Zombie Economics

I was just reminded of the Macro Flame War again, and I realized that one thing both sides agree on is that the other is setting economics back by decades through their ignorance and the resurrection of old fallacies.
But this very fact seems to favor one of the sides in the debate.  It reminds me [...]

The Wisdom of the Crowds in Your Head: The Case of Behavioral Finance

A common idea in the social sciences is that two wrongs can make a right, when errors cancel each other out.  So we have the Median Voter theorem, the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the Wisdom of Crowds.
Some aspiring rationalists have worried that the same process takes place not only in large groups of people, but within [...]

Macro Flame War

There are lots of Great Internet Debates- over operating systems, video game consoles, or politics.  This last week, a similar sort of name-calling verbal brawl broke out among prominent macro-economists.  But that exchange featured long posts and highly technical arguments.  To simplify it for you, I will summarize the debate as the flame war it [...]

Health Care Solutions: The Free Lunch is over here, what are you eating?

After a few months of reading about this bizarre health care debate, I think I finally understand things well enough to put my thoughts on record.  (Was the wait against the spirit of blogging? I probably should have written a ill-informed post to respond to each twist, turn and dumb remark)
First, I should say that [...]

Has the Fed bought the Economics profession?

There’s an intriguing and well written, though overly long, article over at HuffPo called “How the Federal Reserve Bought the Economics Profession“.
The basic idea is that so many economists work for the Fed, have worked for the Fed, or want to work for the Fed that their desire to please their employer has stifled debate [...]

I time-traveled here from 1987 to say: You future people like weird things

(Continuing from my previous post, Does the  idea of sustainability survive sustained inquiry?)
Sustainability means preserving good things for future generations.  But as Bob Solow notes, we have no idea what the preferences of future generations are; we are likely to think they are weird.  After all, if someone in 1800 were trying to make people [...]

Does the idea of sustainability survive sustained inquiry?

In Bob Solow’s 1993 “Economist’s Perspective on Sustainability“, it survives as a “necessarily vague, but useful” idea.  He notes that sustainability has been conflated with other moral ideas about environmental protection, but that sustainability itself does not necessarily mean preserving species or wilderness.  Instead it is about “distributional equity” between the present and the future.  [...]

Returns to Like-Mindedness and Diversity

I’m spending this week at a seminar put on by the Institute for Humane Studies, which involves people listening to lectures on lots of topics from a libertarian perspective and drinking free beer.  It is odd being in a place where most people around me also love to talk about economics and libertarianism, since the [...]

Mini Biographies

1) The Great Zucchini: How to make six figures while working two days a week with a high-school education. Plus: the dark side. Great reporting/writing.
2) A Profile of Andrew Sullivan: I knew from his blog that his life, both personally and intellectually, was interesting and a bit contradictory; but this story truly makes [...]

Do Sanctions Strengthen Oppressive Regimes?

Lots of anecdotal evidence suggests that the Castros, at least, believe they do.