From the Richmond Fed, the focus is Latin America.  Here is one insightful bit of many:

RF: What is your opinion of Hernando de Soto’s The
Other Path? What lessons can policymakers in Latin
America take from that book?

Calvo: The main lesson is that regulations must be
simplified as much as possible in order to encourage the development
of the formal sector and, thus, most likely enhance the
pace of technical progress. However, I am skeptical that a major
overhaul of government regulations will have a major effect in
the short or medium term. The reason is that the informal sector
strongly relies on tax evasion and, unless you implement a
major tax moratorium – accompanied by substantially lowered
tax rates –firms are likely not to move to the formal sector,
even if all the red tape is eliminated. Moreover, a moratorium is
likely to have detrimental moral hazard implications.

Michael Schwartz [my link] earned an economics doctorate from Stanford Univeristy before spending five years as an assistant profesor of microeconomics at Harvard University.  His research papers include "Synchronization under Uncertainty."

These days, Mr. Schwartz is thinking about how to use economics to save attractive women from unwanted solicitations on an Internet dating site [TC: he needs to confer with Miss Passey].  One idea employs the concept of "scarcity," rationing the number of messages each lothario can send.  Another uses full disclosure, by displaying how many people a suitor has already approached.

…A person familiar with the matter says Yahoo aims to build a team of more than a dozen economists.

…Mr. Schwartz…[is] currently writing a research paper about economic markets where one side of a potential transaction is eager to profess its preference for the other side, as is often the case with hiring and online dating.  The unequal relationship make such markets complicated and unpredictable.

That is from today’s Wall Street Journal, p.1, "Hoping to Overtake its Rivals, Yahoo Stocks Up on the Academics."

Gayle Allard and the ever-interesting Peter Lindert write:

How have labor market institutions and welfare-state transfers affected
jobs and productivity in Western Europe, relative to industrialized
Pacific Rim countries?  Orthodox criticisms of European government
institutions are right in some cases and wrong in others.  Protectionist
labor-market policies such as employee protection laws seem to have
become more costly since about 1980, not through overall employment
effects, but through the net human-capital cost of protecting senior
male workers at the expense of women and youth.  Product-market
regulations in core sectors may also have reduced GDP, though here the
evidence is less robust.  By contrast, high general tax levels have shed
the negative influence they might have had in the 1960s and 1970s. 
Similarly, other institutions closer to the core of the welfare state
have caused no net harm to European jobs and growth.  The welfare
state’s tax-based social transfers and coordinated wage bargaining have
not harmed either employment or GDP.  Even unemployment benefits do not
have robustly negative effects.

These are underexplored but not easy to explore questions; here is the paper.

I would feel better if Ireland were removed from the data set, since a booming economy can afford many sins.  After this adjustment, coordinated bargaining wouldn’t look as good.  And when we calculate average productivity, should not the unemployed count for "zero productivity," or even negative, in the appropriate measure?  I believe that tax rates matter, but only at particular thresholds.

I also would like to argue the following: "Don’t think we can pick and choose the egalitarian interventions which turn up as the very best in econometric studies.  We are unlikely to know in advance which policies are the least harmful and politics is even less likely to turn those proposals into legislation." 

But would I be committing The Libertarian Vice?

Here is a nice, relaxing vacation idea for my wife:

The 20 or so people fleeing the Border Patrol aren’t undocumented immigrants – they’re tourists about 700 miles from the border.  Most are well-heeled professionals more likely to travel to the United States in an airplane than on foot.

They’ve each paid 150 pesos – about $15 – for what is perhaps Mexico’s strangest tourist attraction: A night as an illegal immigrant crossing the Rio Grande.

Advertising for the mock journey, which takes place at a nature park in the central state of Hidalgo, tells the pretend immigrants to "Make fun of the Border Patrol!" and to "Cross the Border as an Extreme Sport!"

As craven as the advertising sounds, the organizers say they are trying to build empathy for migrants by putting people in their shoes.

Here is the full story.  Here is an interesting recent article on sympathy.

The Bartels result may be just showing that in an economy when
average incomes are are rising rapidly, the low income groups benefit
more than the higher income groups.  Since WWII, with the exception of
Eisenhower, no Republican was president when the average income was
rising rapidly.

Here is the link for a relevant graph.  Here is a graph of the Bartels result.  And here is Greg Mankiw on inequality and unions, in case you missed it, perhaps Greg’s best post so far.

It starts here, from Xavier Sala-i-Martin, via of Bryan Caplan.  Bryan himself is proof positive of his point.

On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter.

Maybe it’s not greater self-esteem.