Rent Control Does Not Make Housing More Affordable
09 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, income redistribution, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: offsetting behaviour, rent control, The fatal conceit, unintended consequences
1 The Movie is surprisingly good
09 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
in health and safety, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, managerial economics, movies, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics, theory of the firm Tags: road safety
Why Sweden ended its negative interest rate experiments
09 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
Sweden ended its negative rate policy recently. Bernanke recently spoke on how consequences of negative interest rates have not been that bad.
Daniel Lacalle gives an Austrian school perspective:
Negative rates are a huge transfer of wealth from savers and real wages to the government and the indebted. A tax on caution. They are the destruction of the perception of risk that always benefits the most reckless. The bailout of the inefficient.
Central banks ignore the effects of demography, technology, and competition on inflation and the growth of consumption, credit, and investment, and with the wrong policies they generate new bubbles that become more dangerous than the previous ones. The next bubble will again increase the fiscal imbalances of the countries. When central banks present themselves as the agents that will reverse the effect of technology and demographics, they will be creating a greater risk and bubble.
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A simple explanation of money
08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, financial economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, property rights Tags: theory of money
TIM FLANNERY’S Bizarre Globalist Rant
08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
PROFESSIONAL climate alarmist, Tim Flannery was head of Australia’s Climate Commission. For his $180,000, three day, part-time working week, he made decisions that affected billions of dollars of Australian taxpayers money.
A MUST WATCH! And, ask yourself one question while viewing: Would you want this freak show in charge of your hard-earned? …
See more Flannery :
Do we need a written constitution?
08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
Prior to the general election, several of the parties’ manifestos called for the creation of a codified constitution for the UK. In December, the Constitution Unit hosted an event to debate the merits and downsides of such an exercise. Harrison Shaylor summarises the discussion.
What did the 2019 Liberal Democrat election manifesto and the Brexit Party’s ‘Contract with the People’ (from the same election) have in common? Both advocate the need for a written constitution in the UK. So too did the Green Party manifesto, and that of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. Meg Russell took part in a discussion on a written constitution in The Briefing Room on Radio 4 in September, and on 28 November, the Constitution Unit held its own event entitled ‘Do we need a written constitution?’. Two distinguished law professors – Sionaidh Douglas-Scott of Queen Mary University of London…
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New paper : Technological Diffusion News
08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
I posted on my “current work” page a new paper “Technological Diffusion News, A comment on “Whither News Shocks?” by Barsky, Basu & Lee” It is forthcoming in the NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2014, Volume 29
As written in the abstract,
Barsky, Basu, and Lee [2014] are proposing to identify a technological news shock as the innovation in the expectation of TFP at a fixed horizon in the future that does not affect TFP on impact. In response to this shock, consumption typically rises following good news, but investment, consumer durables purchases and hours worked typically fall on impact. Noticing that this shock indeed moves TFP after one period, I propose ways to identify a technological diffusion news. By diffusion news, I mean that TFP is not affected in the short to medium run but permanently increases. In response to such a shock, the economy does display an aggregate boom…
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New version : Putting the Cycle Back into Business Cycle Analysis
08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
I have posted on my “current work” page a (very) updated version of a paper with Paul Beaudry and Dana Galizia “Putting the Cycle Back into Business Cycle Analysis“. As written in the abstract,
Are business cycles mainly a response to persistent exogenous shocks, or do they instead reflect a strong endogenous mechanism which produces recurrent boom-bust phenomena? In this paper we present new evidence in favor of the second interpretation and, most importantly, we highlight the set of key elements that influence our answer to this question. In particular, when adopting our most preferred estimation framework, we find support for the somewhat extreme notion that business cycles may be generated by stochastic limit cycle forces; that is, we find support for the notion that business cycles may primarily reflect an endogenous propagation mechanism buffeted only by temporary shocks. The three elements that tend to favor…
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David Friedman at Libertopia 2010 on Future Imperfect
08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, economics of crime, economics of education, economics of information, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, international economics, law and economics, property rights
New York Times tells Democrats how to regain the White House
08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
All of us who identify as Democrats or liberals are biting our nails about this November’s elections. Can Trump possibly win again? I go back and forth on this, but lately am more optimistic that, because of the impeachment proceedings and Trump’s unhinged behavior about Iran and international affairs in general, the Democrats have a good shot at getting the White House this year—and maybe even (but probably not) the Senate. I’m confident they’ll keep the House of Representatives, but of course the Presidency is also important in a way that the Congress is not: the Prez chooses Supreme Court nominees, and if the nominees are young their influence could last decades—or longer. And we all know that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a left-leaning Justice, probably won’t keep her seat through another Trump administration. The brave woman is hanging in there, but she’s made of flesh.
The article below, by two…
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Is the gender commuting gap the fault of sexist employers? @women_nz
08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment
in discrimination, econometerics, gender, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, transport economics Tags: gender wage gap
The best research on the gender pay gap these days relies upon fortuitous datasets. In this case, the French public employment form asks about maximum commuting time and minimum acceptable pay in your next job.
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