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Say’s Law holds in a model that is out of equilibrium by construction, and Ricardian equivalence does not.
Archive for the ‘Economics’ Category
December 1st, 2011
Category: Airline Industry and Travel, Economics
A NYT Times letter writer is upset that business and first class airplane tickets can be claimed as a business expense, meaning that all the people trapped in coach are subsidizing the fats cats sipping champagne in the front of the plane. I fly over 100,000 miles a year every year, only buy coach tickets [...]
November 28th, 2011
Category: Commerce and its discontents, Economics
Between September, 2010 and September 2011, I spent $1,042 buying books from Amazon.com. Since October, I have spent $0 there. As I describe today in the Nation online, I stopped clicking on Amazon after reading this terrific story by Spencer Soper describing Amazon’s poor labor practices at a facility near Allentown Pennsylvania. Incidentally, I encountered [...]
November 28th, 2011
Category: Drug Policy, Economics
I recently presented a series of DIY calculations for determining the size of the U.S. marijuana market. This post got a lot of play around the web, most notably from Andrew Sullivan, who again did me the kindness of adding his millions of regular readers to my regular readers (both of them). A number of [...]
November 19th, 2011
Category: Economics
Bob’s new book, the Darwin Economy, is pretty neat. He raps about evolution and economics with Paul Solman for eight minutes here.
November 15th, 2011
A rant against Tyler Cowen and for economic fundamentalism on the future of solar PV.
November 10th, 2011
James Heckman’s policy proposal offers the long term benefits of increased economic growth and reduced income inequality. To misquote Meatloaf, “2 out of 3 ain’t bad”. What do we do in the short term? Europe’s Southern nations should sell some of their unique assets (such as their tourist sites) to China and Germany to [...]
November 7th, 2011
Category: Economics, Technology and Society
I wrote a few weeks back about how the rise of the hotel buffet breakfast has eliminated jobs while at the same time wasting food and causing many people to overeat. Craig Lambert sounds similar themes in NYT: The conventional wisdom is that America has become a “service economy,” but actually, in many sectors, “service” [...]
November 7th, 2011
Sarkozy lines up somemiddle-rank supporters for a financial transactions tax; and how an FTT can improve financial markets.
October 30th, 2011
Imagine a basketball game during which the contrast between two players catches your eye. John Bull, a 5’11″ guard, makes lots of three pointers but never gets a rebound. Meanwhile, his 6’10″ Cousin Sam plays power forward, grabs many rebounds but never makes a three pointer. Would you expect John Bull to become a prolific [...]