Month: August 2015
My International Trade reading list for Fall 2015
This is quite long, so it goes under the fold…class starts tomorrow night!
Books: Jacob Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (on-line, optional).
All videos can be found on MRUniversity.com, if not in the international trade section than in the development economics class or a few on Mexico in the Mexico class. In general I recommend viewing the videos before tackling the readings.
I. Comparative advantage and free trade
Bernhofen, Daniel and John C. Brown. 2005. “An Empirical Assessment of the Comparative Advantage Gains from Trade: Evidence from Japan.” American Economic Review.
Autor, David H. David Dorn and Gordon H. Hanson. Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labour Markets. The Economic journal, 2015, 125 (584), p. 621 – 646.
Acemoglu, Daron, David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. 2014. “Import Competition and the Great US Employment Sag of the 2000s.” NBER Working Paper.
Feenstra, Robert C. 2008. “Offshoring in the Global Economy.” Ohlin Lecture Series, Lecture 1 only, through p.66 only.
Grossman, Gene M. and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg. 2006. “The Rise of Offshoring: It’s Not Wine for Cloth Anymore.” Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Donaldson, David. 2011. “Trade and Labor Markets.” powerpoint.
Khandelwal, Amit. 2009. “The Long and Short (of) Quality Ladders.” Review of Economic Studies.
Baldwin, Richard. 2011. “How Trade and Industrial Organization After Globalization’s 2nd Unblundling: How Building and Joining a Supply Chain are Different and Why it Matters.” NBER Working Paper. Also this is a chapter in the NBER book Globalization in an Age of Crisis: Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century (2014), Robert C. Feenstra and Alan M. Taylor, editors, pp. 165–212.
Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou and Nina Pavcnik. 2007. “Distributional Effects of Globalization in Developing Countries.” Journal of Economic Literature.
Tyler Cowen, “Why the theory of comparative advantage is overrated,” Marginal Revolution blog post, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/09/why-the-theory-of-comparative-advantage-is-overrated.html
Videos: The two videos on Comparative Advantage, Sources of Comparative Advantage, Development and Trade, empirical evidence, Evidence on Comparative Advantage from Japan, Factor price equalization, Specific Factors Models, Economics of Offshoring, The Rybczynski Theorem, Trade, Investment, and Migration as Substitutes, Unbundling the Supply Chain.
II.Tariffs
Paul Krugman. “The One-Minute Trade Policy Theorist.” (powerpoint)
The Economic Benefits of U.S. trade, Office of the President of the United States, May 2015.
Broda, Christian, Nuno Limao, and David Weinstein. 2008. “Optimal Tariffs and Market Power: The Evidence.” American Economic Review.
Arkolakis, Costas, Arnaud Costinot and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 2012. “New Trade Models, Same Old Gains?” American Economic Review.
Melitz, Marc J. “The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity,” Econometrica 2003.
Kehoe, Timothy J. and Kim J. Ruhl. 2006. “How Important Is the New Goods Margin in International Trade?” NBER Working Paper, and now just published, Journal of Political Economy 2013.
Bernhofen, Daniel M., Zouheir El-Sahli, and Richard Kneller. 2012. “Estimating the Effects of the Container Revolution on World Trade.” University of Nottingham Discussion Paper Series.
Nunn, Nathan and Daniel Trefler. 2010. “The Structure of Tariffs and Long-Term Growth.” American Economic Review.
Dave Donaldson, “Trade and Growth (Empirics)”, MIT Lectures notes.
Videos: Tariffs v. Quotas, International Trade Disciplines Monopolies, Monopolistic Competition and International Trade, Effective rate of protection, Theory of Optimal Tariffs, Trade and Variety, Does “fair trade” help?, Malawi restrict trade in corn, Market reforms in Bangladesh, John Stuart Mill Terms of trade, The Shipping Container.
III. Heckscher-Ohlin and factor abundance theories of trade
Helpman, Elhanan. 1999. “The Structure of Foreign Trade.” Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Debaere, Peter. 2003. “Factor Abundance and Trade.” Journal of Political Economy.
Deardorff, Alan V. 1979. “Weak Links in the Chain of Comparative Advantage.” Journal of International Economics.
Trefler, Daniel. 1993. “International Factor Price Differences: Leontief Was Right!” Journal of Political Economy.
Davis, Donald R. and David E. Weinstein. 2001. “What Role for International Trade.” NBER Working Paper.
Davis, Donald R. 1995. “Intra-Industry Trade: A Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo Approach.” Journal of International Economics.
Trefler, Daniel. 1995. “The Case of the Missing Trade and Other Mysteries.” American Economic Review.
Costino, Arnaud and Jonathan Vogel. “Beyond Ricardo: Assignment Models in International Trade,” NBER Working Paper, October 2014.
Videos: What is at Stake in Trade Theories?, The Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem, Evidence on the Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem.
IV. Increasing Returns
Donaldson, David. “Increasing Returns to Scale and Monopolistic Trade.” Powerpoint, on-line, http://economics.mit.edu/files/7444
Helpman, Elhanan. 1987. “Imperfect Competition and International Trade: Evidence from Fourteen Industrial Countries.” Journal of the Japanese and International Economics.
Davis, Donald R. and David E. Weinstein. 2003. “Market Access, Economic Geography, and Comparative Advantage: An Empirical Test.” Journal of International Economics.
Antweiler, Werner ; Trefler, Daniel. Increasing Returns and All That: A View from Trade, American Economic Review, 1 March 2002, Vol.92(1), pp.93-119.
Debaere, Peter. 2005. “Monopolistic Competition and Trade, Revisited: Testing the Model Without Testing for Gravity.” Journal of International Economics.
Yi, Kei-Mu. 2003. “Can Vertical Specialization Explain the Growth of World Trade?” Journal of Political Economy.
Harrigan, James. 2001. “Specialization and the Volume of Trade: Do the Data Obey the Laws?” NBER Working Paper.
Bernard, Andrew B. ; Jensen, J. Bradford ; Redding, Stephen J. ;Schott, Peter K. “Firms in International Trade,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1 July 2007, Vol.21(3), pp.105-130.
Helpman, Elhanan. Foreign Trade and Investment: Firm‐level Perspectives,” Economica, 2014, Vol.81(321), pp.1-14.
Tybout, James R. 2001. “Plant- and Firm-Level Evidence on “New” Trade Theories.” NBER Working Paper.
Bernard, Andrew B. and J. Bradford Jensen. 2004. “Why Some Firms Export.” Review of Economics and Statistics.
Baldwin, Richard ; Harrigan, James. Zeros, Quality, and Space: Trade Theory and Trade Evidence,” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 1 May 2011, Vol.3(2), pp.60-88.
Armenter, Roc and Koren, Miklos. “A Balls-and-Bins Model of Trade.” American Economic Review, 2014, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.104.7.2127.
Videos: Trade and External Economies of Scale, Monopolistic Competition and International Trade, Trade and Increasing Returns: Evidence, Paul Romer, Robert Torrens on strategic trade policy, The Economics of Bollywood.
V. Is there a trade and industrialization slowdown?
Hausmann, Ricardo, Jason Hwang, and Dani Rodrik. “What You Export Matters.” Journal of Economic Growth, 12, 1, March 2007, 1-25.
Rodrik, Dani. “The Future of Economic Convergence.” Harvard Kennedy School, August 2011, RWP11-033.
Rodrik, Dani. “Unconditional Convergence in Manufacturing.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2012.
Rodrik, Dani. “The Perils of Premature Deindustrialization.” Project Syndicate, 11 October 2013.
Rodrik, Dani. “Are Services the New Manufactures?” Project Syndicate, October 13, 2014.
Davies, Gavyn. “Why world trade growth has lost its mojo.” The Financial Times, January 9, 2015.
VI. Gravity models
Anderson, James and Eric van Wincoop. 2004. “Trade Costs” Journal of Economic Literature.
Head, Keith. 2011. “Gravity for Beginners.” Presented at US-Canada Border Conference.
Donaldson, David. 2011. “Gravity Models.” No Journal—powerpoint.
Hummels, David. 2007. “Transportation Costs and International Trade in the Second Era of Globalization.” Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Anderson, James and Eric van Wincoop. 2003. “Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle.” American Economic Review.
Eaton, Jonathan and Samuel Kortum. 2002. “Technology, Geography, and Trade.” Econometrica.
Chaney, Thomas. “The Network Structure of International Trade,” American Economic Review 2014.
Video: The Gravity Equation and the Costs of Trade.
VII. Trade in economic history
Harrison, Ann and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 2010. “Trade, Foreign Investment, and Industrial Policy for Developing Countries.” Handbook of Development Economics, Volume 5, Ch 63, also the same is Ann Harrison and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 2009. “Trade, Foreign Investment, and Industrial Policy for Developing Countries.” NBER Working Paper.
Irwin, Douglas. 2002. “Interpreting the Tariff-Growth Correlation of the Late Nineteenth Century.” American Economic Review.
Irwin, Douglas. 2002. “Did Import Substitution Promote Growth in the Late Nineteenth Century?” NBER Working Paper.
John Nye, “The Myth of Free Trade Britain and Fortress France,” Journal of Economic History, 1991.
Irwin, Douglas. 1997. “From Smoot-Hawley to Reciprocal Agreements: Changing the Course of U.S. Trade Policy in the 1930s.” NBER Working Paper.
Irwin, Douglas. 1998. “The Smoot-Hawley Tariff: A Quantitative Assessment.” The Review of Economic Statistics.
Crowley, Meredith A. and Xi Luo. 2011. “Understanding the Great Trade Collapse of 2008-09 and the Subsequent Trade Recovery.” Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Francois, Joseph and Julia Woerz. 2009. “The Big Drop: Trade and the Great Recession.” No Journal, article online.
Videos: Corn Law debates, Friedrich List, Robert Torrens on sliding tariffs, The Deindustrialization of India, Tariffs and Growth in the late 19thCentury, South Korea and Industrial Policy, The Smoot-Hawley Tariff, Why Did Trade Plummet in the Great Recession?
VIII. FDI and multinationals
Blonigen, Bruce. A Review of the Empirical Literature on FDI Determinants, Atlantic Economic Journal, 2005, 33, 4, pp.383-403
Ramondo, Natalia and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 2013. “Trade, Multinational Production, and the Gains from Openness.” Journal of Political Economy, 2013, vol. 121, no. 2.
Antras, Pol and Stephen R. Yeaple. 2013. “Multinational Firms and the Structure of International Trade.” NBER Working Paper, it is also Pol Antras and Stephen Yeaple, “Multinational Firms and the Structure of International Trade,” 2013, Handbook of International Economics,Volume 4, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-54314-1.00002-1
Cole, Harold L., Jeremy Greenwood, and Juan M. Sanchez. “Why Doesn’t Technology Flow From Rich to Poor Countries?” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, 20856, January 2015.
Videos: Basics of multinational corporations, Intra-firm Trade, Intra-industry Trade, Gains from Multinationals, Who Gains from FDI?, Productivity in firms, Foreign investment in India, Competition from foreign retailers, What is a Maquiladora? Introduction to NAFTA, NAFTA and Mexican Agriculture, The Effect of NAFTA on the Mexican Economy.
IX. The politics of trade
Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman. 1994. “Protection for Sale.” American Economic Review.
Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou and Giovanni Maggi. 1999. “Protection for Sale: An Empirical Investigation.” American Economic Review.
Mayda, Anna Maria and Dani Rodrik. 2005. “What are Some People (and Countries) More Protectionist than Others?” European Economic Review.
Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman. 1995. “The Politics of Free-Trade Agreements.” American Economic Review.
Harrison, Ann and Jason Scorse. 2010. “Multinational and Anti-Sweatshop Activism.” American Economic Review.
Videos: The Political Economy of Tariffs, Does Trade Help the Environment?, Regulation as a Major Trade Barrier, Who Supports Free Trade?, The Cultural Diversity Critique of Markets.
Extra readings and videos will be added, as global events indicate.
Monday assorted links
1. Human capital leading up to the Industrial Revolution.
2. How will European cinema fare under a single digital market? “Is he a collaborator?”
3. In America, is there too much TV?
4. What the Chinese 2008 stimulus looked like. And the Chinese use a bevy of animals to clear the parade skies.
5. How is the Greek election shaping up? Exit interview with Olivier Blanchard.
6. Consumption inequality tracks income inequality by more than we used to think. Is scalping ruining the Disney dining experience?
Romer on Urban Growth
Here’s one bit from an excellent interview of Paul Romer on urban development:
Q. How are economics and planning and development of cities related each other?
Urban Expansion is an exception to the usual rule that an economy does not need a plan. Creating new built urban area requires a plan for the public space that will be used for mobility (sidewalks, bus lanes, bike lanes, auto lanes …) and for parks. At a minimum, this plan should provide for a network of arteries big enough to allow bus travel and dense enough that no location is more than 0.5 km from such an artery. This is the only thing that needs to be planned up front for land that is not yet developed. Everything else can wait. But if informal development comes first, it is too late. The area will never have enough public space to allow successful urban development.
I think Romer is correct. What surprised me most when studying Gurgaon in India was that despite strong demand, there wasn’t a lot of common infrastructure being built. The transaction costs of ex-post planning were simply too high.
In addition to transport arteries, I would also mention the importance of setting aside space and access points for sewage, electricity, and information arteries. It’s not even necessary that government provide these services or even the plan itself (private planning of large urban areas is also possible) but a plan has to be made. By reserving space for services in advance of development, developers and residents can greatly improve coordination and maximize the value of a city.
A simple, minimal urban plan is analogous to the rules of the game.
Will Syria *ever* come back?
In just 4 years, over half of Syria’s population of 22m has been killed, displaced or fled the country.
Tweet here, by Paul Kirby.
Macau fact of the day
Gross domestic product in Macau, China’s semi-autonomous gambling haven, fell by more than a quarter in the three months to June as the junket-fuelled growth model comes under attack from Beijing.
The economy contracted by a whopping 26.4 per cent in the second quarter, following declines of 24.5 per cent in the first quarter and 17.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2014.
Stunning as the figure is, it’s not surprising, nor does it signal a collapse for the economy. Macau’s unemployment rate is just 1.8 per cent as construction booms and millions of Chinese visitors cross the border to shop, play some baccarat and attend an increasingly diverse array of Las Vegas style entertainment shows.
That is from Fast FT.
The Chinese fiscal stimulus memory hole
Remember back in 2009, and a bit thereafter (pdf), when so many people were praising China’s very activist, multi-trillion fiscal stimulus?
Yet some of us at the time insisted this would only push off and deepen China’s adjustment problems. There was already excess capacity and high debt and favored state-owned industries, and the stimulus was making all of those problems worse and only postponing a needed adjustment. The Chinese incipient contraction was based on structural problems, not a simple lack of aggregate demand. As I wrote in 2012:
To keep its investments in business, the Chinese government will almost certainly continue to use political means, like propping up ailing companies with credit from state-owned banks. But whether or not those companies survive, the investments themselves have been wasteful, and that will eventually damage the economy. In the Austrian perspective, the government has less ability to set things right than in Keynesian theories.
Furthermore, it is becoming harder to stimulate the Chinese economy effectively. The flow of funds out of China has accelerated recently, and the trend may continue as the government liberalizes capital markets and as Chinese businesses become more international and learn how to game the system. Again, reflecting a core theme of Austrian economics, market forces are overturning or refusing to validate the state-preferred pattern of investments.
How’s that debate going? While the final outcome remains uncertain, Austrian-like perspectives on China are looking pretty good these days.
Just as you go to war with the army you’ve got, so must a country conduct fiscal stimulus with the policy instruments it has. And most forms of Chinese fiscal stimulus make their imbalances worse rather than better. Yet dreams of fiscal stimulus as an answer to the macro problems on the table never die:
Sangwon Yoon writes for Bloomberg:
China is sliding into recession and the leadership will not act quickly enough to avoid a major slowdown by implementing large-scale fiscal policies to stimulate demand, Citigroup Inc.’s top economist Willem Buiter said.
The only thing to stop a Chinese recession, which the former external member of the Bank of England defines as 4 percent growth on “the mendacious official data” for a year, is a consumption-oriented fiscal stimulus program funded by the central government and monetized by the People’s Bank of China, Buiter said.
“Consumption-oriented” is the key word there. I don’t blame Buiter for speaking precisely, but few readers will pick up on his careful use of words. Still, switching to more consumption is a surrender to lower rates of economic growth, not a way of keeping the growth rate high. That is a good idea, but a funny kind of stimulus.
In the meantime, the consumption sector in China seems to be faring poorly. On the way up, investment rose at the expense of consumption, but on the way down they are falling together. Funny how things like that work out, and it does suggest that a consumption-oriented stimulus maybe can break the fall but it won’t restore prosperity.
It’s striking how little recent discussion I’ve seen of China’s much-heralded fiscal stimulus of 2008-2009.
This is an object lesson in relying too much on short-run macro models, or models in which sticky prices are the only imperfections, or models where the quality of investment is not a factor. Whatever you think of the American Great Recession, the Chinese case is very, very different.
Sunday assorted links
1. Ten misunderstandings about beer (the culture that is China). And does “ethical food” taste better?
2. Oliver Burkeman makes claims about sleep.
3. Interview about microscopes and other things.
5. Ruth Leger Sivard has passed away: “With what she knows, she has every right to get on a rooftop and scream,” Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy wrote in 1986. “Instead, after 10 years of analyzing what 142 of the planet’s governments spend their citizens’ money on, she remains a clarifier. The field is small. Few are as skilled.”
6. Various airport ratings, including which countries’ citizens rate airports the highest and lowest.
Who said a single vote never matters?
A mistake by representatives of the Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District means a sales tax increase the district needs to thrive will require approval by a single University of Missouri student.
On Feb. 28, Jen Henderson, 23, became the sole registered voter living within the community improvement district, or CID, meaning she is the only person who would vote on a half-cent sales tax increase for the district.
Henderson says she feels negative about the tax idea, “but has not made a decision about how to vote. Henderson said her concerns include vague project outlines, Gartner’s pay, Business Loop improvements she said will help businesses but not nearby residents and how an additional sales tax would affect low-income people purchasing groceries and other necessities.”
For the pointer I thank Austin Vernon.
Utah fact (estimate) of the day
One of my web searches turned up a study from Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) on the demographics of Mormons. According to the ARIS study, there are now 150 Mormon women for every 100 Mormon men in the state of Utah—a 50 percent oversupply of women.
The article considers data on Orthodox Jews as well, via Jodi Ettenberg.
Solve for the equilibrium, as they say, and please consider as many different variables as possible…
Should the Fed tighten?
1. I do not know what the Fed should do, and I do not know what the Fed will do. I don’t even like that phrase “should the Fed tighten?,” but the superior “what kind of multi-dimensional expectational monetary path should the Fed indicate?” is awkward.
2. Starting in 2008, I thought money was too tight during 2007-2011, and in general I am not afraid of upping the dose of inflation, ngdp, however you wish to express it. I have never had “tight money” in my blood, so to speak.
3. There is good evidence from vacancies and the like that labor markets are fairly tight right now, equities are high and apparently China-robust, and we just had a gdp report of 3.8%. So something other than more monetary loosening ought not to be out of the question. Those variables simply cannot be irrelevant for the Fed’s current choice.
4. There is not a stable Phillips curve. So the lack of strong price inflation does not carry clear labor market implications, nor does it mean we can boost employment through looser money.
5. Often I buy the “asymmetry argument.” That suggests more price inflation probably won’t hurt us much, but monetary tightening could damage labor markets, so why tighten? Paul Krugman among others makes this argument.
6. Now the risks look fairly symmetric. The first reason is that zero short rates for so long might be encouraging excess risk-taking in the financial sector. This can be the “reach for yield” argument, which in spite of its lack of replicable econometric support commands a lot of loyalty from serious observers within the financial sector itself.
7. The second reason for symmetric risks is that zero short rates for so long might be encouraging zombie companies:
The end of ultra-low interest rates may bode ill for the productivity of British businesses, which is already poor. Output per hour is still lower than before the crisis of 2007, whereas in America and even France it has grown. Tight monetary policy should be bad for productivity, since it makes business investment more expensive. As the cost to businesses of borrowing has fallen by more than half since 2008, investment by firms has risen by 20%. The worry now is that dearer borrowing will curb the investment binge, making productivity even more dismal.
Yet there is another side to the productivity equation. Kristin Forbes, a member of the MPC, points out that, as in Japan in the 1990s, cheap borrowing may allow inefficient “zombie firms” to survive for longer than they normally would. In Britain interest payments as a share of profits have fallen from about 25% in 2009 to 10% today, bringing down company liquidations with them. As they stagger on, zombie firms hold down average productivity levels in their industry and, as a result, put a lid on wage growth. Rising interest rates could slowly start to sort the wheat from the chaff.
That is from from The Economist and of course you can adapt it for an American context.
8. Those two arguments might be meaningful with only a chance of say fifteen percent each, but that still would put the risks in a broadly symmetric position. I don’t see that the critics have made the case that a mere quarter point rate increase should be so damaging.
9. The contrarian in me rebels when I see article after article, blog post after blog post, consider the monetary policy problem in only two dimensions, namely as would be expressed by a Phillips curve. See #4. The “nice view” of monetary policy, as Faust and Leeper suggest (pdf), is probably wrong.
10. If I were at the Fed, I would consider a “dare” quarter point increase just to show the world that zero short rates are not considered necessary for prosperity and stability. Arguably that could lower the risk premium and boost confidence by signaling some private information from the Fed. But it’s a risk too — what if the zero rates are necessary?
11. The prospect of a stronger dollar, and the subsequent hit on American exports, remains a domestic reason not to let rates rise. I doubt if it is a global Benthamite reason, but it is probably a reason held by some within the Fed.
12. The biggest piece of information here is that both Janet Yellen and Stanley Fischer both seem genuinely uncertain as to what the Fed should do. No, they haven’t been absorbed by the hard money Borg. They have their own version of these arguments and it seems they see the risks as being relatively symmetric, and thus the correct monetary policy choice is far from obvious. No one has yet said anything that is smarter or more potent in Bayesian terms than what they probably are thinking.
13. Let’s say the Fed did decide to allow rates to rise. How exactly would they make that happen? How hard would it prove to accomplish? That’s an under-discussed angle to all of this. And the Fed might either wish to postpone this curiosity or get it over with, another set of symmetric risks.
We’ll know more soon.
A very good paragraph and a half
Claire Messud on Elena Ferrante in the FT:
…the novelist remains true to her broadest undertaking: to write, with as much honesty as possible, the unadorned emotional truths of Elena Greco’s life, from timid peasant schoolgirl to respected literary icon, riven always between her origins and her ambitions, between her intellectual pursuits, her romantic desires, and her maternal responsibilities — always with Lila as her fractured mirror.
I’ve pressed Ferrante’s novels on friends with mixed results. Some fall upon the books with a familiar eagerness, but by no means all: one woman said, of My Brilliant Friend, “How’s it different from Judy Blume? Just girls getting their periods.” But I end up thinking that the people who don’t see Ferrante’s genius are those who can’t face her uncomfortable truths: that women’s friendships are as much about hatred as love; that our projections determine our stories as much as does any fact; that we carry our origins, indelibly, to our graves. To imbue fiction with the undiluted energy of life — to make of it not just words upon a page but a visceral force — is the greatest artistic achievement, worth more than any pretty sentences: Ferrante has done this, if not perfectly, then with a rare brilliance.
Here is a good review of Ferrante from The Economist. As I’ve been saying for a while, this is one of the important literary projects over the last decade or more. And of course we still don’t know who Elena Ferrante really is, her (his?) true identity remains a secret. And here is the new Vanity Fair interview with Ferrante.
Saturday assorted links
1. Which Republican candidates actually cut government spending?
2. Will the financial mainstream pick up on the block chain idea?
3. Emmanuel Todd is getting himself in trouble.
4. When it comes to travel, skip the iconic.
6. Interview with Josiah Ober on ancient Greece.
7. “But we are not utilitarians. We are Americans.” Is there a coming car revolution?
What should be the minimum wage for rural Idaho?
There is a new opinion of sorts:
The Democratic Party platform now calls for a $15 per hour national minimum wage for all hourly workers after delegates voted in an amendment proposed by progressive activists during the Democratic National Committee Meeting here on Friday.
The pointer is from Conor Sen.
The economic history of one NYC block
Here is the academic paper, by William Easterly, and Laura Freschi, and Steven Pennings:
Economic development is usually analyzed at the national level, but the literature on creative destruction and misallocation suggests the importance of understanding what is happening at much smaller units. This paper does a development case study at an extreme micro level (one city block in New York City), but over a long period of time (four centuries). We find that (i) development involves many changes in production as comparative advantage evolves and (ii) most of these changes were unexpected (“surprises”). As one episode from the block’s history illustrates, it is difficult for prescriptive planners to anticipate changes in comparative advantage, and it is easy for regulations to stifle creative destruction and to create misallocation. If economic growth indeed has a large component for increases in productivity through reallocation and innovation, we argue that the micro-level is important for understanding development at the national level.
It is a block on Greene St., near NYU, and so a section of this paper focuses on whorehouses. History made them do it. Here is the interactive site. I am in general a big believer in this kind of micro-history, which remains undervalued in the economics profession.
The pointer is from Kottke.
Do we overvalue nuance?
Kieran Healy has a new paper on that topic (pdf), by the way a paper with a very short title (but this is a family blog). Here is his opening paragraph:
Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Sociologists typically use it as a term of praise, and almost without exception when nuance is mentioned is is because someone is asking for more of it. I shall argue that, for the problems facing Sociology at present, demanding more nuance typically obstructs the development of theory that is intellectually interesting, empirically generative, or practically successful.