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Blog aggregator for economics research

2019-08-16

• Rethinking capital regulation: the case for a dividend prudential target
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-08-16 03:24:39 UTC

  By Manuel Muñoz http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:srk:srkwps:201997&r=dge The paper investigates the effectiveness of dividend-based macroprudential rules in complementing capital requirements to promote bank soundness and sustained lending over the cycle. First, some evidence on bank dividends and earnings in the euro area is presented. When shocks hit their profits, banks adjust retained earnings to smooth dividends. This generates bank equity and credit supply volatility. Then, a DSGE model with key financial frictions and a banking sector is developed to assess the virtues of what shall be call [...]

2019-08-15

• Thesis Thursday: Elizabeth Lemmon
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-08-15 06:00:18 UTC

  On the third Thursday of every month, we speak to a recent graduate about their thesis and their studies. This month’s guest is Dr Elizabeth Lemmon who has a PhD from the University of Stirling . If you would like to suggest a candidate for an upcoming Thesis Thursday, get in touch . Title Essays on the provision of long term care to older adults in Scotland Supervisors David Bell , Alasdair Rutherford Repository link http://hdl.handle.net/1893/29369 What long term care provision is available to older people in Scotland? Long term care (LTC) in Scotland comprises both formal care and [...]

2019-08-13

• No, Wages Are Not Rising Because of Minimum Wage Laws
  by Adam Michel in The Foundry, 2019-08-13 15:32:38 UTC

  Before lawmakers left for August recess, the Democrat-controlled House voted to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Such a move would backfire in a major way if passed into law. It would hurt lower-skilled individuals the most, including teenagers, immigrants, and those without a high school degree. And women, who hold more low-wage jobs than men, would be hurt the most, accounting for more than 60% of the resulting lay-offs. The push for new wage mandates comes at a puzzling time: We are in the midst of a record economic expansion in which workers in lower-wage jobs are see [...]

2019-08-12

• 320 – Fixed costs and input rates
  by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions, 2019-08-12 15:41:12 UTC

  Optimal input rates (e.g. of fertilizer to a crop) are not affected by fixed costs. I had an interesting discussion with a Canadian poultry farmer last month, who needed to be convinced of this fact. In Canada last month I gave a seminar at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs on water pollution from agricultural fertilizers, and how an understanding of the economics of fertilizer application can help identify cost-effective policy strategies for reducing pollution. One thing I talked about was the economics of applying too much fertilizer (more than would be in the farm [...]

• Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 12th August 2019
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-08-12 11:00:31 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Developing open-source models for the US health system: practical experiences and challenges to date with the Open-Source Value Project . PharmacoEconomics [ PubMed ] Published 7th August 2019 PharmacoEco [...]

2019-08-09

• The Currency Manipulation Game
  by Jeffrey Frankel in Project Syndicate, 2019-08-09 15:15:43 UTC

  CAMBRIDGE – The trade war between the United States and China is heating up again, with US President Donald Trump abruptly announcing plans to impose a 10% tariff on the $300 billion worth of imports from China that he had so far left untouched. The Chinese authorities then allowed their currency, the renminbi, to fall below the symbolic threshold of CN¥7 per US dollar. The Trump administration promptly responded by naming China a “currency manipulator” – the first time the US had done that to any country in 25 years. Pundits declared a currency war, and investors immediately sent global stock [...]

2019-08-08

• Capital’s gain is lately labour’s loss : The global decline in the labour share of income
  by ? in FRED blog, 2019-08-08 13:00:19 UTC

  The GDP of a country reflects, among other things, the total payments to all factors of production. For a long time, the share of payments to labour* relative to total payments to all factors of production was relatively stable. In recent decades, the share of payments to labour has been trending down in many countries, which FRED can help us illustrate. The first graph shows that the share of labour compensation in GDP has been declining for several countries around the world. In the U.S., this share has declined by 5% between 1975 and 2017. The decline in other countries is even greater, wi [...]

2019-08-07

• Is there really a global decline in the (non-housing) labour share?
  by BankUnderground in Bank Underground, 2019-08-07 08:00:00 UTC

  Germán Gutiérrez and Sophie Piton Much has been written on the global decline of the corporate labour share (defined as the share of corporate value added going to wages, salaries and benefits). The IMF and OECD worry about this trend, linking it to decreasing wages and rising inequality. And economists are hard at work looking for an explanation: prominent hypotheses range from automation and ‘superstar’ firms to offshoring. But is there really a global decline in the non-housing/business labour share? Not if you properly exclude housing income and account for self-employment, as desc [...]

2019-08-06

• The Bedrock Myth and the Rise of Midtown Manhattan (Part II)
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-08-06 12:31:54 UTC

  Jason M. Barr         August 6, 2019 Note: This two-part series is adapted from chapters seven and eight of my book, Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan’s Skyscrapers (OUP, 2016), which is based on research ( here and here ) performed with Troy Tassier of Fordham University. The Bedrock Myth An aerial view of Manhattan reveals the shape of its curious skyline: a cluster of skyscrapers Downtown and another one in Midtown, but few in between. The conventional wisdom is that skyscraper developers gravitated to these areas because access to bedrock near the surface made it easi [...]

2019-08-05

• 319 – Reducing water pollution from agricultural fertilizers
  by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions, 2019-08-05 15:18:43 UTC

  I gave a talk to the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) on July 16, 2019, exploring ways to reduce water pollution from agricultural fertilizers. Many methods have been proposed to reduce water pollution from agricultural fertilizers. The list includes use of nitrification inhibitors, land retirement, vegetation buffer strips along waterways, flood-plain restoration, constructed wetlands, bioreactors, cover crops, zero till and getting farmers to reduce their fertilizer application rates. Last year, while I was at the University of Minnesota for several months, I [...]

• Just say no to exchange rate intervention
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-08-05 12:19:24 UTC

  “ Just in the past week, we had a meeting with the president and the economic principals and we had ruled out any currency intervention ,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow , CNBC, July 26, 2019. “I could do that in two seconds if I want to. I didn’t say I’m not going to do something.” President Donald J. Trump, Washington Post , July 26, 2019 Whenever possible, policymakers should explore a broad set of options before responding to challenges they face. However, when the President and his advisers recently discussed foreign currency intervention, we hope everyone quickly concluded th [...]

• Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 5th August 2019
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-08-05 11:00:57 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . The barriers and facilitators to model replication within health economics . Value in Health Published 16th July 2019 Replication is a valuable part of the scientific process, especially if there are unce [...]

2019-08-04

• Real consequences of open market operations: the role of limited commitment
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-08-04 13:31:07 UTC

  By Francesco Carli and Pedro Gomis Porqueras http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:94088&r=dge We study how limited commitment in credit markets affects the implementation of open market operations and characterize when they result in real indeterminacies and when they have real effects. To do so, we consider a frictional and incomplete market framework where agents face stochastic trading opportunities and limited commitment in some markets. When limited commitment does not constraint agents’ choices, we find necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a unique monetary equilib [...]

2019-08-03

• Trump, Kushner and Netanyahu are hellbent on destroying the two-state solution , Analysis
  by ? in Noozilla Top, 2019-08-03 15:35:03 UTC

  By Beth Oppenheim and Luigi Scazzieri This week, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his team have been touring the Middle East to push his new $50bn economic plan, unveiled in Bahrain last month. The proposals aim to open the West Bank... Topics: [...]

2019-08-01

• Är miljardförmögenheter ett problem?
  by Niclas Berggren in Nonicoclolasos, 2019-08-01 04:18:58 UTC

  Inte minst sedan Thomas Piketty publicerade Kapitalet i tjugoförsta århundradet har en intensiv debatt föregått i många länder om hur en liten andel av befolkningen har lyckats bli väldigt rik på senare år. Ofta framställs detta som mycket problematiskt. Frågan är vilka kriterier man ska använda för att utvärdera detta. Ett möjligt kriterium är lycka. I ”Billionaires, Millionaires, Inequality and Happiness” , som huvudsakligen rapporterar att antal korrelationer, återfinns följande figur: Tankeväckande. Det är självfallet inte härigenom på något sätt belagt att den förmögenhet som dollarmilja [...]

2019-07-31

• Misunderstanding the average impact of microcredit?
  by milfordbateman in Development Economics, 2019-07-31 10:30:21 UTC

  Photo: Peter Haden . Microfinance center leaders tally the week’s loan payments in India. By  Milford Bateman  and Maren Duvendack A recent article on the “ average impact of microcredit ” by Dr. Rachel Meager (LSE) has received much praise over the past few weeks. Meager deploys Bayesian hierarchical modelling to provide a new take on the argument in favour of a reformed system of microcredit. Her work builds on the data provided by six randomized control trials (RCTs) conducted by Abhijit Banerjee and colleagues (see Banerjee, Karlan and Zinman , 2015 ). Meager makes an attempt to exculpate [...]

• Neuroeconomics and modern neuroscience
  by Alessandro Cerboni in Knowledge Team, 2019-07-31 10:15:31 UTC

  CEE-M Working Papers  from  CEE-M, Universtiy of Montpellier, CNRS, INRA, Montpellier SupAgro Abstract:  The paper is an overview of the main significant advances in the knowledge of brain functioning by modern neuroscience that have contributed to the emergence of neuroeconomics and its rise over the past two decades. These advances are grouped over three non-independent topics referred to as the “emo-rational” brain, “social” brain, and “computational” brain. For each topic, it emphasizes findings considered as critical to the birth and development of neuroeconomics while hig [...]

2019-07-29

• The Bedrock Myth and the Rise of Midtown Manhattan (Part I)
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-07-29 12:15:14 UTC

  Jason M. Barr          July 29, 2019 Note: This two-part series is adapted from chapters seven and eight of my book, Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan’s Skyscrapers (OUP, 2016), which is based on research ( here and here ) performed with Troy Tassier of Fordham University. The Bedrock Myth There’s a popular historical anecdote about Manhattan that’s frequently bandied about at cocktail parties and on hop-on-hop-off bus tours. It has to do with why skyscrapers are “missing” between Downtown and Midtown. In particular, the story says that Manhattan’s skyline is the way it i [...]

• Rita Faria’s journal round-up for 29th July 2019
  by Rita Faria in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-07-29 11:00:29 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . All-male panels and gender diversity of issue panels and plenary sessions at ISPOR Europe . PharmacoEconomics – Open [ PubMed ] Published 22nd July 2019 All male panels and other diversity considerations [...]

• Die vele probleme van mans
  by admin in Johan Fourie's Blog, 2019-07-29 06:00:22 UTC

  MEYERTON, HENLEY ON KLIP – JANUARY 14: Oprah Winfrey poses with the Graduates on her arrival at the inaugural graduation of the class of 2011 at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls on January 14, 2012 in Henley on Klip, South Africa. (Photo by Michelly Rall/Getty Images) Een ding wat ekonomiese geskiedenis mens leer is dat baie van die groot veranderinge in die geskiedenis, goed wat ons tipies toeskryf aan sosiale, politieke of kulturele faktore, eintlik maar ekonomiese oorsake het. Die Groot Trek? Miskien wou ‘n paar opportunistiese grensboere (of hul leiers) maar net wegkom van hul sw [...]

2019-07-28

• Against adaptation
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-07-28 12:17:37 UTC

  One under-rated determinant of political debate lies in the fact that we become accustomed to some things but not others. I’m prompted to say this by reactions on Twitter to my questions about Mark “Herr Juncker in the bunker” Francois : how did this idiot achieve prominence? Why does the BBC think him an acceptable guest on what it considers a serious show? Why have our selection mechanisms & standards gone so badly awry? Some replied that the BBC is chasing click bait, or that it is human nature for people to cheer on those on their own side, regardless of their competence. What such replies [...]

2019-07-26

• JHU's 21st Century Cities Initiative
  by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2019-07-26 13:55:00 UTC

  As my term as the Chairman of USC's Economics Department ends on August 15th, I have been focusing on my new initiative at Johns Hopkins University .� At JHU, I am directing the 21st Century Cities Initiative.�� � �This blog post is meant to both market this initiative and to offer some benchmarks for judging my center's performance. Our Mission Statement is simple.� I want 21CC to be the campus hub for research, teaching and outreach on topics related to urban economic growth, urban poverty and urban quality of life.� Given our location, Baltimore will be an important city for us but we will [...]

2019-07-25

• Under Venezuelan Socialism, There is No Beer. (And No Democracy.)
  by Robert Lawson in Hit & Run blog, 2019-07-25 18:00:15 UTC

  Venezuela's economic crisis began in earnest about five years ago, when the price of oil began falling from more than $100 a barrel, down to a low of about $26 a barrel in 2016. But the underlying cause of the crisis is the government's socialist economic policies, and the crisis has intensified as the government doubles down on those policies. The economic crisis has, in turn, produced a political crisis. Widespread discontent with economic conditions prompted protests against President Nicolas Maduro's government. In January of this year, the National Assembly declared Juan Guiadó interim pr [...]

2019-07-24

• The Technology Trap: a review
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-07-24 13:01:51 UTC

  The historian Suetonius wrote that, when approached by a man offering a cheap technology for transporting heavy columns to Rome the emperor Vespasian refused to use the device for fear it would displace workers. “How will it be possible for me to feed the populace?” he asked. The fear that new technology will destroy jobs is, therefore, an ancient one. This is the theme of Carl Benedikt Frey’s The Technology Trap . Although Dr Frey is best known for his work with Michael Osborne predicting (pdf) that new technologies threaten millions of jobs, his book is not an exercise in futurology. Most of [...]

• Why Did Pre-Modern States Adopt Big-God Religions?
  by Alessandro Cerboni in Knowledge Team, 2019-07-24 09:29:01 UTC

  Abstract:  Over the past two millennia successful pre-modern states in Eurasia adopted and cultivated Big-God religions that emphasize (i) the ruler’s legitimacy as divinely ordained and (ii) a morality adapted for large-scale societies that can have positive economic effects. We make sense of this development by building on previous research that has conceptualized pre-modern states as maximizing the ruler†s profit. We model the interaction of rulers and subjects who have both material and psychological payoffs, the latter emanating from religious identity. Overall, religion reduces the cos [...]

2019-07-23

• Don’t Fear the Scooter
  by Alon Tal in Project Syndicate, 2019-07-23 11:54:51 UTC

  TEL AVIV – Electric bicycles and scooters are taking a lot of heat. Concerns about traffic fatalities, terrorized pedestrians, and urban lawlessness have led a growing chorus of politicians and media commentators to conclude that the technology should be banned outright. But these critics are missing the point. Small, portable, electric transportation options are a tremendous opportunity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, avoid traffic jams, and relieve human frustration. A scooter that averages ten miles (16 kilometers) per day produces 3,500 grams less carbon dioxide than a car traveling th [...]

2019-07-22

• Brendan Collins’s journal round-up for 22nd July 2019
  by Bren Collins in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-07-22 11:00:41 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Making hard choices in local public health spending with a cost-benefit analysis approach . Frontiers in Public Health Published 29th June 2019 In this round-up I have chosen three papers which look broad [...]

2019-07-18

• What’s the story behind who’s working? : Disaggregating EPOP by race and gender
  by ? in FRED blog, 2019-07-18 13:00:18 UTC

  Back in 2016, a FRED Blog post discussed the volatility of the labor market for people of different races based on the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP). The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines this measure as “the number of employed people as a percentage of the civilian noninstitutional population.” So EPOP is basically the percentage of adults who are employed. The EPOPs for Hispanic and Black Americans have increased at roughly the same rates since the Great Recession of 2007-09, while the growth rate for White Americans has leveled off. This change occurred in spite of the decrease in [...]

2019-07-17

• Costs of recession
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-07-17 13:03:49 UTC

  The Resolution Foundation’s James Smith has written a nice paper on the likelihood of recession and the fact that, with monetary less able to support the economy, we need to think about alternative ways of tackling recessions. I just want to amplify what he says in two ways. First, there’s increasing evidence that recessions can do long-term damage, even if the economy appears to bounce back in the short-term. There are at least three mechanisms here:  - Education. Bryan Stuart shows that the 1980-82 recession in the US “generated sizable long-run reductions in education and income.” Parents w [...]

2019-07-16

• The Technology of Tall (Part I): Skeletons, Outriggers, and Buttresses
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-07-16 12:22:22 UTC

  Jason M. Barr    July 16, 2019 Note this is Part I of what will be an on-going series on the evolution of skyscraper technology. The Birth of Height In 1900, the architect Cass Gilbert—who later designed the 55-story Woolworth Building (1913)—wrote an article to justify the existence of tall buildings. At the time, New Yorkers were witnessing their first skyscraper boom. They were curious and puzzled, and unsure of what to make of these new structures. Since the dawn of civilization, buildings for work and living were never more than six stories. Then, in a matter of a few short years, offices [...]

• A vueltas con los robots y con los algoritmos
  by Juan Francisco Jimeno in Nada Es Gratis, 2019-07-16 05:01:00 UTC

  Últimamente hay dos temas que surgen recurrentemente en (casi) todas mis conversaciones con colegas y amigos. Uno es, como no, futbolístico: la renovación del Real Madrid; otro se refiere a las consecuencias de la robotización y de la inteligencia artificial sobre el mercado de trabajo y el crecimiento económico. En cuanto al primero, dejaré mis opiniones para mejor ocasión, aun cuando esas conversaciones a veces derivan en una discusión "apasionante" sobre si veremos pronto "robots" en las alineaciones de nuestros equipos favoritos (algunos prototipos ya parecen cumplir algunos de los requisi [...]

2019-07-15

• Academic Health Economists’ Blog Journal Round-Up
  by Jason Shafrin in Healthcare Economist, 2019-07-15 16:38:21 UTC

  Today I put together the journal round-up for the Academic Health Economists’ blog , one of my favorite reads. I review three papers: Understanding price growth in the market for targeted oncology therapies . American Journal of Managed Care [ PubMed ]  Published 14th June 2019 Do cancer treatments have option value? Real‐world evidence from metastatic melanoma . Health Economics [ PubMed ] [ RePEc ]  Published 24th June 2019 Aggregate distributional cost-effectiveness analysis of health technologies . Value in Health [ PubMed ]  Published 1st May 2019 To see my thoughts on each o [...]

• Libra's dramatic call to regulatory action
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-07-15 12:10:12 UTC

  “I just think it cannot go forward without there being broad satisfaction with the way the company has addressed money laundering...data protection, consumer privacy….” FRB Chairman Jerome H. Powell, Testimony to House Financial Services Committee , July 10, 2019.  “We have an open mind, but not an open door.” Bank of England Governor Mark Carney , June 18, 2019. “A wider use of new types of crypto-assets for retail payment purposes would warrant close scrutiny by authorities to ensure that they are subject to high standards of regulation.” Letter to G20 Leaders , FSB Chair (and FRB Vice Chair [...]

• Jason Shafrin’s journal round-up for 15th July 2019
  by Jason Shafrin in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-07-15 11:00:05 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Understanding price growth in the market for targeted oncology therapies . American Journal of Managed Care [ PubMed ] Published 14th June 2019 In the media, you hear that drugs prices—particularly for on [...]

2019-07-12

• Just Released: Historical Reconstruction of the New York Fed Staff Nowcast, 2002-15
  by Blog Author in Liberty Street Economics, 2019-07-12 15:27:59 UTC

  Patrick Adams, Domenico Giannone, Eric Qian, and Argia Sbordone The New York Fed Staff Nowcast has been running for over three years. Each Friday at 11:15 a.m., we publish our updated predictions for real GDP growth based on the data released each week. When the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases the first estimate of GDP growth, we stop updating our nowcast and archive it. We maintain these archives as part of our Nowcasting Report on the New York Fed’s public website to allow users to study the features of the nowcast and its accuracy. Now, to better understand the model [...]

• Interregional mobility and monetary policy
  by BankUnderground in Bank Underground, 2019-07-12 08:00:08 UTC

  By Daniela Hauser and Martin Seneca According to conventional wisdom , a currency area benefits from internal labour mobility. If independent stabilisation policies are unavailable, the argument goes, factor mobility helps regions respond to shocks. Reasonable as it sounds, few attempts have been made to test this intuition in state-of-the-art macroeconomic models. In a recent Staff Working Paper (also available here ), we build a DSGE model of a currency area with internal migration to go through the maths. So does the old intuition hold up? The short answer, we think, is yes. Interna [...]

2019-07-11

• Here Are 6 Ways a New Report Devastates the $15 Minimum Wage
  by Rachel Greszler in The Foundry, 2019-07-11 17:38:17 UTC

  Just in time for next week’s likely House vote on a federal $15 minimum wage, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has come out with a caustic report on the consequences of the policy. The report confirms what even liberal economists caution : A $15 minimum wage would “risk undesirable and unintended consequences” and lead to a survival-of-the-fittest labor market, where only the highest-skilled workers come out on top.   Democrats are under the illusion that the government can force employers to artificially increase wages with no adverse consequences for American workers. But [...]

2019-07-08

• On the Instability of Banking and Other Financial Intermediation
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-07-08 18:29:12 UTC

  By Chao Gu, Cyril Monnet, Ed Nosal and Randall Wright http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:szg:worpap:1904&r=dge Are financial intermediaries inherently unstable? If so, why? What does this suggest about government intervention? To address these issues we analyze whether model economies with financial intermediation are particularly prone to multiple, cyclic, or stochastic equilibria. Four formalizations are considered: a dynamic version of Diamond-Dybvig banking incorporating reputational considerations; a model with delegated investment as in Diamond; one with bank liabilities serving as payment in [...]

• Protecting the Federal Reserve
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-07-08 11:19:34 UTC

  “How can a dozen … people meeting eight times a year decide what the cost of capital should be versus some kind of organically, market supply determined rate? The Fed is not omniscient. They don’t know what the right rate should be. How could anyone?” Judy Shelton, Interview with James Politi , Financial Times , May 31, 2019. The Fed’s practice of paying banks to keep money parked at the Fed in deposit accounts instead of going into the economy is unhealthy and distorting; the rate should come down quickly as the practice is phased out.” “Other nations indulge in currency warfare through unfai [...]

• Rachel Houten’s journal round-up for 8th July 2019
  by Rachel Houten in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-07-08 11:00:07 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Adjusting for inflation and currency changes within health economic studies . Value in Health Published 13th June 2019 The purpose of the paper is to highlight the need for transparency in the reporting o [...]

• Spot Month Limits: Necessary, But Not Sufficient, to Prevent Market Power Manipulation
  by cpirrong in Streetwise Professor, 2019-07-08 00:50:41 UTC

  In my recent post on position limits, I suggested that at most spot month limits are justified as a means of constraining market power manipulation. It is important to note, however, that setting spot month limits at levels that approximate stocks in deliverable position may not be sufficient to prevent the exercise of market power during the delivery period, with the resultant deleterious effects on prices. The basic motivation for position limits equal to stocks is predicated on a model of manipulation that makes particular assumptions about market participants’ beliefs. I pointed out [...]

2019-07-07

• Females, the elderly, and also males: Demographic aging and macroeconomy in Japan
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-07-07 00:17:31 UTC

  By Sagiri Kitao, Minamo Mikoshiba and Hikaru Takeuchi http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2019-37&r=dge The speed and magnitude of ongoing demographic aging in Japan are unprecedented. A rapid decline in the labor force and a rising fiscal burden to finance social security expenditures could hamper growth over a prolonged period. We build a dynamic general equilibrium model populated by overlapping generations of males and females who differ in employment type and labor productivity as well as life expectancy. We study how changes in the labor market over the coming decades will affect the [...]

2019-07-05

• Simplicity: smart & stupid
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-07-05 12:41:20 UTC

  David Gauke has been rightly praised for this : Rather than recognising the challenges of a fast-changing society require sometimes complex responses, that we live in a world of trade-offs, that easy answers are usually false answers, we have seen the rise of the simplifiers. This echoes a fine piece by Ian Leslie who says : The disease of politics today is not populism, so much, as simplism: the oversimplification of complex problems. I want to quibble, though. There are – to simplify! – two different types of simplicity, the stupid and the smart. Stupid simplicity is the sort that Gauke [...]

• Olimpiadi 2026: non scivolare sulle stime come a Torino
  by Jerome Massiani e Matteo Modena in La Voce, 2019-07-05 07:00:29 UTC

  Quali saranno gli effetti delle Olimpiadi invernali 2026 a Milano e Cortina sull’economia locale e su quella italiana? Il confronto con Torino 2006 può essere fuorviante. Ma il rischio è soprattutto quello di fidarsi di stime troppo ottimistiche. Milano e Cortina hanno saputo convincere il Comitato olimpico della validità della loro candidatura per l’organizzazione delle Olimpiadi invernali 2026. La vittoria è accompagnata da importanti aspettative economiche. Diventa così inevitabile il confronto con i risultati di Torino 2006. Sono disponibili diverse stime dell’impatto di Milano-Cortina: 2, [...]

2019-07-01

• Skyscrapers, Housing, and Cities: A Q&A Interview with Ingrid Gould Ellen (Part II)
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-07-01 11:55:38 UTC

  Jason M. Barr     July 1, 2019 Ingrid Gould Ellen is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at New York University, and a Faculty Director at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy . She is the author of Sharing America’s Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration and editor of The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates About Housing, Segregation and Opportunity . On Housing Supply JB: In your recent article, “ Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability ,” in Housing Policy Debate , you discuss some of the reasons given by the oppone [...]

• Chris Gibbons’s journal round-up for 1st July 2019
  by Christopher Gibbons in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-07-01 11:00:08 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . The economic case for the prevention of mental illness . Annual Review of Public Health [ PubMed ] [ RePEc ] Published April 2019 I’m a big fan of these annual reviews in public health, partly because the [...]

• Renewable Energy vs. Africa’s Renaissance
  by Vijay Jayaraj in MasterResource, 2019-07-01 06:00:53 UTC

  Thirteen of the world’s 20 least electrified countries are in Africa. Around 630 million people live without access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. “What will help Africa defeat energy poverty: glorified renewables or time-tested, dense, reliable conventional energies?” The African energy renaissance never happened. Most of the continent is still in the dark and far behind the rest of the world in energy production. Now, the challenges faced by Africa’s energy sector have only been complicated by European interests in climate policy-driven renewable energy . What will help [...]

2019-06-27

• Why Is Macro So Hard? Bias Against Emergence and Bias Against Understanding
  by Dave in voluntaryXchange, 2019-06-27 18:21:00 UTC

  Macro is hard because journalists (and many of the rest of us) overweight conscious action by individuals — decisions. If we overweight something, we must underweight something else — and that’s emergence: the idea that some things happen through the interaction of all of us rather than through conscious planning. Cold Spring Shops pointed me towards a couple of pieces and Stumbling and Mumbling that cover this well, in the context of Brexit and the rise of Boris Johnson. Not all of this is relevant here; I’ve emphasized the parts I like best . I fear that we have here is another example [...]

2019-06-24

• The Case for Strengthening Automatic Fiscal Stabilizers
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-06-24 11:56:55 UTC

  “[F]iscal stimulus should be timely, targeted and temporary.” Douglas Elmendorf and Jason Furman, “ If, When, How: A Primer on Fiscal Stimulus ,” The Hamilton Project, January 2008. “Somewhere, sometime a government policy worked in a way it was intended to .” Stanley Fischer, discussing John Taylor, “ The Swedish Investment Funds System as a Stabilization Policy Rule ,” 1982.  “[S]tabilizers are unlikely to pay for themselves.” Claudia Sahm, “Direct Stimulus Payments to Individuals,” in Heather Boushey, Ryan Nunn, and Jay Shambaugh (editors), Recession Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the [...]

• Simon McNamara’s journal round-up for 24th June 2019
  by sjmcnamara1 in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-06-24 11:00:22 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Manipulating the 5 dimensions of the EuroQoL instrument: the effects on self-reporting actual health and valuing hypothetical health states . Medical Decision Making [ PubMed ] Published 4th June 2019 EQ- [...]

• Prácticas anticompetitivas: un ejemplo de libro (de texto)
  by Juan Luis Jiménez in Nada Es Gratis, 2019-06-24 07:00:29 UTC

  de  Javier Campos y Juan Luis Jiménez . El próximo mes de septiembre, cuando comience el nuevo curso escolar, la tradicional queja de miles de familias españolas sobre la carestía de los libros de texto puede estar más justificada que nunca. En una resolución reciente , la Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) ha multado a 34 editoriales de libros de texto no universitarios y a la Asociación Nacional de Editores de Libros y material de Enseñanza ( ANELE ) por coordinar políticas y condiciones comerciales para restringir la competencia. Como es habitual, lo interesante de es [...]

2019-06-23

• Cartographical, and ethical, literacy
  by Diane Coyle in The Enlightened Economist, 2019-06-23 13:43:18 UTC

  I love books about data visualisation – the oeuvre of Edward Tufte especially The Visual Display of Quantitative Information , anything by Howard Wainer eg Picturing the Uncertain World . So I’ve very much enjoyed How to Lie With Maps by Mark Monmonier. This is an update of a classic tetbook and has been an eye-opener. Although I love maps, and althoug software means they are used far more often, I’d never really thought about them in the same mental bucket as other forms of data visualisation. The book covers everything from choice of symbols to use of colour and shade to the influence of cul [...]

2019-06-22

• How to find a good restaurant? Economists can help
  by ? in Age of Engagement | Big Think, 2019-06-22 12:19:33 UTC

  Where to eat? It's a question you've probably pondered when visiting somewhere unfamiliar. Though it's fun to explore a strange suburb, town or city, when you're hungry you'd rather minimise the chance of paying exorbitant prices for an unpleasant experien [...]

• How to find a good restaurant? Economists can help
  by ? in Noozilla Top, 2019-06-22 08:53:20 UTC

  Where to eat? It's a question you've probably pondered when visiting somewhere unfamiliar. Though it's fun to explore a strange suburb, town or city, when you're hungry you'd rather minimise the chance of paying exorbitant prices for an unpleasant... [...]

2019-06-21

• Economics needs to do more than attract women to solve its gender problem
  by ? in Forum:Blog, 2019-06-21 06:49:43 UTC

  Economist Carolina Alves explains why she set up the Diversifying and Decolonising Economics initiative - to make economics free of discrimination, including sexism, racism, and discrimination based on approach and geography. [...]

2019-06-20

• Why GDP Still Matters
  by Bjørn Lomborg in Project Syndicate, 2019-06-20 13:21:26 UTC

  ALLINGE, DENMARK – New Zealand is being lauded for introducing the world’s first Wellbeing Budget , which aims to shift the focus from GDP toward the “wellbeing of people.” Those with a grudge against the GDP indicator – in particular greens, who blame economic growth for harming the environment – see this as an exciting new opportunity to stop chasing dollars and start caring about people. The pursuit of higher GDP is easy to malign. The measure was invented during the industrial era, and includes many things that are obviously not beneficial. As Robert F. Kennedy pointed out a half-century a [...]

2019-06-18

• Économie informelle : cinq mythes à déconstruire à travers le monde
  by The Conversation in Contrepoints, 2019-06-18 02:30:11 UTC

  Par Cecilia Poggi, Anda David et Claire Zanuso. Un article de The Conversation À partir du 1 er juillet 2019, les Australiens pourront appeler une hotline dédiée au travail au noir pour dénoncer au fisc les entreprises frauduleuses. Ce nouveau service fait partie d’un plan gouvernemental plus large visant à lutter contre l’économie informelle. Dans un tout autre contexte, au Bangladesh où 87 % de jeunes sont engagés dans le secteur informel, le gouvernement lancera bientôt un programme afin d’aider ces travailleurs à être mieux insérés dans la croissance du pays rapporte le Global Times . Ces [...]

2019-06-17

• The Brave New World of Monetary Policy Operations
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-06-17 12:45:56 UTC

  “Ultimately, the size of the balance sheet will be determined by a number of factors, including demand for nonreserve liabilities, such as currency (which has been rising), and, importantly, the quantity of reserves necessary to remain reliably on the flat portion of the reserve demand curve.” Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal K. Quarles, February 22, 2019 . Prior to the Lehman failure in 2008, the Federal Reserve controlled the federal funds rate through open market operations that added to or subtracted from the excess reserves that banks held at the Fed. Because excess reserves typically [...]

• Skyscrapers, Housing, and Cities: A Q&A Interview with Ingrid Gould Ellen (Part I)
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-06-17 12:27:37 UTC

  Jason M. Barr       June 17, 2019 Ingrid Gould Ellen is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at New York University, and a Faculty Director at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy . She is the author of Sharing America’s Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration and editor of The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates About Housing, Segregation and Opportunity . On Skyscrapers and Housing JB: One of the vigorous current debates regarding tall building construction is about luxury residential towers in places like New York , San Francisc [...]

2019-06-12

• No title
  by MCG Blogs de Economía in Asociación de Estudios Euro-Americanos: Desarrollo internacional de América, Europa y otras áreas, 2019-06-12 17:58:00 UTC

  36. Informe de Economía de Europa, América y Mundial, 2019. Asociación de Estudios Euro-Americanos de Desarrollo Económico                                       Informe de Economía de Europa, América y Mundial, 2019                            AEEADE. Asociación de Estudios Euro-Americanos de Desarrollo Económico       Próximamente incluiremos un análisis de las secciones 2 y 3 del Informe Económico del año 2019, elaborado por la Presidenta de la Asociación, M.C. Guisán.     El informe consta de cuatro secciones: 1) Desarrollo económico de las regiones españolas. 2) Europa 2) América 3) Otras á [...]

• How to explain cost-effectiveness models for diagnostic tests to a lay audience
  by Rita Faria in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-06-12 06:00:28 UTC

  Non-health economists (henceforth referred to as ‘lay stakeholders’) are often asked to use the outputs of cost-effectiveness models to inform decisions, but they can find them difficult to understand. Conversely, health economists may have limited experience of explaining cost-effectiveness models to lay stakeholders. How can we do better? This article shares my experience of explaining cost-effectiveness models of diagnostic tests to lay stakeholders such as researchers in other fields, clinicians, managers, and patients, and suggests some approaches to make models easier to understand. [...]

2019-06-11

• Does Medical Marijuana Reduce Opioid-Related Deaths or Not?
  by Jacob Sullum in Hit & Run blog, 2019-06-11 21:15:01 UTC

  A widely cited  2014 study , reported in  JAMA Internal Medicine , found that medical marijuana laws were associated with lower rates of opioid-related mortality between 1999 and 2010. Supporters of marijuana reform have frequently invoked that study, written by University of Pennsylvania researcher Marcus Bachhuber and two co-authors, as evidence that letting people use cannabis for medical and/or recreational purposes helps reduce opioid-related deaths. Not so fast, say the authors of a study published yesterday in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , who extended the analy [...]

• Risposta ai critici: proprio perché l'Italia è una bomba, è il momento di trattare al rialzo
  by Sergio Cesaratto in Politica&EconomiaBlog, 2019-06-11 16:47:00 UTC

  Indossato l'elmetto per le bombe che pioveranno, ecco una risposta più articolata alle critiche all'intervista al sussidiario.net Europeisti no, realisti sì Un mia recente intervista ha fatto sollevare più di un sopracciglio ai miei amici, per metterla all’inglese. Uno di questi, che ringrazio, mi ha dedicato addirittura un editoriale su Sollevazione (luogo appropriato per la detta espressione facciale). Leonardo Mazzei riassume quanto dico in quattro punti: 1)       « i parametri di Maastricht hanno perfettamente senso ». 2)     “alla lettera UE bisogna dare « una risposta ragionevole con pr [...]

2019-06-10

• Italeave: The Renewed Threat of a Parallel Currency
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-06-10 12:13:27 UTC

  “[T]he mini-BOTs… are either money and then they are illegal, or they are debt and then that stock goes up…. I don't think there is a third possibility.”   ECB President Mario Draghi, press conference, 6 June 2019 . In the March 2018 general election, two Italian political parties (the League and the Five Star Movement) that eventually formed the current government campaigned against many of the structures that are the foundation of the European Union. One part of their agreed policy program, a proposal that resurfaced in the past week , concerns the possibility of issuing mini-BOTs (which sta [...]

• Alastair Canaway’s journal round-up for 10th June 2019
  by captaincanaway in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-06-10 11:00:54 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Analytic considerations in applying a general economic evaluation reference case to gene therapy . Value in Health Published 17th May 2019 For fledgling health economists starting in the world of economic [...]

• En torno a una mesa: Facilitadores sociales en las negociaciones
  by Anxo Sánchez in Nada Es Gratis, 2019-06-10 05:07:51 UTC

  Esta entrada es conjunta con Pablo Brañas-Garza, Antonio Cabrales, Guillermo Mateu y Angela Sutan, y es una traducción de "Around a table: Social facilitators for negotiations", recientemente aparecido en VoxEu . Las negociaciones son fundamentales en la vida económica. Tanto empresas como gobierno se enfrentan a ellas, y también aparecen frecuentemente en entornos personales y sociales. Son enormemente importantes pero también muy estresantes. Brooks y Schweitzer mostraron en 2011 que "comparado con otros con sentimientos neutros, los negociadores que sienten ansiedad esperan beneficios más [...]

2019-06-07

• Bankkriser kan stärka demokratin
  by Niclas Berggren in Nonicoclolasos, 2019-06-07 04:28:03 UTC

  Bankkriser brukar betraktas som negativa händelser, innefattandes risker för det finansiella systemet och för den reala ekonomins funktionssätt. Nu visar det sig dock, enligt studien ”Do Banking Crises Improve Democracy?” , att bankkriser ibland kan ha en positiv effekt: We study the impact of banking crises on the level of democracy. We use an event-study method on a sample of up to 129 countries over the period 1975–2010 accounting for 94 systemic banking crises. We find that banking crises are followed by an improvement in democracy and report evidence suggesting that the relation is causal [...]

2019-06-05

• Reassessing Trade Barriers with Global Value Chains
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-06-05 19:34:26 UTC

  Yuko Imura http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:19-19&r=dge This paper provides a systematic, quantitative analysis of the short-run and long-run effects of various trade-restricting policies in the presence of global value chains and multinational production. Using a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with endogenous firm entry and exit in both exporting and multinational production, I compare the effects of (i) tariffs on final-good imports, (ii) tariffs on intermediate-input imports, and (iii) barriers to accessing foreign markets. I show that, in the long run, all [...]

2019-06-04

• The Economics of Skyscraper Height (Part IV): Construction Costs Around the World
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-06-04 12:26:40 UTC

  Jason M. Barr      June 4, 2019 Note this is Part IV of a series on the economics of skyscrapers. Part I can be read here , Part II here , and Part III here . Rise of the Skylines As we look around planet Earth, we can’t help but notice that skyscrapers are getting taller. In 2000, for example, the average height of the tallest 100 completed buildings was around 285 meters (935 feet). In 2018, that number was about 385 meters (1263 feet), for an average annual growth rate of 1.8%. What is causing this rise in building height? The Demand for Height First and foremost, skyscraper construction i [...]

• All bark but no bite? What does the yield curve tell us about growth?
  by BankUnderground in Bank Underground, 2019-06-04 08:00:14 UTC

  Carlo Favero, Sebastian Vismara and Iryna Kaminska The slope of the yield curve has decreased in the US and the UK over the last few years ( Chart 1 ). This development is attracting significant attention, because the yield curve slope (i.e. the difference between longer term government bond yields and shorter term government bond yields) is a popular business cycle indicator, and a fall of longer term yields below shorter term yields (i.e. an ‘inversion’ of the yield curve) has historically been considered as a powerful signal of recessions, particularly in the US. Chart 1: [...]

• ¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos del PIB?
  by Antonia Díaz in Nada Es Gratis, 2019-06-04 05:07:20 UTC

  Cuando me preguntan acerca de mi profesión suelo decir que me dedico a estudiar el comportamiento humano más medible pero, tras leer el libro de la profesora Diane Coyle , “ GDP: a Brief but Affectionate History ”, me pregunto si, acaso, el adverbio “más” no es demasiado aventurado. Muchas veces se critica la osadía de los macroeconomistas a la hora de ofrecer predicciones y evaluar políticas (véase, como ejemplo, el reciente rifirrafe acerca del efecto del aumento en el Salario Mínimo Interprofesional sobre el empleo), a lo que suelo contestar que hacemos lo que podemos y que aprendemos sobre [...]

• Renewables VPPAs: An Interesting Pricing Problem For Aspiring Scholars
  by cpirrong in Streetwise Professor, 2019-06-04 01:13:11 UTC

  Virtual Power Purchasing Agreements (VPPAs) have been around for a while, and play a particularly important role in securing financing for renewable energy projects, as this article from Reuters regarding VPPAs in Europe indicates . They are essentially long term swaps whereby one party (e.g., a wind or solar operation) receives a fixed price for power, and pays a floating price, usually based (in the US) on the spot price in an RTO/ISO market (e.g., PJM, or MISO). These contracts present interesting pricing issues because of the unique nature of electricity as a commodity, and the uniqu [...]

2019-06-03

• Sam Watson’s journal round-up for 3rd June 2019
  by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-06-03 11:00:40 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Limits to human life span through extreme value theory . Journal of the American Statistical Association [ RePEc ] Published 2nd April 2019 The oldest verified person to have ever lived was Jeanne Calment [...]

2019-05-30

• Employment protection reform in European labor markets: the collective bargaining regime matters.
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-05-30 22:26:26 UTC

  By Francesco De Palma and Yann Thommen http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2019-16&r=dge Policy advisers repeatedly call on Western European countries to reform their employment protection legislation (EPL) by adopting layoff taxes to finance unemployment insurance (UI). This new design, partly based on the existing “experience-rating” (ER) system in the U.S., would induce firms to internalize layoff fiscal costs and hence reduce unemployment. Its success remains uncertain in economies with a collective wage-setting system, as in many Western European countries. Using a matching model wit [...]

• Ferraris and Resource Stocks
  by sense.sustainability@gmail.com (Jisung Park) in Sense and Sustainability, 2019-05-30 12:00:43 UTC

  Probably the most famous economic indicator is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP per capita gives us a measure of how much was produced in an economy per person. Most, if not all, governments use GDP per capita growth as a measure of their economic performance and a large branch in economic research focuses on understanding why some countries have such high GDP per capita while others do not. GDP is calculated as the sum of household consumption, investment (saving), government expenditures and net exports (net exports are total exports minus imports). GDP therefore is supposed to provide a su [...]

2019-05-28

• The Johnson puzzle
  by ? in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-05-28 12:32:03 UTC

  One of the puzzles of our time is why Boris Johnson is considered – not just by Tory members but by much of the media - to be a credible contender for Prime Minister when many of us regard him as a oafishbuffoon, serialliarandassociateof criminals. One ans [...]

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