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Blog aggregator for economics research

2019-03-25

• Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 25th March 2019
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-03-25 12:00:46 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 . How prevalent are implausible EQ-5D-5L health states and how do they affect valuation? A study combining quantitative and qualitative evidence . Value in Health Published 15th March 2019 The EQ-5D-5L is a [...]

• Keynes and the dearth of growth
  by Bruno Duarte in EUnomics, 2019-03-25 06:52:50 UTC

  It is not hard to recall John Maynard Keynes suggested contractions are the result of sluggish demand rather than price fluctuations back when both money was indexed to metal and productive capital could be destroyed. Monetary financing of public deficits coupled with persistent capital depletion (some demand today that zombie firms be retired) during WWII surely proved Keynes right – would applying Keynes today be equally correct? Surely we do not ignore capital value was determined by its indexing to metal commodities and intermittent capital controls (with corresponding risk premia) when K [...]

• Inequality, Portfolio Choice and the Great Recession
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-03-25 00:55:30 UTC

  By Heejeong Kim http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crd:wpaper:19002&r=dge What drives sharp declines in aggregate quantities over the Great Recession? I study this question by building a dynamic stochastic overlapping generations economy where households hold both low-return liquid and high-return illiquid assets. In this environment, I consider shocks to aggregate TFP that occur alongside a rise in risk of a further economic downturn. Importantly, a higher probability of an economic disaster is consistent with the recent evidence finding a decline in households’ expected income growth over the Grea [...]

2019-03-21

• Don’t Tax Capital — Optimal Ramsey Taxation in Heterogeneous Agent Economies with Quasi-Linear Preferences
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-03-21 16:04:46 UTC

  By YiLi Chien and Yi Wen http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2019-007&r=dge We build a tractable infinite-horizon Aiyagari-type model with quasi-linear preferences to address a set of long-standing issues in the optimal Ramsey taxation literature. The tractability of our model enables us to analytically prove the existence of Ramsey steady states and establish several strong and novel results: (i) Depending on the government’s capacity to issue debts, there can exist different types of Ramsey steady state and their existence depends critically on model parameter values. (ii) The optimal ca [...]

• Thesis Thursday: Alastair Irvine
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-03-21 07:00:35 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 Alastair Irvine who has a PhD from the University of Aberdeen . If you would like to suggest a candidate for an upcoming Thesis Thursday, get in touch. Title Time preferences and the patient-doctor interaction Supervisors Marjon van der Pol , Euan Phimister Repository link http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=238373 How can people’s time preferences affect the way they use health care? Time preferences are a way of thinking about how p [...]

2019-03-18

• The Distributional Effects of Conventional Monetary Policy and Quantitative Easing: Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-03-18 17:42:42 UTC

  By Stefan Hohberger, Romanos Priftis and Lukas Vogel http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:19-6&r=dge This paper compares the distributional effects of conventional monetary policy and quantitative easing (QE) within an estimated open-economy DSGE model of the euro area. The model includes two groups of households: (i) wealthier households, who own financial assets and can smooth consumption over time, and (ii) poorer households, who only receive labor and transfer income and live “hand to mouth.” We compare the impact of policy shocks on constructed measures of income and wealth inequality [...]

• Stress Testing Financial Networks: The Case of CCPs
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-03-18 12:19:47 UTC

  “[C]entral clearing will only make the financial system safer if CCPs themselves are run safely.” Then-Federal Reserve Governor Jerome H. Powell, Speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Symposium on Central Clearing, June 23, 2017 Following the crisis of 2007-09, in which AIG’s bilateral derivatives trades played a notable role, the G20 leaders called for central clearing of standardized derivatives. The resulting shift has been dramatic: central counterparties (CCPs) now clear about three-fourths of interest rate contracts, up from less than one-fourth a decade earlier (see Faruqui, Hu [...]

• Brendan Collins’s journal round-up for 18th March 2019
  by Bren Collins in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-03-18 12:00:58 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 . Evaluation of intervention impact on health inequality for resource allocation . Medical Decision Making [ PubMed ] Published 28th February 2019 How should decision-makers factor equity impacts into economic de [...]

2019-03-17

• Blue Skies Over Beijing (Princeton Press 2016) by Kahn and Zheng
  by Matthew Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2019-03-17 20:05:00 UTC

  The March 2019 JEL has published a review of my co-authored (joint with Siqi Zheng of MIT) 2016 Princeton Press book: Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China.� The book and its first chapter can be found here. Our book asks big questions; 1.� Why did China become so polluted? 2.� Why do Chinese urbanites increasingly demand "blue skies"? 3.� In the distinctive Chinese Communist System, do local and national officials have incentives to respond to the growing desire for blue skies? 4.� How do China's different cities compete against each other for jobs and people? [...]

2019-03-16

• Wachstumsschwäche, Niedrigzinsen und einige Erklärungen
  by Acemaxx-Analytics in Acemaxx-Analytics, 2019-03-16 13:01:00 UTC

  Die Geldpolitik sollte so funktionieren: Die Notenbank senkt die Zinssätze. Und Unternehmen und private Haushalte fühlen sich ermutigt, Kredit aufzunehmen und zu investieren: sie geben Geld aus. So läuft es aber nicht. In der Billig-Geld-Ära, die sich in den meisten Industrieländern im zweiten und in Japan im dritten Jahrzehnt befindet, gab es zwar Kreditaufnahme, aber es waren in erster Linie die Staaten, die es taten, nicht der private Sektor, wie Bloomberg in einem lesenswerten Bericht anhand von ein paar eindrucksvollen Abbildungen schildert. Unternehmen sind sogar inzwischen zum Netto-Spa [...]

• Eine erneute Bestätigung der Relativeinkommenshypothese
  by Ekkehart Schlicht in Funktionale Staatsfinanzen, 2019-03-16 08:14:00 UTC

  In einem früheren Blog habe ich mich über die jahrzehntelange Vernachlässigung von Duesenberrys Relativeinkommenshypothese (mit einer total schwachen Begründung von Friedman) lustig gemacht. Inzwischen wendet sich das Blatt. Die Relativeinkommenshypothese findet zusehends mehr Beachtung. Ein schönes und sehr überzeugendes Beispiel  findet sich in einer umfangreichen Studie von Noam Gruber. Er bezieht in seine Betrachtung nicht nur das relative Einkommen sondern auch das relative Vermögen ein und fasst seinen Beitrag wie folgt zusammen: Diese Studie verwendet Daten aus der chinesischen Haushalt [...]

2019-03-14

• Job Heterogeneity and Aggregate Labor Market Fluctuations
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-03-14 23:10:58 UTC

  By Pawel Krolikowski http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:190400&r=dge This paper disciplines a model with search over match quality using microeconomic evidence on worker mobility patterns and wage dynamics. In addition to capturing these individual data, the model provides an explanation for aggregate labor market patterns. Poor match quality among first jobs implies large fluctuations in unemployment due to a responsive job destruction margin. Endogenous job destruction generates a burst of layoffs at the onset of a recession and, together with on-the-job search, generates a negative com [...]

2019-03-13

• Skyscrapers and Shadows: The Value of Sunshine in the City
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-03-13 12:35:33 UTC

  Jason M. Barr          March 13, 2019 Almost none of the land use regulations that cities have ardently adopted for over a century have been justified by any serious quantitative work.   The existence of even the smallest externality, such as a shadow, has been seen as justification for massive interventions in the housing market. – Edward Glaeser The sun is the mother of life. Humans, like all biological lifeforms, need sunlight to survive and thrive. From it, they extract vitamin D; warmth for their furless bodies; and a general sense of well-being. Sunlight, however, is a scarce commodity; [...]

2019-03-11

• What Risk Professionals Want
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-03-11 12:59:36 UTC

  “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” Warren Buffett (cited in Omaha World-Herald , January 2, 1994) “If you don’t invest in risk management, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it’s a risky business.” Gary Cohn, then-President of Goldman Sachs, panel discussion , September 25, 2011 As memories of the 2007-09 financial crisis fade, we worry that complacency is setting in. Recent news is not good. In the name of reducing the regulatory burden on small and some medium-sized firms, the Congress and the President enacted legislation that eased the requirements on some of the larg [...]

2019-03-09

• Warren wants to Turn the Internet into a Literal Sewer (Service)
  by Manne & Stapp in Truth on the Market, 2019-03-09 17:05:43 UTC

  Near the end of her new proposal to break up Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple , Senator Warren asks, “So what would the Internet look like after all these reforms?” It’s a good question, because, as she herself notes, “Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn’t exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world.” To Warren, our most dynamic and innovative companies constitute a problem that needs solving. She described the details of that solution in a blog post : First, [my administration would restore competition to the tec [...]

2019-03-08

• Knapp (1905) never wrote that government spends first and taxes later – did he not “get it”?
  by Dirk in econoblog101, 2019-03-08 10:37:27 UTC

  My new working paper Knapp’s State Theory of Money and its reception in German academic discourse  makes a couple of interesting points. Here is the short version with three key takeaways (apart from the fact that Knapp’s book was discussed by many other economists, and at some length – 20 pages was normal, even more than 40 was possible!): In The State Theory of Money, Knapp never says: government spends first and taxes later . The word “spending” does not appear even once, and the word “spend” appears twice – once in the context of a commodity and once in the context of time. That has l [...]

• "Es difícil que las niñas quieran ser algo que no ven"
  by J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz in Nada Es Gratis, 2019-03-08 06:07:29 UTC

  de José Ignacio Conde-Ruiz, @conderuiz En la actualidad estamos inmersos en la llamada cuarta revolución industrial.  Esta revolución digital con la difusión de Internet y de las nuevas tecnologías esta trayendo consigo desarrollos económicos y sociales nunca antes imaginables. Aunque es difícil anticipar cual va a ser su impacto sobre el futuro del empleo, parece que hay cierto consenso sobre el hecho de que las profesiones que mas demanda tendrán en el futuro serán las relacionadas con las nuevas capacidades y habilidades digitales. Y es aquí donde nos encontramos un problema. La participaci [...]

2019-03-07

• My quality-adjusted life year
  by Bren Collins in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-03-07 07:00:07 UTC

  Why did I do it? I have evaluated lots of services and been involved in trials where I have asked people to collect EQ-5D data. During this time several people have complained to me about having to collect EQ-5D data so I thought I would have a ‘taste of my own medicine’. I measured my health-related quality of life (HRQoL) using EQ-5D-3L, EQ-5D-VAS, and EQ-5D-5L, every day for a year (N=1). I had the EQ-5D on a spreadsheet on my smartphone and prompted myself to do it at 9 p.m. every night. I set a target of never being more than three days late in doing it, which I missed twice through [...]

2019-03-04

• Competition in Asia: too little of a good thing
  by Adam Triggs in East Asia Forum, 2019-03-04 11:00:32 UTC

  Authors: Adam Triggs and Jake Read, ANU Weak competition is worrying Western economies. It has been linked to inadequate investment , mounting mark-ups , increasing inequality , weak wages , struggling start-ups , pricey products and insufficient innovation . Asian economies could learn from their mistakes. Many of them will face, or are already facing, similar challenges. Working together through a multilateral approach to these challenges will make them easier to address. Addressing these challenges early will pay dividends into the future. Advanced economies are ticking-off many of the sym [...]

2019-03-03

• Produzione scientifica (i coNpetenti...)
  by Alberto Bagnai in Goofynomics, 2019-03-03 17:02:00 UTC

  Il pomeriggio volge al termine, e non mi pare vero di aver passato tutta la giornata a casa. Fatemi spendere una mezz'oretta risicata, fra lo studio di una direttiva e quello di un disegno di legge, per mettere i puntini sulle "i" della parola "competenti". Ce n'è una sola, e in effetti il punto è uno, e solo uno. In ambito scientifico la competenza si misura coi risultati raggiunti in termini di pubblicazioni. Il resto interessa meno. Le pubblicazioni si valutano sotto almeno due profili: la quantità e la qualità (fare un'unica cosa bellissima e poi dormire sugli allori non è segno di grande [...]

• The 1% vs the 0.1%
  by ? in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-03-03 13:16:44 UTC

  Many of you might react to the FT’sstoryabout the “squeezed 1%” by getting out the world’s smallest violin. I think this is a mistake. It reminds us that the damage done by inequality extends beyond the generalsocialandeconomicharm. It hurts even those who [...]

• Hvem chikanerer russiske journalister?
  by Christian Bjørnskov in Punditokraterne, 2019-03-03 13:03:32 UTC

  Siden slutningen af 90erne er hundrede – hvis ikke endnu flere – journalister blevet chikaneret, overfaldet og i adskillige tilfælde myrdet i Rusland. Det samme gælder flere oppositionspolitikere, når de øjensynligt var ved at blive en offentlig belastning for Putins regime. Det har dog været heftigt diskuteret, om Rusland primært er farligt for journalister pga. at organiseret kriminalitet ’forsvarer sig’ mod offentlig kritik af deres aktiviteter, eller om det mere systematisk er det politiske regime selv, der udgør faren for den fjerde statsmagt. Spørgsmålet er med andre ord, om russiske [...]

• Behavioural New Keynesian Models
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-03-03 04:24:55 UTC

  By Robert Calvert Jump and Paul Levine http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sur:surrec:0219&r=dge This paper provides a bird’s eye view of the behavioural New Keynesian literature. We discuss three key empirical regularities in macroeconomic data which are not accounted for by the standard New Keynesian model, namely, excess kurtosis, stochastic volatility, and departures from rational expectations. We then present a simple behavioural New Keynesian model that accounts for these empirical regularities in a straightforward manner. We discuss elaborations and extensions of the basic model, and suggest a [...]

2019-02-27

• Regulating Facebook could hinder small businesses with overseas customers
  by ? in Noozilla Top, 2019-02-27 10:01:12 UTC

  Digital platforms provide a host of challenges for governments. Questions about how to best protect privacy, democracy, and speech online become more pressing every year. Topics: Facebook, Social Media [...]

2019-02-26

• Governments Bear Much of the Responsibility for Rising Inequality—But Also Have the Tools to Reduce It
  by Michele Battisti and Joseph Zeira in Pro-Market, 2019-02-26 14:39:47 UTC

  A new study tracks the influence of public policy on inequality and argues that the main rise in inequality has been a result of the decline in public sectors in the OECD countries.     Income inequality has been at the forefront of public debates in the US and around the world in recent years, fueling voter dissatisfaction in liberal democracies and contributing to the rise of far right populists. Inequality has become a particular area of interest for economists, as numerous studies show a dramatic rise in income and wealth inequalities since the 1980s.   Research in economics reacts both [...]

2019-02-25

• Inflation risks and inflation expectations
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-02-25 13:49:59 UTC

  “The Phillips curve is the connective tissue between the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate goals of maximum employment and price stability.” FRBNY President John C. Williams, USMPF Discussion , February 22, 2019. “The White House wants highly capable, competent people who understand that you can have strong economic growth without higher inflation.” White House National Economic Council head Lawrence Kudlow, cited in The Wall Street Journal , January 24, 2019 U.S. inflation has been low and steady for three decades. This welcome stability is not merely a consequence of good fortune. Shocks that [...]

• Sam Watson’s journal round-up for 25th February 2019
  by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-02-25 12:00:22 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 . Democracy does cause growth . Journal of Political Economy [ RePEc ] Published January 2019 Citizens of a country with a democratic system of government are able to affect change in its governors and infl [...]

• Everything you think you know about corporate tax incentives is wrong
  by ? in Noozilla Top, 2019-02-25 10:36:06 UTC

  Cities should stop playing Amazon’s game and quit offering companies tax incentives. New York City should count its blessings.Read Full Story Topics: Taxes, Amazon, Amazon (AMZN) [...]

• Everything you think you know about corporate tax incentives is wrong
  by ? in Co.Exist, 2019-02-25 08:00:57 UTC

  Cities should stop playing Amazon’s game and quit offering companies tax incentives. New York City should count its blessings.Read Full Story [...]

• Media pÃ¥verkar politiska attityder – fallet Östtyskland
  by Niclas Berggren in Nonicoclolasos, 2019-02-25 05:15:01 UTC

  Den nya studien ”Media’s Role in the Making of a Democrat: Evidence from East Germany” visar följande: This paper explores the causal influence of media content on voting behavior. We exploit a natural experiment involving access to West German TV within the German Democratic Republic. Focusing on federal and state election outcomes in the post-reunification decade (i.e., a time at which TV content was harmonized), we find that municipalities that had access to Western TV broadcasts before reunification have lower vote shares for left-wing and right-wing extremist parties. With regard to poten [...]

2019-02-21

• It's 'Time to Panic' Over Climate Change, Asserts New York Times Op-Ed
  by Ronald Bailey in Hit & Run blog, 2019-02-21 18:25:00 UTC

  Unabated man-made climate change would likely pose problems , many significant, for humanity during the course of this century. But is it " time to panic " about it, as David Wallace-Wells writes in a recent New York Times op-ed? "The age of climate panic is here," declares the author of the forthcoming The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming . Although he thinks it's not nearly enough, Wallace-Wells suggests that the newly proposed Green New Deal is "what the beginning of a solution looks like." To support his call for panic, Wallace-Wells cites the so-called Doomsday report , w [...]

• Structure vs agency in economics
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-02-21 14:15:56 UTC

  Will Davies made a typically good point yesterday when he tweeted that the “impoverishment of the ‘ sociological imagination ’ over decades” has left people “people unable to speak critically of systemic problems, without personifying them”. What we have today is a crude moralistic tribalism in which people divide simply into goodies and baddies. We see this in the “ two minutes hate ” against Shamima Begum – which is oblivious to the fact that one’s rights do not depend solely upon one’s moral character. We saw it in the silly debate about whether Churchill was a hero or villain, much of whic [...]

2019-02-20

• Star Trek and the Economics of the Future (Part II): Programming versus Survival
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-02-20 13:04:54 UTC

  Jason M. Barr           February 20, 2019 Is it possible they built their machines too well…gave them pride and a desire to survive? Machines that wanted order and logic and found that frustrated by the illogical emotional creatures that built them? –Captain James T. Kirk to the ancient android, Ruk (TOS:S1:E7, What Are Little Girls Made Of? ) A Brief History of the Economic Revolutions of Homo Sapiens Our world is characterized by rapid technological change. The root cause of this is the need for economic growth. This quest for growth, however, is relatively new in the long history of homo sa [...]

• Method of the month: Permutation tests
  by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-02-20 09:00:22 UTC

  Once a month we discuss a particular research method that may be of interest to people working in health economics. We’ll consider widely used key methodologies, as well as more novel approaches. Our reviews are not designed to be comprehensive but provide an introduction to the method, its underlying principles, some applied examples, and where to find out more. If you’d like to write a post for this series, get in touch . This month’s method is permutation tests . Principle One of the main objections to the use of p -values for statistical inference is that they are often misunderstoo [...]

2019-02-19

• Just Released: Introducing the SCE Household Spending Survey
  by Blog Author in Liberty Street Economics, 2019-02-19 16:00:00 UTC

  Gizem Kosar, Kyle Smith, and Wilbert van der Klaauw Today we are releasing new data on individuals’ experiences and expectations regarding household spending. These data have been collected every four months since December 2014 as part of our Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). The goal of this blog post is to introduce the SCE Household Spending Survey and highlight some of its features. While the SCE Household Spending Survey shares design features with the main SCE—both pose probabilistic questions to a rotating panel of respondents—the information it collects is unique in [...]

• Federalism Is a Condition for Better States
  by Dalibor Rohac in Cato Unbound, 2019-02-19 07:45:00 UTC

  Dalibor Rohac The libertarian distrust of government rests on solid empirical foundations. According to work by the late R.J. Rummel, after all, around 262 million unarmed people died at the hands of governments over the course of the 20 th century – six times as many as those who died in combat over the same period. Although Mark Koyama’s essay and the body of research on which it draws do not show that such distrust is completely unwarranted, they do qualify it in important ways. Mark’s findings establish links between state capacity and institutions on the one hand, and conflict and prospe [...]

• Energy Efficiency Improvements Do Not Save Energy
  by noreply@blogger.com (David Stern) in Stochastic Trend, 2019-02-19 00:58:00 UTC

  I have a new working paper out, coauthored with Stephan Bruns and Alessio Moneta , titled: " Macroeconomic Time-Series Evidence That Energy Efficiency Improvements Do Not Save Energy ". It's another paper from our ARC funded project: " Energy Efficiency Innovation: Diffusion, Policy and the Rebound Effect ". We estimate the economy-wide effect on energy use of energy efficiency improvements in the U.S. We find that the rebound is around 100%, implying that in the long run energy efficiency improvements do not save energy or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the micro level, we might naïvely [...]

2019-02-18

• Improving resilience: banks and non-bank intermediaries
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-02-18 13:03:28 UTC

  Debt causes fragility. When banks lack equity funding, even a small adverse shock can put the financial system at risk. Fire sales can undermine the supply of credit to healthy firms, precipitating a decline in economic activity. The failure of key institutions can threaten the payments system. Authorities naturally respond by increasing required levels of equity finance, ensuring that intermediaries can weather severe conditions without damaging others. Readers of this blog know that we are strong supporters of higher capital requirements: if forced to pick a number, we might choose a leverag [...]

2019-02-17

• Science and Subterfuge in Economics
  by Jayati Ghosh in INET Blog, 2019-02-17 05:00:00 UTC

  This article originally appeared on Project Syndicate Mainstream economics has a tendency to decide on some “established” conclusions, and then hold to them, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary. This is bad enough, but what may be worse for a discipline that lays claim to being a science is the lack of insistence on the replicability of empirical results. This is both standard and essential in most natural sciences; in economics, by contrast, there is mostly indifference and occasionally even fierce resistance to it. In so [...]

2019-02-16

• «4η Βιομηχανική Επανάσταση: Μύθος ή Πραγματικότητα;» Μαυρουδέας Σταύρος – Ημερίδα ΕΟΕΔΕ
  by Stavros Mavroudeas in Stavros Mavroudeas blog, 2019-02-16 22:04:31 UTC

  Ακολουθεί παρακάτω το κείμενο και οι σύνδεσμοι της παρουσίαση της εισήγησης « 4 η   Βιομηχανική Επανάσταση: Μύθος ή Πραγματικότητα; » ( Μαυρουδέας Σταύρος) στην Ημερίδα που διοργάνωσε η ΕΟΕΔΕ στις 15/2/2019 στη Θεσσαλονίκη     Ένωση Οικονομολόγων Εκπαιδευτικών Δευτεροβάθμιας Εκπαίδευσης (ΕΟΕΔΕ) Τμ. Μακεδονίας – Θράκης   Επιστημονική ημερίδα: « Η οικονομία στον ορίζοντα της 4ης βιομηχανικής επανάστασης » Θεσσαλονίκη, 15/2/19     4 η βιομηχανική επανάσταση: Μύθος ή Πραγματικότητα;   Σταύρος Μαυρουδέας καθ. Πολιτικής Οικονομίας Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο Τμ. Κοινων. Πολιτικής e-mail: s.mavroudeas@pant [...]

2019-02-15

• Non-expiring information
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-02-15 13:44:47 UTC

  I liked this line from this piece at Farnam Street: A lot of us are on the treadmill of consuming expiring information. Expiring information is not the same as trivia, which can be useful and interesting. It is instead knowledge which has a short shelf-life. A lot of talk about Brexit has been expiring information. We are no nearer today to knowing what type of Brexit we’ll get (or even if or when we’ll get it) than we were on June 24 th 2016. All the effort expended over the last 32 months on wondering what will happen has therefore been largely wasted. News which looked useful at the time [...]

2019-02-14

• Science and Subterfuge in Economics
  by Jayati Ghosh in Project Syndicate, 2019-02-14 14:05:09 UTC

  NEW DELHI – Mainstream economics has a tendency to decide on some “established” conclusions, and then hold to them, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary. This is bad enough, but what may be worse for a discipline that lays claim to being a science is the lack of insistence on the replicability of empirical results. This is both standard and essential in most natural sciences; in economics, by contrast, there is mostly indifference and occasionally even fierce resistance to it. In some cases, the data that must be used to replicate conclusions are denied to other researchers. The reason [...]

2019-02-13

• The pawn mistake
  by ? in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-02-13 13:44:23 UTC

  The ridiculous Digby Jones hastweeted:Hey Mr Tusk. Those who pushed for Brexit did have a plan but it required your lot not to bully the UK, for Remoaners & the Establishment not to sabotage the wish of the majority & for Jezza’s mob not to play tr [...]

2019-02-12

• The forecasting record
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-02-12 13:27:57 UTC

  The ONS says GDP grew by 1.4% last year. 1.4% is a significant number: it is exactly what the private sector economists surveyed by the Treasury predicted in December 2017 that growth would be in 2018. Granted, this bulls-eye might not survive future revisions to GDP estimates. But it reminds us that economists’ forecasts for growth are often not too bad. My chart shows the point. It compares forecasts made in December for growth the following year to actual growth since 2001. Most of the time, the forecasts aren’t too far out. Where they go badly wrong is in recessions. Economists don’t see [...]

• Sorpresa: più immigrati, meno spesa sanitaria
  by Giulia Bettin e Agnese Sacchi in La Voce, 2019-02-12 09:37:18 UTC

  È vero che gli immigrati sfruttano i sistemi di welfare dei paesi di arrivo? Gli stranieri che risiedono in Italia sono mediamente più giovani della popolazione italiana. Ed è più bassa la loro domanda di servizi sanitari, facendo scendere la spesa. Immigrati e welfare: prendono o lasciano? Da tempo è in corso un intenso dibattito sugli effetti socio-economici dell’immigrazione , accompagnato da una diffusa percezione che gli immigrati siano un peso perché sfruttano i sistemi di welfare nei paesi di arrivo. In un recente lavoro di ricerca mostriamo che in Italia l’aumento di 1 punto percentua [...]

2019-02-11

• Common Ownership: Back to Basics
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-02-11 14:47:56 UTC

  “[I]f we suppose our contractors to be in a sensible degree not ‘economic’ agents, but actuated in effective moments by a sympathy with other’s interests […] we might suppose that the object which X (whose own utility is P) tends […] to maximize is not P, but P plus λ π , where λ is a coefficient of effective sympathy .” Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, Mathematical Psychics, An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences , London, 1881, page 53. “[I]ndex funds provide investors with the most effective stock-market strategy of all time: buy American business and hold it forever, and [...]

• Sam Watson’s journal round-up for 11th February 2019
  by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-02-11 13:43:11 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 . Contest models highlight inherent inefficiencies of scientific funding competitions . PLoS Biology [ PubMed ] Published 2nd January 2019 If you work in research you will have no doubt thought to yourself at on [...]

2019-02-09

• Why MMT (Ultimately) Doesn't Matter
  by Tyler Durden in Zero Hedge, 2019-02-09 19:30:00 UTC

  Authored by Peter Earle via The American Institute for Economic Research, Last year, internet  searches  for Modern Monetary Theory ( MMT ) numbered approximately 100 per month; in the years and decades before that, the weekly total searches numbered mostly in single digits. Yet in the first few weeks of this year, searches have topped 100 per day and seem to be on an uptrend. People who’ve never heard the term “chartalism” are speaking — and acting — as if a new and groundbreaking discovery has been made; “a  new  kind of science” in the realm of economics, situated neatly upon the doorsill [...]

2019-02-08

• Gli immigrati irregolari? Calano se si riduce il sommerso
  by Luca Pensieroso e Fabio Mariani in La Voce, 2019-02-08 09:58:21 UTC

  La riduzione del carico fiscale e la lotta all’evasione possono contribuire a diminuire l’attrattività del settore informale e, di conseguenza, l’afflusso di immigrati irregolari. Politiche protezionistiche potrebbero invece avere l’effetto opposto. L’offerta e la domanda di immigrati L’immigrazione clandestina è un argomento di grande attualità che divide l’opinione pubblica. Se la riduzione del numero di immigrati clandestini è un obiettivo della politica del governo, un contributo significativo al suo raggiungimento potrebbe venire dalla diminuzione delle tasse e da un più efficace contro [...]

• Research Review | 8 February 2019 | ESG Investing
  by James Picerno in The Capital Spectator, 2019-02-08 04:19:57 UTC

  Can Sustainable Investment Yield Better Financial Returns: A Comparative Study of ESG Indices and MSCI Indices Mansi Jain (Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University), et al. 2 February 2019 ‘Sustainable investment’ includes a variety of asset classes selected while caring for the  causes of environmental, social, and governance (ESG). It is an investment strategy that seeks to  combine social and/or environmental benefits with financial returns, thus linking investor’s social, ethical, ecological and economic concerns… The purpose of this paper is to study whether the sustainable investment al [...]

2019-02-07

• The costs of public sector patronage: lessons from the British Empire
  by Siobhan Miller in Microeconomic Insights, 2019-02-07 15:24:26 UTC

  Civil servants constitute a key element of state capacity, with the responsibility for raising government revenues, providing public services and implementing reforms. But what happens to their performance when they are appointed to office less on the basis of their talents than on their social connections to powerful patrons? This research examines the costs of patronage through the lens of a historical bureaucracy that spanned the globe: Britain’s Colonial Office. The research combines newly digitized personnel and public finance data from the administration of the British Empire over the pe [...]

2019-02-06

• Global poverty over the long-term: legitimate issues
  by Branko Milanovic in globalinequality, 2019-02-06 17:08:00 UTC

  I became somewhat peripherally involved in the debate on long-term trends in global poverty that is raging these days in the WebSphere, prompted first by some very strong claims by Steven Pinker and Bill Gates, and then by an equally strong rebuttal by Jason Hickel . Max Roser whose work is to be strongly commended became somewhat of a lateral casualty in this debate because it was his graph (based essentially on the work of Martin Ravallion and the World Bank) that Pinker and Gates quoted and Hickel disagreed with. Joe Hassel and Max Roser have now written a detailed explanation of the data [...]

• New working paper: "Willingness Toupee"
  by John Whitehead in Environmental Economics, 2019-02-06 16:13:08 UTC

  Willingness Toupee David M. McEvoy, O. Ashton Morgan and John C, Whitehead No 19-01, Working Papers from Department of Economics, Appalachian State University Abstract: In this paper we tackle the hairy problem of male pattern baldness. We survey balding men and elicit their willingness to pay to move from their current sad situation to a more plentiful one. Then we comb-over the results. What’s the average willingness to pay to move from a glistening cue ball to a luscious mane? About $30,000. Key Words: mullet, skullet, comb-over, ducktail, Beatlemania, buzz cut, whiffle, pageboy, attribute [...]

• The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level in Overlapping Generations Models
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-02-06 01:13:47 UTC

  By Roger Farmer and Pawel Zabczyk http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nsr:niesrd:498&r=dge We demonstrate that the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) cannot be used to determine the price level uniquely in the overlapping generations (OLG) model. We provide two examples of OLG models, one with three 3-period lives and one with 62-period lives. Both examples are calibrated to an income profile chosen to match the life-cycle earnings process in U.S. data estimated by Guvenen et al. (2015). In both examples, there exist multiple steady-state equilibria. Our findings challenge established views abou [...]

2019-02-05

• Obstacles to full employment
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-02-05 15:54:14 UTC

  Is full employment sustainable? For me, this is one question posed by the row between Richard Murphy and Jonathan Portes and Simon Wren-Lewis over Labour’s proposed fiscal rule. Richard describes the difference between them thus: I am seeking a stable, sustainable economy with full employment. They are seeking the restoration of the model of central bank monetarism that existed from 1999 to 2008 in the UK, with well-known consequences. This is because Portes and Wren-Lewis want to use fiscal policy to inflate the economy away from the zero lower bound, so that interest rates can again be use [...]

• Book Review: Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities by Alain Bertaud. The MIT Press, 2018
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2019-02-05 13:11:16 UTC

  Jason M. Barr       February 5, 2019 Today, just over half of the world’s population lives in cities. By the middle of the 21 st century this figure will likely be near 75%. The future is decidedly urban. Those who care about the well-being of humanity must naturally be concerned with how cities work; for when they function well, people are happier and healthier (and other species as well). The Dream of Urban Utopia At least since the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when the skies were black with coal dust, and poor factory workers huddled together in squalid housing, city planners an [...]

2019-02-04

• FOMC Communication: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-02-04 13:27:50 UTC

  “Since becoming a central banker, I have learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.” Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, September 22, 1987 ( The Wall Street Journal , as cited in Geraats ). “More recently, in the 1980s, policymakers, myself included, were concerned that being too explicit about short-run targets would make such targets more difficult to change, impeding necessary adjustments to evolving market and economic conditions.” Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan , October 11, 2001. Following t [...]

2019-02-02

• What Hides behind the German Labor Market Miracle? Unemployment Insurance Reforms and Labor Market Dynamics
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-02-02 22:34:10 UTC

  By Benjamin Hartung, Philip Jung and Moritz Kuhn http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12001&r=dge A key question in labor market research is how the unemployment insurance system affects unemployment rates and labor market dynamics. We revisit this old question studying the German Hartz reforms. On average, lower separation rates explain 76% of declining unemployment after the reform, a fact unexplained by existing research focusing on job finding rates. The reduction in separation rates is heterogeneous, with long-term employed, high-wage workers being most affected. We causally link our [...]

• My favourite economics papers
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-02-02 12:14:49 UTC

  Last week Chris Bertram asked me to tweet the covers of books I’ve enjoyed, which I interpreted for the most part as books which made a big impact upon me. This set me thinking: what academic papers have also done so? Here’s a list of 11 – an arbitrary number, in arbitrary order, E&OE. “The elasticity of demand with respect to product failures” by Werner Troesken (pdf) . This describes how Americans continued to buy snake oil for decades despite it being of dubious efficacy. It is of clear political relevance today: populists are using many of the tactics snake oil sellers used. But it has eve [...]

2019-02-01

• Endogenous forward guidance
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-02-01 17:39:39 UTC

  By Boris Chafwehé, Rigas Oikonomou, Romanos Priftis and Lukas Vogel http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201810-354&r=dge We propose a novel framework where forward guidance (FG) is endogenously determined. Our model assumes that a monetary authority solves an optimal policy problem under commitment at the zero-lower bound. FG derives from two sources: 1. from commiting to keep interest rates low at the exit of the liquidity trap, to stabilize inflation today. 2. From debt sustainability concerns, when the planner takes into account the consolidated budget constraint in optimization. Our mo [...]

2019-01-31

• How to gauge the world’s banking markets? Look to the World Bank
  by ? in FRED blog, 2019-01-31 14:00:57 UTC

  How competitive are countries’ banking markets? It’s a complicated question that requires some thought and effort to answer: First, there are several ways to measure competition. One way is to measure the concentration of market shares. But this method isn’t perfect because there may still be substantial competition in a market with few players. Another way is to look at markups—that is, the difference between the price charged and the marginal cost (the cost of one additional produced item). The problem here is that it’s difficult to directly observe those costs, so the costs need to be [...]

• Wishful thinking: too much, & too little
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-01-31 13:50:30 UTC

  There have been several excellent tributes to the great Erik Olin Wright , which I especially urge non-Marxists to read as insights into what it means to be a Marxist today. In a spirit of undue curmudgeonliness, however, there’s one point made by David Calnitsky I disagree with. He says :  For Marxists and fellow travelers, the power of wishful thinking is more seductive than it is for others without such normative commitments. I disagree. We Marxists have by now learned from that most effective of teachers, the school of hard knocks, that our hopes are often disappointed. Wishful thinking [...]

• The Disability Option: Labor Market Dynamics with Macroeconomic and Health Risks
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-01-31 02:42:18 UTC

  By Amanda Michaud and David Wiczer http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nys:sunysb:18-12&r=dge We evaluate the contribution of changing macroeconomic conditions and demographics to the increase in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) over recent decades. Within our quantitative framework, multiple sectors differentially expose workers to health and economic risks, both of which affect individuals’ decisions to apply for SSDI. Over the transition, falling wages at the bottom of the distribution increased awards by 27% in the 1980s and 90s and aging demographics rose in importance thereafter. The [...]

2019-01-30

• The role of institutions
  by Bruno Duarte in EUnomics, 2019-01-30 12:25:29 UTC

  Marianna Mazzucato  is a brilliant economic researcher frequently hired by European innovation policy-makers to advise on neo-Schumpeterian social market economy policy. I haven’t finished reading Mazzucato’s work as an intelligible argument for broader audiences requires extensive recapitulation but did find an interesting piece by two economists that criticise Mazzucato’s approach to finance. According to Alberto Mingali and  Terrence Kealey , Mazzucato’s assertion that the State’s control of currency (a  Modern Monetary Theory  approach to money) implies returns on research depend on the gr [...]

• A flaw in deposit insurance.
  by Ralph Musgrave in Ralphonomics, 2019-01-30 10:04:00 UTC

  An alleged merit of deposit insurance is that it encourages saving (in the form of accumulating a stock of money held in banks), which in turn encourages banks to lend, which allegedly increases investment. There are several flaws in that idea. James Tobin in his paper “The Case for Preserving Regulatory Distinctions” pointed to several flaws. But the flaw I wish to highlight (not spotted by Tobin, far as I can see) is as follows.  Absent deposit insurance, so called deposits held at banks are actually more in the nature of shares, in that those so called deposits can lose some or all their va [...]

2019-01-29

• Perché facciamo così l’analisi costi-benefici*
  by punto in La Voce, 2019-01-29 10:05:48 UTC

  di Paolo Beria, Alfredo Drufuca, Marco Ponti, Riccardo Parolin e Francesco Ramella Un semplice esempio Si immagini un progetto che riduce il tempo di viaggio da A a B di 10 euro, portando il costo generalizzato da 100 a 90 euro; il beneficio degli utenti, che assumiamo per semplicità coincidere con il beneficio collettivo, è evidentemente 10 euro. Si immagini però che lo stato, contestualmente, imponga una nuova tassa su quella relazione pari a 9,90 euro. Il costo generalizzato degli utenti dopo il progetto sarà 100 -10 (beneficio) + 9,90 (tassa) =99,90 quindi avranno un beneficio solo di 0,1 [...]

• Cambio di passo per il franco Cfa
  by Massimo Amato in La Voce, 2019-01-29 09:53:35 UTC

  Il franco Cfa ha permesso l’afflusso di capitali esteri e il sostegno alle importazioni, ma implica forti vincoli per i paesi che aderiscono all’accordo. Vanno rimessi in discussione il cambio fisso con l’euro e i rapporti di scambio fra gli stati membri. Come funziona il franco Cfa Ragionare, senza strumentalizzazioni né minimizzazioni, sul franco Cfa ( Communauté Financière Africaine ) implica questioni tecniche e simboliche. La moneta le tocca entrambe, perché richiede decisioni sovrane: non irrazionali (si spera), ma nemmeno riconducibili alla pura applicazione di modelli. L’attuale franc [...]

2019-01-28

• China: Mao Strikes Back
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-01-28 14:10:43 UTC

  “Establishing a unified, open, competitive and orderly market system is the basis for the market to play a decisive role in the allocation of resources.” Communiqué , Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, November 12, 2013. “The fundamental obstacle to implementing far-reaching economic reforms in China is the top leadership’s view that, while state-owned firms may be a drag on China’s economic growth, they are essential to maintaining the position and control of the Chinese Communist Party and achieving the party’s strategic objectives.” Nicholas [...]

2019-01-24

• On top tax rates
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-01-24 13:45:47 UTC

  I’m not happy with either the left or right’s conventional arguments about top marginal taxes. Let’s take the right’s first. They claim that high taxes disincentivize the work of the highly-skilled and in doing so reduce GDP and tax revenue. I’m not happy with this because the evidence is weak (pdf) . As Thomas Piketty and colleagues have shown , the feasible top tax rate could be very high indeed. In this context, I’m baffled by Greg Mankiw’s claim that more of the rich are like Taylor Swift than Henry Potter. Let’s say Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets her way and there is a 70% tax rate on hig [...]

• Supply or demand?
  by Bruno Duarte in EUnomics, 2019-01-24 07:05:21 UTC

  Is public spending supply or demand-side economics?  Although the ECB and the IMF argue that government spending impacts consumption and satiates demand, there is very little consensus amongst practitioners whether government implements supply or demand-side economics. At its rudiment, the question asked is whether government is the supplier of goods such that it may influence the Aggregate Supply (AS) curve. Typically, supply-side stimulus increases output  without accelerating inflation  by improving productivity; whereas demand-side stimulus increases output while accelerating inflation by [...]

2019-01-23

• Meeting round-up: Health Economists’ Study Group (HESG) Winter 2019
  by Rita Faria in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-01-23 07:00:08 UTC

  2019 started with aplomb with the HESG Winter meeting , superbly organised by the Centre for Health Economics , University of York. Andrew Jones kicked off proceedings with his brilliant course on data visualisation in health econometrics. The eager audience learnt about Edward Tufte’s and others’ ideas about how to create charts that help to make it much easier to understand information. The course was tremendously well received by the HESG audience. And I know that I’ll find it incredibly useful too, as there were lots of ideas that apply to my work. So I’m definitely going to be looking fur [...]

2019-01-21

• Lo que no te han contado del Elefante de Milanovic
  by Ancora Imparando in Elblogsalmon, 2019-01-21 18:14:07 UTC

  Toca hablar de desigualdad . Proclamado por muchos como el gráfico más importante de los últimos años, el Elefante de Milanovic no deja indiferente a nadie en el mundillo. Hoy, intentaremos rellenar sus lagunas más comunes. Vemos renta relativa en X (si, de cada 100, cobro más que 61 y menos que 37, seré el percentil 62) y su crecimiento en Y. De ahí el mote de "elefante": poco crecimiento en la cola, torso alto, caída en la curva de la trompa y repunte de megaricos. Spoiler: la globalización no afecta a todos por igual . La lectura habitual afirma que pobres y ricos se h [...]

• Revealing Stereotypes: Evidence from Immigrants in Schools
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-01-21 17:11:12 UTC

  By: Alberto Alesina  (Department of Economics, Harvard University, IGIER Bocconi, NBER and CEPR);  Michela Carlana  (Harvard Kennedy School and IZA);  Eliana La Ferrara  (Department of Economics, IGIER and LEAP, Bocconi University); Paolo Pinotti  (Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University, DONDENA, and Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti) Abstract: If individuals become aware of their stereotypes, do they change their behavior? We study this question in the context of teachers’ bias in grading immigrants and native children in middle schools. Teachers give lower grade [...]

• On the Possibility of Progress
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-01-21 17:07:09 UTC

  By: Romer, Paul M.  (New York University) Abstract: Paul M. Romer delivered his Prize Lecture on 8 December 2018 at the Aula Magna, Stockholm University. Keywords: long-term growth; JEL: O00 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:nobelp:2018_004&r= ltv [...]

• Strikes, Employee Workplace Representation, Unionism, and Industrial Relations Quality in European Establishments
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-01-21 17:05:24 UTC

  By: John T. Addison ;  Paulino Teixeira Abstract: Using cross-country data, this paper investigates the relationship between workplace representation and strikes. Works councils are associated with reduced strike activity. However, where union members make up a majority of works councillors, such union-dominated councils experience greater strike activity than do their counterparts with minority union membership, and also more strikes than establishments with union workplace representation where union members are in a minority. Dissonance between the parties as to the state of industrial [...]

• Inequality and Well-Being
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-01-21 17:04:24 UTC

  By: Borooah, Vani Abstract: This chapter investigates a neglected area in the study of human development relating differences in human development between social groups in a country. Failure to take account of such inter-group inequalities might lead one to exaggerate a country’s developmental achievements. Conversely, one would get a more accurate picture of a country’s achievements with respect to human development only after one had taken cognisance of the fact that the fruits of development were unequally distributed between its various communities. There is a further issue. Not only [...]

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