labor productivity should be lower post-recession, because the marginal new graduate is of lower quality. Michael Boehm and Martin Watzinger look at the performance of PhD economists and find that those who studied or graduated during a recession over-perf [...]

• Las raíces políticas de la crisis del Euro
  by Cives in Politikon, 2012-05-22 11:48:47 UTC

  He leído ya en dos o tres sitios reproches a la profesión económica en general por el problema de la crisis del Euro. Mi punto de vista de esta historia es que esta interpretación es equivocada. En este post quiero explicar por qué y especialmente por qué pienso que se trata de un problema político institucional más que económico. Un diagnóstico compartido Los problemas que han llevado a la situación actual no son ningún misterio económico. Como he explicado en alguna ocasión, la zona euro funciona de tal forma que los tipos de interés reales funcionan de forma procíclica, ya q [...]

• ¿Funcionarán las medidas contra el absentismo en el sector público?
  by Samuel Bentolila in Nada Es Gratis, 2012-05-22 06:00:37 UTC

  Los empleados públicos tenemos mala fama en este país, como lo revelan desde los chistes de Forges hasta denigrantes comentarios recientes sobre renunciar al  cafelito . ¿Está justificada esta imagen pública en cuanto al absentismo laboral? En tal caso, ¿tendrán efecto los planes recién anunciados del actual Gobierno para reducir ese absentismo? Tenemos alguna evidencia empírica, basada en otros países, para empezar a contestar a estas preguntas. En general, es difícil medir la productividad de los trabajadores no manuales y en especial en el sector público (donde cuesta medir inc [...]

• Was Hayek a (Welfare) Statist?
  by David Glasner in Uneasy Money, 2012-05-22 04:14:22 UTC

  There’s been a little flurry in the blogosphere of late about what F. A. Hayek thought about the welfare state, apparently touched off by a remark made by the late Tony Judt in a newly published book, the result of a collaboration between the late Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder Thinking the Twentieth Century . Judt makes the following charge. Hayek is quite explicit on this count: if you begin with welfare policies of any sort — directing individuals, taxing for social ends, engineering the outcomes of market relationships — you will end up with Hitler. Tyler Cowen, in a generally favorabl [...]

2012-05-21

• Flygplatser främjar kunskapsintensiva näringar
  by Nima Sanandaji in Kebnekaisegruppen, 2012-05-21 22:00:40 UTC

  Stadsnära flygplatser som Bromma förblir kontroversiella i Sverige. Men forskningen pekar på att flygplatser får en allt viktigare roll för utvecklingen. En ny studie pekar på att flygplatserna i Europa har blivit avgörande för städers utvecklingskraft, inte minst för städer som vill attrahera högkvalificerade arbetare och innovativa företag. Kunskapsintensiva näringar främjas av tillgången av flygplatser eftersom flyget gör det möjligt att konkurrera på en Europeisk eller rentav internationell miljö. Därför sker omfattande utveckling i närheten av flygplatserna, dit m� [...]

• Bankia, CAM y el Capitalismo Popular
  by José Francisco Bellod Redondo in jfbellod, 2012-05-21 18:50:00 UTC

  Buena parte del problema al que se enfrentan ciudadanos que colocaron sus ahorros en Bankia o en la CAM son resultado de la onda expansiva de la revolución neoliberal impulsada en los años 80 por Margaret Thatcher. Durante la década de los años 80 el término “capitalismo popular” alcanzó gran difusión. Se trataba de una formula neoliberal que pretendía integrar los intereses de los trabajadores con los del capitalismo: privatizar las empresas públicas y vender las acciones en pequeños paquetes de módico precio entre los trabajadores. La fórmula prometía: las pequeñas sumas a [...]

• Predation, labor share and empirical evidence
  by Economic Logician in Economic Logic, 2012-05-21 14:20:00 UTC

  When you look at national accounts, one striking fact is that the labor income share is remarkably stable in each country. And the average level of this labor income share varies quite dramatically across countries. These differences vanish to a large extend once you allocate proprietor's income (these are business owners) to labor income and capital income, but some differences remain. Carlos Bethencourt and Fernando Perera-Tallo try to explain these differences. They build a model where workers can choose to produce or predate. If the labor income share is high, they rather produce, if it is [...]

• 1992: le "lievi imprecisioni" del Corsera
  by Alberto Bagnai in Goofynomics, 2012-05-21 13:41:00 UTC

  Avrei altro da fare, ma quando è troppo è troppo. Mi sono già occupato del modo in cui certe fonti di (dis)informazione riportano quello che potrebbe accadere se la dracma uscisse dall’euro (in particolare, su Repubblica ). Non credevo che la mia indignazione per una certa tendenziosa superficialità potesse essere superata. Ma a Roma si dice che il peggio non è mai morto. E infatti, un lettore del blog mi segnala un articolo che suscita in me un’indignazione ancor più motivata e profonda. Perché, vedete, Livini, l’autore del “pezzo” di Repubblica, in fondo faceva un esercizio [...]

• Moins d’austérité = plus de croissance et moins de chômage
  by laurence-df in OFCE le blog, 2012-05-21 13:34:29 UTC

  Eric Heyer et Xavier Timbeau La Commission européenne vient de publier ses prévisions de printemps et anticipe une récession (légère selon les mots de la Commission, -0,3% tout de même) en 2012 pour la zone euro, rejoignant ainsi l’analyse de la conjoncture de l’OFCE de mars 2012 . L’austérité budgétaire brutale engagée en 2010, accentuée en 2011 et encore durcie en 2012 dans pratiquement tous les pays de la zone euro (à l’exception notable de l’Allemagne, tableau 1 et 1 bis) pèse lourdement sur l’activité en zone euro. En 2012, l’impulsion négative en zone euro, c [...]

• Political Power and Regional Economic Performance
  by sebastianfleitas in NEP-HIS blog, 2012-05-21 12:37:13 UTC

  Who is the boss here? Regional power and participation of the Caribbean coast in the ministerial cabinets, 1900-2000. (Original title: ¿Quién manda aquí? Poder regional y participación de la costa Caribe en los gabinetes ministeriales, 1900-2000) by Adolfo Meisel Roca (ameisero@banrep.gov.co) URL: http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/col000101/009424.htm Abstract (Translated from Spanish by the reviewer) It is well known that regional identities are very strong in Colombia and that they have had an influence in the politics of the country. One of the dimensions that Presidents of the Republ [...]

• If people don't go to the lab, the lab goes to the people
  by Dany Jaimovich - Bakary Baludin in Development Therapy, 2012-05-21 10:58:00 UTC

  While it has been more�than a decade since behavioral experiments are conducted on the field in developing countries ,�it is usually very�difficult�to find established facilities for this kind of�research. This is why the� BUSARA CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS �is a very welcomed contribution. The Center is a state-of-the-art facility for experimental studies in behavioral economics located�right outside the Kibera slums � in Nairobi. They have a pool of participants from the area , that are recruited via SMS and then receive the payments using MPesa (then dismissing the problem of lack of�cr [...]

• Tax policy shocks and the business cycle
  by David Andolfatto in MacroMania, 2012-05-21 06:24:00 UTC

  I have to admit that I never ascribed much importance to the idea of "tax policy shocks" as an important driver of the U.S. postwar business cycle. I thought of such shocks as perhaps playing a supporting role, along the lines of Tax Disturbances and Real Economic Activity in the Postwar United States ( Tony Braun , 1994). But I just came across a paper that has led me to re-evaluate my views on this matter: Empirical Evidence on the Aggregate Effects of Anticipated and Unanticipated U.S. Tax Policy Shocks (Karel Mertons and Morten Ravn, 2011). Here is the abstract: We provide empirical eviden [...]

• De Pablo, cuasimonedas y Hayek: una aclaración
  by Nicolas Cachanosky in Punto de Vista Economico, 2012-05-21 03:10:24 UTC

  En una reciente nota, Juan Carlos de Pablo ( UCEMA ) entabla un diálogo ficticio con F. A. Hayek sobre la emisión de cuasimonedas. El dialogo tiene lugar en torno a las expectativas de que las provincias argentinas podrían volver a emitir bonos provinciales (Lecor, Lecop, Patacones, etc.) y utilizarlos como medio de pago dados los problemas fiscales. Una cuasimoneda es un activo que, al ser muy líquido, es fácil de intercambiar por dinero y por lo tanto si bien no es dinero en sí mismo, funciona como tal. Una cuasimoneda es, entonces, un sustituto de dinero. En agregados monetarios, M2 = [...]

• [経済]コスタ・コンコルディアの船長は例外に非ず
  by himaginary in himaginaryの日記, 2012-05-21 00:00:00 UTC

  こちらのブルームバーグ日本語記事 で紹介されているように、海難事故では女性と子供を優先して救助する、という社会的規範が存在し、タイタニックではそれが守られたが、ルシタニアでは沈没に時間的余裕が無かったために守られなかった、という研究が少し前に出版された *1 。 しかし、最近、その研究内容を否定する別の研究が出され、 Economic Logic 、 Ideas Market（WSJ） 、 Core Economics の各ブログで紹介されている（ EconAcademics blog aggregat [...]

2012-05-20

• Mi educación sentimental en 10 (12) libros (II)
  by Cives in Politikon, 2012-05-20 21:27:41 UTC

  Bueno, vamos con la segunda parte de la serie. Al final pensé que podría haber hecho tres entregas, así que es posible que saque otra. 6. The theory of industrial organization, Jean Tirole . Tirole escribe como los ángeles y sus libros de texto son realmente estupendos (su manual de teoría de juegos  y su libro sobre regulación son estupendos también; pero este lo estudié primero), combinando la modelización rigurosa con las explicaciones de la intuición que hay detrás. Este libro es seguramente el primer libro de economía “serio” que leí y lo recuerdo con especial cariño. [...]

• 216 – Diminishing marginal benefits of economics
  by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions, 2012-05-20 19:22:48 UTC

  One of the foundational concepts of economics is the idea of diminishing marginal benefits. In this post I argue that it applies to economics itself. A classic example of diminishing marginal benefits is the application of fertilizer to a wheat crop. As you add more fertilizer, the wheat yield increases, but it does so at a diminishing rate. The yield curve gets flatter and flatter as the fertilizer rate increases. This flattening off of benefits has been found to be extremely common as the level of an input to a production process increases (even those related to the environment – see PD18 [...]

• Greexit: La salida de Grecia de la UE
  by in Tiempo Económico, 2012-05-20 16:31:18 UTC

  La economía mundial presenta una condición de fragilidad y se tienen encendidas las alertas ya que es posible que la economía Griega no pueda continuar en la zona euro. La razón es que existen presiones de diferentes partidos políticos helenos para no aceptar las políticas de austeridad impuestas por las organizaciones internacionales (Banco Central Europeo, Fondo Monetario Internacional y Comisión Europea) como condición para [...]

• Women and children first! Not!
  by Andreas Ortmann in Core Economics, 2012-05-20 07:21:06 UTC

  Tweet In a recently published working paper (see  here ), Swedish economists Elinder & Erixson revisit the issue of gender, social norms, and survival in maritime disasters. This topic has attracted some attention through the controversial work of Frey et al. (e.g., here ; see also here ) which made much of the alleged bravery of male passengers on the Titanic who allegedly sacrificed themselves so that women and children might be saved, seemingly providing further evidence for a “women and children first” social norm. Specifically, Frey et al. argued that “even though the two vessels a [...]

• Fiscal stimulus
  by James Hamilton in Econbrowser, 2012-05-20 07:01:57 UTC

  My colleague UCSD Professor Valerie Ramey has an interesting new paper looking at the effects of higher government spending on GDP. Ramey (2012) approaches the question from a forecasting perspective. Suppose a certain event (examples of which are detailed below) causes you to revise your forecast of how high government spending is going to be over the next few years. How would this news cause you to change your forecast of how high private GDP (that is, all the components of GDP other than government spending) is going to be? If your prediction of private GDP goes up, that is evidence con [...]

• Public Speaking and more Q&A from Advisors4Advisors Webinar
  by Wade Pfau in Pensions, Retirement Planning, and Economics Blog, 2012-05-20 03:45:00 UTC

  On May 18, I presented a webinar on the 4% Rule for Advisors4Advisors . I was quite surprised that almost 200 people logged. I think of lot of those learned about it here. Thank you for joining, and I hope you found it to be a worthwhile use of an hour.� I try not to do too much self promotion, but I am interested to do more public speaking on retirement planning issues and it may help if I can provide some endorsements to get you thinking about having me as a speaker. Andy Gluck wrote a very favorable article about the presentation . A few of his generous comments include: "And that’s what [...]

• Money is an Experience Good: Competition and Trust in the Private Provision of Money
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2012-05-20 02:18:16 UTC

  By Ramon Marimon, Juan Pablo Nicolini and Pedro Teles http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:563&r=dge We study the interplay between competition and trust as efficiency-enhancing mechanisms in the private provision of money. With commitment, trust is automatically achieved and competition ensures efficiency. Without commitment, competition plays no role. Trust does play a role but requires a bound on efficiency. Stationary inflation must be non-negative and, therefore, the Friedman rule cannot be achieved. The quality of money can only be observed after its purchasing capacity is realized. I [...]

• [経済]軍事独裁政権の成立する確率
  by himaginary in himaginaryの日記, 2012-05-20 00:00:00 UTC

  について分析した 論文 がグアテマラのフランシスコ・マロキン大学の経済学部教授 Andres Marroquin のブログUDADISIで 紹介されている （ EconAcademics blog aggregator 経由）。 以下は同ブログで紹介された論文の結論部。 In this paper we have analyzed the probability of a country of experiencing a military dictatorship, using a panel of 48 African countries over the period 1970- 2007. We found a number of results. Income per capita negatively affects the probability of a military rule, with some nonlinearities, in particular lo [...]

2012-05-19

• ¿Son los estímulos fiscales una buena idea?
  by in Tiempo Económico, 2012-05-19 23:08:51 UTC

  Existe un amplio debate en la ciencia económica en relación a la importancia que tienen los estímulos fiscales para detonar el crecimiento y el empleo, particularmente en épocas de crisis. Los Estados Unidos en febrero de 2009 lanzaron un programa de este tipo por 750 billones de dólares -por cuatro años-, la mayor parte del mismo se realiza sobre la base de pagos de transferencias y reducciones impositivas, sólo un 15% es en la forma de gastos gubernamentales en la compra de bienes y servicios. La administración del presidente Obama indica que ha tenido [...]

• Models of Innovation 2: Sequential Innovation
  by afinetheorem in A Fine Theorem, 2012-05-19 09:30:12 UTC

  This post continues a series of notes on the main theoretical models of innovation. The first post covered the patent race literature. Here I’ll cover the sequential innovation literature most associated with Suzanne Scotchmer, particularly in her 1991 JEP and her 1995 RAND with Jerry Green. Let there be two inventions instead of one, where the second builds upon the first. Let invention 1 cost c1, and invention 2 cost c2, with firm 1 having the ability to invent invention 1, and firm 2 invention 2. If only invention 1 exists, the inventing firm earns v1 (where v1 is a function of patent [...]

2012-05-18

• Complex Survey Data in Econometrics
  by Dave Giles in Econometrics Beat: Dave Giles' Blog, 2012-05-18 19:14:00 UTC

  It's easy to forget that many of the standard results that we learn in statistics are based fairly and squarely on the assumption that the data are obtained by using simple random sampling. In reality, this is rarely the case. Stratified �and cluster sampling are routinely used by our statistical agencies, and frequently the sampling process is much more complicated than that. So-called "Complex Survey" designs, which involve multi-stage stratification and clustering are very common. This is�something to watch out for in practice. When it comes to regression analysis, modifying the [...]

• ‘Free Market’ Double Standards 5.0
  by Unlearningecon in Unlearning Economics, 2012-05-18 17:36:02 UTC

  The imaginary ‘ free market ‘, itself a highly contradictory concept, and one that causes its proponents to ignore anything inconvenient to their worldview, has helpfully offered up another 23 examples of its followers either flat out contradicting themselves, or holding a clear double standard in two similar situations. To clarify the first two: John Bates Clark originated the theory of marginal productivity , which holds that labourers are paid pretty much exactly what their labour is worth. Yet he also endorsed the notion that labour is worthless unless it was combined with capital, and t [...]

• Why are seasonal immigrant worker programs so unpopular?
  by Economic Logician in Economic Logic, 2012-05-18 14:55:00 UTC

  Immigration policy is difficult to optimize, first because some economic rents are at stake, second because people do not want to share the luck of being born in the right place and at the right moment with foreigners who do not have that luck. But even within that context, a policy of seasonal immigration should be easy to adopt, as everybody wins: immigrants are let in only when labor demand is very high and cannot be met by locals, and the immigrants leave when the labor demand is back to normal. And the immigrants are willing to go for it, as it provides good income that is valued as they [...]

• Greece: a question of tough love
  by Financial Times in Economists' Forum, 2012-05-18 11:45:00 UTC

  content [...]

• Google’s promotion policy sucks for women
  by Cathy O'Neil, mathbabe in Mathbabe, 2012-05-18 10:57:34 UTC

  I’m going to start this post with an excerpt from a comment of reader JoanDelilah  from a couple of weeks ago, commenting on my post The meritocracy myth : And at the end of the day, this also assumes that it is right and proper for a structure to be in place which requires you to *grab* tough/interesting work to prove yourself, as opposed to it being given to you. There is competition inherent in the foundational world-view behind that statement. Why so much competition? We are supposed to be on the same team and competing with other businesses, right? What about the woman who is happy to cr [...]

• Bill Bengen’s “How Much is Enough?”
  by Wade Pfau in Pensions, Retirement Planning, and Economics Blog, 2012-05-18 03:20:00 UTC

  Bill Bengen has written another thought-provoking and important article. This one is “How Much is Enough?” appearing in the May 2012 issue of Financial Advisor .With sequence of returns risk, what happens in the early part of retirement matters much more than what happens later. If there is any retiree in U.S. history most at risk of witnessing the failure of the 4% rule, it is those retiring at the start of 2000. But now we have 12 years of data about the progress of 2000 retirees, and so we can begin to see more clearly about how things are working out. Bill Bengen’s new article provi [...]

2012-05-17

• The Environmental Costs of Anti-Dumping Policy
  by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2012-05-17 23:31:00 UTC

  Maybe Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall didn't figure out all of micro theory. �Consider the case of solar panel imports from China. �The NY Times reports t hat the U.S is imposing a large tariff punishment on these imports. This will hurt Chinese exporters and U.S importers and help U.S producers of panels but it will also impose a global pollution externality. �A side benefit of the U.S being able to import cheap solar panels is that this increases their adoption and this reduces global GHG emissions. �In the presence of such a consumption positive externality, does this affect how we think abo [...]

• Contagio? Quale Contagio?
  by Paolo Manasse in Back-Of-The-Envelope Economics, 2012-05-17 20:37:00 UTC

  (in corso di pubblicazione per ISPI) Il fallimento (già avvenuto) della Grecia, l'ingovernabilità del paese sancita dalle urne e la prospettiva della sua uscita dall'Euro evocano lo spettro del “contagio”. La paura che agita mercati e governi è che il precipitare della crisi greca provochi un crack di dimensioni continentali : uno scenario un cui attacchi speculativi contro i debiti sovrani di Portogallo, Irlanda, Spagna e Italia, forzano il default disordinato di questi paesi, il fallimento a catena dei sistemi bancari nazionali, delle imprese, il crollo della produzione, la disoc [...]

• Why we need small countries: they experiment with policies
  by Economic Logician in Economic Logic, 2012-05-17 14:57:00 UTC

  Small countries are often considered a nuisance. They are sometimes tax havens that annoy larger countries because it increases tax competition. They have more weight than their size in international organizations (UN, European Commission, ECB) or sports organizations (FIFA), which at least in the latter case encourages corruption. And they increase sample sizes in cross-country regressions without truly adding information, sometimes leading to erroneous results. But small countries are also great because it allows to experiment with policies. That is the argument of Jeffrey Frankel . He gives [...]

• What Georgia Can Teach the World
  by Michael Fuenfzig in The ISET Economist, 2012-05-17 14:35:19 UTC

  A new discussion paper  by Jeffrey Frankel,  via  Economic Logic : The large economies have each, in sequence, offered “models” that once seemed attractive to others but that eventually gave way to disillusionment. Small countries may have some answers. They are often better able to experiment with innovative policies and institutions and some of the results are worthy of emulation. This article gives an array of examples. Some of them come from small advanced countries: New Zealand’s Inflation Targeting, Estonia’s flat tax, Switzerland’s debt brake, Ireland’s FDI policy, Canada’s banking s [...]

• No Magic Wand: Liberalization and Structural Transformation in India
  by Triplecrisis in Triple Crisis, 2012-05-17 13:00:05 UTC

  Suranjana Nabar-Bhaduri, Guest Blogger In November 2011, the UPA coalition government in India announced its decision to allow FDI in multi-brand retail. Proponents within the government and media argued that this decision would address the supply bottlenecks in the Indian distribution system; facilitate the transfer of knowledge and skills; generate more employment; accelerate economic growth; improve production know-how and promote exports. Following stiff resistance from some of its coalition members, and opposition parties (which was driven more by political motives, considering that the N [...]

2012-05-16

• Scottish Jobs and Dubious Statistics
  by Brian Ashcroft in Scottish Economy Watch, 2012-05-16 20:36:36 UTC

  The latest Scottish labour market data published today for the quarter January to March should be welcomed. Unemployment fell by 10,000 over the quarter as employment rose by 24,000. The Scottish unemployment rate moved into line with the UK rate of 8.2% and the employment rate, at 71.2%, stayed above the UK rate of 70.5% for the 16-64 age group. For all aged 16 and over, the employment rate in Scotland moved from slightly below the UK rate to parity at 58%. But within these numbers male employment is rising (+29k) while female employment is falling (-5k). At first sight these data fro [...]

• EuroSandeces
  by José Francisco Bellod Redondo in jfbellod, 2012-05-16 19:17:00 UTC

  Desde que llegué al convencimiento de que España debía abandonar el euro (no la Unión Europea), y hacerlo de una forma ordenada, me he preocupado por buscar y tratar de entender los argumentos de quienes defienden con ahínco nuestra permanencia en la eurozona: el miedo al caos que podría desatarse ante tal eventualidad es el argumento más recurrido. Como si tener una tasa de paro del 25% y 5´7 millones de parados, y una prima de riesgo de 500 puntos básicos no fuera el caos…. El gran (único argumento) de quienes se oponen a nuestra salida es que nuestras deudas, ahora denominadas [...]

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