Month: October 2003

Jeffrey Frankel, a member of President Clinton’s CEA, charges (Milken Institute Review, registration required) that:

When it comes to economic policy, Republican and Democratic administrations have switched places since the 1960s. The Republicans, who were so long identified with free markets and less-is-more government, have become the party of fiscal profligacy and market intervention. Democratic presidents have (by comparison) become the agents of fiscal responsibility and arms-length microeconomic policies.

Robert Ekelund and Mark Thornton have a rebuttal in the latest issue of the MIR (3rd quarter, 2003) but it’s a strange “rebuttal” that begins:

We certainly agree with Jeff Frankel (Milken Institute Review, 1st Quarter 2003) that the “Republicans have become the party of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction, big government and failing-grade microeconomics.” However, we would argue that there is less mystery to this exchange of economic platforms with the Democrats than meets the eye. The Republican Party was established in the 19th century as a party of big government and economic intervention.

For my take see my earlier post, The Beast Isn’t Starving.

Some fallacies just keep coming back no matter how many times they have been exploded. Jobs in the manufacturing sector are disappearing and have been doing so for 30 years. The reason this has occured, however, is not because we have “sent the good jobs overseas” and it is not because our manufacturing sector is “rusting.” Jobs have disappeared because the manufacturing sector has been spectaculary successful. When measured in terms of what ultimately matters, output, the U.S. manufacturing sector has more than doubled in size over the past 30 years. We are now producing more “stuff” than virtually ever before and because of productivity improvements we are doing it with less labor. The graph below from The Economist is for the G7 countries, not just the U.S., but it conveys the correct idea. (For the US data see Robert Hall’s recent testimony before Congress).

“Job destruction” is a vital aspect of progress. If we had not destroyed millions of farm jobs most of us would still be working in agriculture today.

Nobel Laureate Modigliani passed away several days ago. Read this tribute, which explains Modigliani’s views on religion, his flight from the Mussolini regime as a boy, and his opposition to Berlusconi. Here is one of the more personal bits:

When I saw the holes in his socks I liked and admired him even more. I thought, here is a man who doesn’t give a damn about appearance; someone who is all meat, no smoke.

Brad DeLong reproduces and responds to a well-reasoned critique of the pessimistic view that he and Paul Krugman share about the prospects for the American dollar.

The main point of the critique:

These authors–and the conventional wisdom generally–miss two, closely related points. First, foreign investors’ risk exposure to dollar assets has essentially nothing to do with the current account deficit. Second, the ability of U.S. households, firms, and the government to service their liabilities has essentially nothing to do with whether those liabilities are owed to foreign or domestic investors.

Click on the link to read Brad’s response, it is not easily summarized.

My take: Given the composition of my assets, my implicit position in the dollar market is long, but probably more because of inertia than anything else.

I have already written a post on this topic. My central query was why segregation lasted as long as it did in major league sports. I have since learned more:

1. Black players were common in professional football in the late 19th century and through 1933, when segregation was introduced by team owners.

2. The pressure to segregate came from fan demand, and was enforced by game commissioners, working through a collusive league structure.

3. John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants (baseball), regularly tried to sneak African-Americans onto his team, claiming that they were “Cuban.” The baseball commissioner was both strong and racist, however, so he failed in these attempts.

4. Early football leagues were chaotic and had little power, including little power to enforce segregation in the early days of the sport.

5. Paul Brown, coach of the Cleveland Browns football team, decided to play black players in 1946.

6. The Los Angeles Rams quickly followed suit, in part because they wanted public funds for a stadium, and needed to avoid possible legal problems.

7. The Washington Redskins were the last football team to integrate, and only when they received “artfully applied pressure” from the Kennedy Administration.

8. Bill Walsh, the very successful coach of the San Francisco 49ers, hired a racially conscious sociologist to his staff, in recent times, to manage race relations on his team.

All points are from the recent and excellent Tackling Jim Crow: Racial Segregation in Professional Football, by Alan H. Levy.

OK, you probably already read Steven Landsburg on Slate.com. But this article of his is too good a link to pass up. It turns out that divorce is considerably more likely when the child is a girl, rather than a boy. Here are two choice bits:

In the United States, the parents of a girl are nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of a boy. The more daughters, the bigger the effect: The parents of three girls are almost 10 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of three boys. In Mexico and Colombia the gap is wider; in Kenya it’s wider still. In Vietnam, it’s huge: Parents of a girl are 25 percent more likely to divorce than parents of a boy.

Here is another:

Take a typical unmarried couple who are expecting a child and have an ultrasound, which more often than not reveals the child’s sex. It turns out that such couples are more likely to get married if the child is a boy. Apparently, for unmarried fathers, the prospect of living with a wife and a son is more alluring than the prospect of living with a wife and a daughter.

It seems that fathers enjoy marriage more when there is a son around the house, confirming an old stereotype. The original research was done by Gordon Dahl and Enrico Moretti.

Robin Hanson suggests that time is a scarce, yet unpriced resource in group conversations, conferences, and seminars. We are all familiar with the conference participant who talks too much, this is really just tragedy of the commons. So let’s attach a price to talking.

Robin argues that each person should receive a fixed number of tokens. Every now and then a buzzer will go off randomly. If you are talking when the buzzer goes off, you lose a token. If you lose all your tokens, you can’t talk any more. So presumably you will speak only when you feel it is important, to conserve your time. My note: I don’t see why the randomization is necessary, why not just use something like chess clocks to limit how much each person talks?

Robin and I have talked of trying this out. Would it work? I can see a few problems:

1. It may violate fairness norms to shut up a person who has lost all of his tokens.

2. Without rationing, smarter people can persuade/bully their way into talking more, and this is better than giving everyone equal time. (Note: you can have non-egalitarian variants of the scheme, or perhaps allow people to donate their tokens to the smart.)

3. The methods and procedures of implementation may distract from the discussion. Imagine the buzzer going off in the middle of your briliant point.

4. Conferences are not about ideas production, they are about the production of publicity, and the device does not work toward this end.

I am most concerned with #2 and #4, but I still see merit in the idea. If and when we try it, I will let you know, let me know if you have ever tried some version of the proposal.

Here are some other wild ideas that Robin likes, most or all of them wilder than the buzzer idea.

Addendum: Here is Robin’s own description of the idea.

I just received my copy of The Literary Book of Economics, compiled and edited by Michael Watts of Purdue University.

I love the book, it contains excerpts from literary works that present economic themes. On opportunity cost, you get to read Robert Frost on “The Road Not Taken”.

On equality, you get to read Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, one of the most biting critiques of egalitarianism ever penned. The story is truly short, just a few pages, do click on the link and read it if you have the time.

Here is the opening to the story:

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Or are you familiar with the economic proposition, sometimes associated with Aaron Wildavsky, that the demand for safety rises with wealth and income? British poet Alexander Pope first stated that idea in 1737, for his short poem “Imitations of Horace,” click here.

You don’t have to read this book in one fell swoop, it offers 348 pp. of wonderful browsing. In addition to the authors cited above you get John Milton, Ayn Rand, Thomas Mann, John Steinbeck, Victor Hugo, and George Orwell. Highly recommended.