Category: Uncategorized

*The Great Persuasion*

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the new book by Angus Burgin and the subtitle is Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression.  As I had suspected, it is interesting.  Here is the core thesis:

To Hayek and the other founders of the Mont Pelerin Society, Friedman’s ascent within its orbit reflected the collapse of its attempt to integrate a restrained defense of free markets into a traditionalist worldview.  In the broader social environment Friedman’s rise portended, and precipitated, the triumphant return of laissez-faire.

One thing which strikes me reading this book, as it does when I reread Friedman’s 1962 Capitalism and Freedom, is how much market-oriented writers of that era were not focused on the problems of old people, even though today those problems take up a huge chunk of the budget of the federal government.

I found this excerpt interesting:

In stark contrast to the early post-war years, Friedman would conclude near the end of his career that “there are too many damn think tanks now,” adding that they simply “don’t have the talent for it.”

Growth tigers of the 1950s

by  Tyler Cowen in

If we pull out Japan, Israel, and postwar European catch-up, and do per capita growth, B.R. Shenoy’s list of top performers looks like this:

Jamaica, 6.9%

Trinidad and Tobago, 5.9%

Algeria, 5.7%

Puerto Rico, 5.5%

Rhodesia and Nysaaland, 4.1%

Turkey, 2.9%

Philippines, 2.5%

If you do absolute rather than per capita, many of those numbers go up by a few percentage points, for instance the Philippines becomes 5.8% and Algeria becomes 8.0%.

Those numbers are from B.R. Shenoy’s book Indian Economic Policy.  Are there lessons?  One is that parts of the Caribbean are in fact wealthier than many people think.  Another is that the 1950s were a very good decade for the Caribbean, culturally too.  A third lesson is that the top performers in one period may not have legs.  Finally, looking at this table makes one realize, yet again, how good it was to more or less rid the world of communism.

The words English has taken from India

by  Tyler Cowen in

Another author who has drawn inspiration from the dictionary is Tom Stoppard. In his play Indian Ink, two characters compete to use as many Hobson-Jobson words as possible:

  • Flora: “While having tiffin on the veranda of my bungalow I spilled kedgeree on my dungarees and had to go to the gymkhana in my pyjamas looking like a coolie.”
  • Nirad: “I was buying chutney in the bazaar when a thug who had escaped from the chokey ran amok and killed a box-wallah for his loot, creating a hullabaloo and landing himself in the mulligatawny.”

Here is more, hat tip goes to The Browser.  They also refer us to this long interview with philosopher Thomas Scanlon, and Ed Glaeser on what American can learn from Australia.

Assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. The increasing polarization of the eurozone electorate.

2. Will Amazon achieve one-day or same-day delivery?

3. Why does this kitchen sink cost more than many laptops?  That is a question from Amit C.  I say materials, combined with economies of scale on the laptop side.

4. Claims about China and financial repression (“this time it’s different”).

5. Starbucks in a funeral home, and Jeff Sachs is mostly right here.

I didn’t mean to leave anybody out

by  Tyler Cowen in

From my entering class at Harvard, that is.  A few emails prompt me to produce a longer list:

Douglas Elmendorf, now head of the CBO in addition to his previous illustrious career in research and policy.

Rob Stavins, teaches at the Kennedy School and is one of the leading researchers in environmental economics including climate change.

Perry Mehrling, we’ve covered him a lot on MR, most of all I love his book on Fischer Black.

Asher Blass, living in Israel, working as a partner in a consulting firm, for a while he was chief economist at Bank of Israel.  I recall Asher once telling me that an individual can have a larger impact in a country with a small population.

Kenneth Kuttner, he has spent time at the San Francisco Fed and co-authored several important papers on money and credit.  Now at Williams College.

John Nachbar, a noted theorist at Washington University and for a while he was department chair.

David Corbett, he now works as a lawyer.

Allen Sanguines, he was brilliant in theory, he is now the President of Rasaland, a development fund in Mexico.

Mark Sundberg, a while ago he was at the World Bank.

Mary Hirschfeld, former Jeopardy champion, went on to get a Ph.D in theology at Notre Dame, now teaching humanities at Villanova.

Greg Duffie, macro and money, professor at Johns Hopkins.

Richard Grossman, at Wesleyan, he is well known in financial history.

Hamish Stewart, has done well recognized work in economics and philosophy.

Deborah Weiss, for a while she was my colleague at GMU Law, now she is living in Texas and raising a family.

My earlier coverage of the class was here.  Our TAs included Michael Mandel and Nobu Kiyotaki.  There are more, perhaps Miles can help me out in the comments.

Reminiscences of Miles Kimball, and others

by  Tyler Cowen in

Miles and I were in the same entering class in Harvard.  Miles and Abhijit Banerjee were for economic theory the sharpest students in the group and it must have been an absolute terror to teach them.  Both were gentlemanly in the extreme, but if a mistake or ambiguity were on the board, or in a paper, you could be sure they would find it and point it out.  I recall Abhijit answering a question on the macro final exam and showing that what he thought would be the supposed Harvard faculty member answer was in fact wrong, in addition to solving for the right answer, finding a few other possible equilibria, and acing the rest of the exam in but a few hours’ time.  Steve Kaplan, from the same class, later became known as an empirical economist but his theoretical acumen was remarkably good.  Those three dominated a lot of the discussions.  Mathias Dewatripont was also no slouch in theory though temperamentally quieter.  Alan Krueger, in his third year, obtained the reputation of having the best eye for an important empirical paper and how to execute it; he learned the most from Larry Summers.  Nouriel Roubini was generally quiet, though he looked all-knowing and at times slightly jaded.

Brad DeLong was a few years older.  He was thought of as the slightly right-wing guy (compared to his peers he was) who read a lot of unusual history of economic thought, including Adam Ferguson.  He and his girlfriend (now wife) were inseparable and always affectionate.

Miles struck me as a mind in perpetual motion, in the best sense of that phrase.  I was not surprised, in 1984, when I heard about his linguistics Master’s thesis, which includes a learned and original discussion of Charles Peirce.  Miles is also a cousin of Mitt Romney, and he will soon blog “Will Mitt’s Mormonism Make Him a Supply-Side Liberal?”.  I wonder what he makes of us all.

Here are his early tweets.

One feature about his blog which is refreshing is that he is neither a libertarian nor a progressive, though he incorporates ideas from both approaches.  My RSS feed is mostly libertarians and progressives, but that is part of the strange selection mechanism of the blogosphere, not a reflection of the economics profession.

Again, Miles’s blog is here and Miles on Twitter is here.  Most of all, he seems to be a great dad, or at least his daughter thinks so.  She too is studying at Harvard, for an MBA.  Here is her project Expert Novice, “Every month or so, I write a letter about what I’ve learned lately.”

*Rome: An Empire’s Story*

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the new book by Greg Woolf.  Could it now be the best single-volume introduction to the history of ancient Rome?  It is conceptual yet avoids the pitfalls of overgeneralizing, a difficult balance to strike.  It also has a superb (useful rather than exhaustive) bibliography.  A good measure of books such as this is whether they induce you to read or order other books on the same topic and this one did.

A sure thing to make my “Best Books of 2012” list.

Higher frequency (book) trading: Walras, collusion, or both?

by  Tyler Cowen

High-speed trading tools pioneered in the stock market are increasingly driving price movements on Amazon’s website as independent sellers use them to undercut and outwit each other in a cut-throat online market place.

Product prices now change as often as every 15 minutes as some of the 2m sellers on Amazon’s site join the online retailer in using computerised tools – often developed by former data miners at investment banks – to lure shoppers with the best deals.

…Amazon sellers – using third-party software – can set rules to ensure that their prices are always, for example, $1 lower than their main rival’s.

…Some sellers have even created dummy accounts with ultra-low prices to deliberately pull down those of rivals so they can corner a market by buying their goods, say pricing experts. That practice violates Amazon’s rules of conduct.

Here is more, “Amazon robo-pricing sparks fears.”