Loyal readers: I can promise only weak monotonicity in my response, but what topics or questions or books or whatever would you like to see covered on MR?
Request for requests
Previous post: Farewell to Alms, final session
Next post: Economics majors are rising
Next Comments →
How about a book club (a la ‘Farewell to Alms’) on one of your older books, particularly if you have subsequently revised your opinion, or have developed some themes on a subject since publishing?
Nick
I’d be interested to read about the relationship between civil liberties and economics. I’m not sure how to be more specific, but I’m sure you can just let the subject go where it will go. Thanks.
What areas of economics would you want to work in if you were a graduate student today? What current economics research topics currently interest you the most? Or any other advice to economics students at the start of the dissertation writing stage.
As for books, I’m currently reading (well listening to)”Giving” by Bill Clinton. It’s a mixed bag about non-governmental ways to improve the lot of the poor in the world thru private initiative. He mixes good and bad points into an interesting read.
For the sake of balance and using Clinton himself to show another way of enacting good change without the government, it’s a good book to view in this light.
Just a thought.
As for books, I’m currently reading (well listening to)”Giving” by Bill Clinton. It’s a mixed bag about non-governmental ways to improve the lot of the poor in the world thru private initiative. He mixes good and bad points into an interesting read.
For the sake of balance and using Clinton himself to show another way of enacting good change without the government, it’s a good book to view in this light.
Just a thought.
I’m interested in the topic of the ‘eat local’ movement.
For example:
2 city families pledge: Eat ‘local’
“(September 11, 2007) — It’s dinnertime. Do you know where the food on your table comes from?
Two Rochester households are taking the Eat Local Challenge, pledging to eat primarily within their foodshed for all or part of this month.
Taste and freshness are the most common reasons people buy locally grown foods.”
http://rochesterdandc.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070911/LIVING/709110309
Topics (they’re somewhat specific, but of interest to me):
The impact of internet, Web 2.0, etc., on the way we do business.
Buyer and seller behavior in the automotive market.
Economic decision-making as it relates to marriage and having children.
Analysis on the things that polarize us in the US (politics, socio-economic levels, race, gender, geography, etc.).
Debunking conventional wisdom on various economic topics.
David,
Not to hijack the thread, but yours is an interesting point that we’ve talked about in my organization. Our philosophy is that everyone should be working to eliminate their own jobs. The theory being that when you improve efficiency, time and effort can be devoted to other things. It works better in an orgnazation whose goals are to continue to increase production. Since you are in a public institution, that may not be the goal, thus your problem persists.
How about the Paris bike sharing program?
How about a post on Ludwig Lachmann?
I particularly development stuff, emerging economy, the Chinese influence, Africa. The nuggets you throw in about behavioural economics is also fresh keep up the good work.
Omodudu.
Electoral College (or generally election systems).
The economics of religion – promising research programs within it.
Flat tax – a desirable model?
Transition economies – what went right, what went wrong, could it have gone better? (In particular Eastern Germany in the doldrums)
If the whole Latin America dollarized, would it affect the US economy? How would it change the US monetary policy?
Homeschooling – a positive alternative, or could it be dangerous (on the larger scale) because parents impose their beliefs and prejudices on their kids, thereby hampering their socialization?
I would be interested in your perspectives on the different career trajectories for people coming out in economics, law and economics, and public policy.
This morning I was unlucky enough to catch a segment of The Today Show. A psychologist described games and incentives for effective child-rearing and discipline (shredding CD’s, smiley faces, crap like that). How should I raise my kids without making them feel manipulated or controlled? This topic has been given some lip service in passing but real-life anecdotes in this area are quite welcome.
I would very much appreciate something on the following topic as part of your advice for graduates in economics topic:
What are the boundaries of “economics” as a science according to graduate schools in general and perhaps GMU in particular (i.e. where topics such as “economic history” are not a subset of “economics” but of “history”)? What about in particular fields such as Austrian economics? (Do the boundaries shift?) What are the options for interdisciplinary work?
When does someone get left out in the cold because their work is too interdisciplinary? If you are, for example, not as strong in math, should you focus early, take the minimum amount of math and carve out a spot in your niche or are you risking being considered fringe and unorthodox?
Thanks!
I’d like to see something on Irving Fisher’s “The Theory of Interest”. Also something on mental accounting.
Like econ2econ, I’d like to see some analysis of marriage and mate-selection
alternatives to using petroleum powered vehicles for commuting, including bicycles, electric cars, etc.
Is there a causal relationship between economic ideas and historical events, or does economics only provide cover for other motives. See Marx and communism, Keynes and socialism, Hayek/Friedman and deregulation/privatization.
I’d love to see more macroeconomic analysis. Coverage of governmental reports versus the reality of the marketplace. Also more microeconomic stuff – how macro policy is affecting people across the class spectrum. For instance: my groceries have gotten really expensive lately. Is there data to correlate fruit prices with recent bee scares? And what’s up with Papua New Guinea these days?
I’m sure many of us readers think about a potential future career as a professor. So:
-Describe the average professor’s worklife. Is it really as flexible as it seems? How much vacation time per year, for instance? How often can you combine work-related travel with pleasure? Is life as a professor relatively less stressful than other jobs? You get my drift. Feel free to expand on any of these ideas.
Comrade Barski,
If life were that obvious (“poor people need more money – or food – lets have government give it to them”) then socialism would have been Utopian.
What your friends are forgetting is scarcity – there is no free lunch.
I’ve been getting interested in the overlap of economics and security for awhile now, and I’ve seen several people recommend Shapiro and Varian’s _Information Rules_ as an economic look at the IT industry.
Doing such a discussion will push me to read this soon, rather than “one of these days,” so this is pretty self-interested. But I’ve heard several competent security people sing this book’s praises, and would love to see how it’s received by a bunch of economists.
I’ve been getting interested in the overlap of economics and security for awhile now, and I’ve seen several people recommend Shapiro and Varian’s _Information Rules_ as an economic look at the IT industry.
Doing such a discussion will push me to read this soon, rather than “one of these days,” so this is pretty self-interested. But I’ve heard several competent security people sing this book’s praises, and would love to see how it’s received by a bunch of economists.
Seeing as states can pretty much decide to hold their primaries whenever they want, why haven’t we reached an equilibrium where all states hold their primaries on the same day? I feel like this should have happened by now, if you assume state legislatures take an interest in having a say in who the next president will be.
I would like to see a defense of economics in general. I see economic come under attach a lot, for holding unrealistic assumptions, and being an inaccurate measure of human action. So, I’d like to see what the economists response is.
I always wonder what smart economists (especially those whose research is not on finance) do with their personal finances.
To Liberty:
My text might have been unclear- When I said “give them money” I meant that the employer would give more money via an increased minimum wage- I did not mean to imply government money/socialism.
Comrade Barski,
I don’t want to take the thread off topic, but the two concepts (government subsidies and government mandated prices) have a lot in common.
In either case the only reason to imagine it being so simple is if you ignore scarcity. Firms don’t have endless resources either, so being forced to pay more for low-skilled workers means cutting back elsewhere.
Analyses on international trade, exchange rates, china, the Anglosphere, colonialism, the British Empire and its institutions.
Any observations about anti-americanism, culture, clash of civilizations, the rise and decline of the West, the war on terror, foreign policy.
Military analysis, a comparison of civil law and common law, ideas for an optimal law system.
Also, a practical discussion of how the market actually works, i.e. an explanation, including the effects of money, creative destruction, innovation, patents etc. why free enterprise is able to upgrade the world the best and why knee-jerk socialism is very wrong. Might be useful in discussions
I’d like to see something on the economics of space travel, the economics of innovation, the role of mathematics in modern economics (too much? too little?), maybe some Austrian themed fun, maybe some public choice work on the differences in types of democracies, and of course, neuroeconomics!!
OH: how about a series on the economics of BYzantium?!
Is the internet making the economy behave more like the economist perfectly competitive model?
I’d like some thoughts on expanding the economy off planet.
Healthcare economics. Possibly comparisons of different philosophies and the assumptions and the prognoses?
Why is the market for marijuana (at the bottom of the distribution ladder, at least) so different from what we would expect in an efficient market?
I don’t smoke pot, but I have friends who do. From all the anecdotal evidence I have gathered, prices are very sticky. In times of low supply, the price doesn’t move, dealers just sell out. Unless one is buying high quality product by request, price seems not to vary with the quality of the product. Inflation does not seem to have an impact either, as over the past 10 years, the price in my area has not changed at all.
An economic analysis of this market would prove to be quite interesting.
How about a deep discussion/book forum on the effects of land redistribution in LatAm (especially in countries with semi-feudal rural economies such as Brazil, Boliva, Guatemala, Ecuador…)? Especifically the efects on employment, wages, output (redistributing “iddle” lands ala “Decreto 900″ in Guatemala 1952), inequality and indirect socio-political effects.
Or what about the effects of multicultural or multiethnic calss division on social and poitical stability, and its feedback on economic effects?
Thanks,
Economister
I would like to see you engage with the work of my favourite English public intellectual – Ronald Hutton – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Hutton.
Since Hutton is a prolific writer, this could be a long term venture.
Hutton (currently a Professor of history at Britol University) writes about folklore, rituals, national myths, pagan religions (eg. witchcraft, druidry) and shamanism – as well as more conventional historical subjects such as the seventeenth century in England.
I’d like to see discussion of this question:
How can economists explain (and model) society’s irrational treatment of children?
The NPV of the average adult must exceed that of the average child. With the adult, we have a known quantity; for the child, there is risk that the child will turn out badly (or better) or even die, and there’s also the cost of feeding and educating that child, and waiting for the investment to start to pay off.
Why then do we pervasively commit to policies that start off “if it saves even one child…”? I can understand why, for evolutionary reasons, a given parent would take this position for his or her child. But it doesn’t make sense on a societal scale, as far as I can see.
And if I’m not sounding cold enough already… Even more so, when we’re talking about specific cases rather than average. Why do we pay as much for a single year of education for a child that is unlikely to repay the investment as we do for the entire K-12 education of an average child?
Why are people likely angry at me even for asking this question?
I’d like to hear your thoughts on virtue ethics.
I’d like to read and discuss more about government distortion of markets: ethanol requirements, sugar subsidies, price gouging laws, minimum wage laws, smart growth, antitrust, “fair trade” legislation. I know this has all been covered. But it’s just so damned important that I want to keep the discussion going.
Just once I’d like to read a post about cats.
For entirely selfish reasons: a post about traveling to Mexico City
Could we have “My favo[u]rite things London”, perhaps?
You’d have to decide for yourselves whether to exclude writers who moved to the capital but didn’t start out as Londoners (that’s Shakespeare gone, for starters).
Alternately, your top hits in England would be great. I think you’ve only done Scotland when it comes to the UK.
How do you cope with the crushing weight of the absurdity of existence?
i would like to see economics and education…if education is a monopoly market, that might explain all of the dead weight losses, but there’s a lot more
More Roberto Bolano.
I’d like to hear some discussion about the dynamics of political polarization. My hypothesis is that improved information flow has led to enhanced self-selection, forcing any arbitrary group to expel any member that deviates even slightly from group orthodoxy.
Why are the prices so high at Matias Dahlgrens new restaurant in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm? Potential candidates are:
1 Costs (ingredients, staff, rent) are high.
2 Demand is inelastic (50% of guests are wealthy americans).
3 Market power (ther are too few players in the segment of super luxuray fine dining in Stockholm).
Here’s one that’s unrelated to Economics, but appropriate given the fact that this is a blog and the way in which your book club was conducted–Writing to Learn, by William Zinsser.
The relevance of computational game theory for economics? What does it mean for the applications of economic theory that computing the Nash equilibrium is PPAD-complete?
Next Comments →
Comments on this entry are closed.