Category: Weblogs

David Beckworth is starting a money/macro podcast series

by  Tyler Cowen in

David writes to me:

Today is the launch of a new podcast series on macroeconomics called Macro Musing and I am privileged to be the host. Each week, with the help of a special guest, we will get to explore in depth various macroeconomic topics. If want to go all wonky on macro this is the podcast for you!

So far I have recorded podcasts with the following guests: Scott Sumner, John Taylor, John Cochrane, Cardiff Garcia, Miles Kimball, Ramesh Ponnuru, and George Selgin. There have been a lot of interesting conversations covering topics such as the origins of the Great Recession, the safe asset shortage problem, negative interest rates, the fiscal theory of the price level, the Eurozone Crisis, Abenomics, the Great Depression, China’s economic problems, and alternative monetary regimes. In addition to these interesting topics, I have enjoyed learning how each guest got into macro, either as an academic or journalist, and how they see the field changing over time as new ideas and new technology emerge. I think you will find it fascinating too.

More guest are scheduled, including some Fed officials, but I would love to hear from you on what guests and topics you would like to see on the show. My first guest is Scott Sumner with whom I discuss his views on the Great Recession, NGDP targeting, and his new book on the Great Depression, The Midas Paradox.

I hope to make this a long-term project, but it success depends in part on you subscribing. So please subcribe via itunes or your favorite podcast app and spread the word. Let’s make this podcast a success together and who knows, maybe we can help make the world a better place.

A mass email from Andrew Sullivan

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here are some key parts:

This email is to let you know that I’m going back to long-form journalism, as I hoped to, at New York Magazine, edited by the incomparable Adam Moss (with whom I’ve worked, on and off, since the late 1980s). I start today and am already working on an essay on Trump. I’ll also be blogging the Democratic and Republican conventions – two discrete, unmissable moments for bloggery in real time. I know, I know. But if I keep the blogging restricted to two bouts of four days each, I’m hoping I won’t relapse.

My other news is that I’ve also committed to two new books. The first, with the working title of “Keeping Faith,” is a spiritual memoir and theological argument about the future and meaning of Christianity in the 21st Century. The second, called “Thinking Out Loud,” is a collection of my essays and reviews and posts over the last thirty years. I’m excited to be published by Simon and Schuster, with Ben Loehnen as my editor. I’ll keep you posted as these projects unfold.

Sentences to ponder, MR fact of the day — who leaves on-line comments?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Americans who leave news comments, who read news comments, and who do neither are demographically distinct. News commenters are more male, have lower levels of education, and have lower incomes compared to those who read news comments.

That is from Dr. Natalie (Talia), Jomini Stroud, Cynthia Peacock, and Emily Van Duyn, via the excellent Laura Miller.

Comments are open on this one, people…

The Stigler Center at the University of Chicago now has a blog

by  Tyler Cowen in

https://promarket.org/

Here is a Luigi Zingales post, “Why this blog?”:

By gathering information on the nature and cost of this subversion of competition, by distributing this information among the public at large, and by making this information salient, media outlets can reduce the power of vested interests. By exposing the distortions created by special interests, they can create the political demand for a competitive capitalism.

This is the goal of our Pro-Market blog: to educate the public about the many ways competition can be subverted. In this exercise our only goal is to make the market system work better. In the finest University of Chicago tradition, we will do it with data. We will try to do it with the rigor of the best academic work, but without the pedantry that often accompanies it. This blog will collect opinions, summarize work, and report on relevant research by Chicago faculty and Stigler fellows. We will use every medium at our disposal, because the message is our medium.

Self-recommending…

The man who wants to read everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

The New Yorker has done a profile of Michael A. Orthofer, here is one excerpt:

I first contacted him in 2004, asking him if I could write for the the Complete Review; I was an undergraduate at Stanford at the time, and thought that the site was an institution, like The New York Review of Books. I was politely rebuffed. Years later, I e-mailed to ask if I could send him a galley of my first novel. He already had it, he replied—he had picked up an advance review copy for sale at the Strand, for $1.49. He went on to review the book, giving it a B, and later e-mailed to soften the blow. “Bs always have something going for them,” he explained, while a C grade indicates “steer-clear territory.” All books on the site get a rating from A+ to F, part of the site’s endearing, Robert-Christgau-like fustiness.

Michael runs Literary Saloon, one of the very best and most important blogs, focusing on foreign literature in translation.

Oddly, he spent the first six years of his life not reading, and thus he is somewhat behind.  Yet he is working at it:

“I can’t imagine not doing it,” Orthofer told me. “A day in which I don’t read or write, I have trouble falling asleep.” His goal is to read a book a day, though he confesses that this is “unrealistic.” He works on weekends, too, and has written four novels that are in the drawer. His main interests, according to the site, are inline roller-skating in Central Park and building snow sculptures, some of which are big enough that he carves staircases inside them to get to the top. When he tires of working, he steps out to a library or bookstore, “to see, be around books.” Last year, and this year, he worked through Christmas.

I will continue to read him until I can no longer.  The profile is interesting and humorous throughout, and it is so far my favorite magazine piece of the year.

For the pointer I thank Michael Rosenwald.

Is the gig economy taking over Washington, D.C.?

by  Tyler Cowen in

No, basically:

We first look at the number of District taxpayers who have paid self-employment taxes. The data show that the total number of people who pay self-employment taxes has increased in the District from 35,000 in 2006 to nearly 49,000 in 2014. This is a very steep increase (36 percent overall and nearly 4.5 percent annualized) even when compared to the relatively rapid increase in the District’s population and tax filers (tax filers grew at about 2 percent per year during the same period).  But data show that the rapid increase in the number of filers who paid self-employment taxes occurred before 2010. In fact, since 2010, the share of tax filers who pay self-employment taxes has been stable at about 14 percent.

That is from a longer post, there is more at the link.  Here is the broader (and excellent) blog on the law and economics of Washington, D.C., DistrictMeasured.com.

What kind of blog post produces the most comments?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Imagine if I wrote a post that just served up a list like this:

The people who deserve to be raised in status:

Norman Borlaug, Jon Huntsman, female Catholics from Croatia, Scottie Pippen, Yoko Ono, Gordon Tullock, Uber drivers, and Arnold Schoenberg,

And

The people who deserve to be lowered in status:

Donald Trump, Harper Lee, inhabitants of the province Presidente Hayes, in Paraguay, doctors, Jacques Derrida, Indira Gandhi, and Art Garfunkel

You might get a kick out of it the first time, but quickly you would grow tired of the lack of substance and indeed the sheer prejudice of the exercise.

Yet, ultimately, the topic so appeals to you all.  So much of debate, including political and economic debate, is about which groups and individuals deserve higher or lower status.  It’s pretty easy — too easy in fact — to dissect most Paul Krugman blog posts along these lines.  It’s also why a lot of blog posts about foreign countries don’t generate visceral reactions, unless of course it is the Greeks and the Germans, or some other set of stand-ins for disputes closer to home (or maybe that is your home).  Chinese goings on are especially tough to parse into comparable American disputes over the status of one group vs. another.

I hypothesize that an MR blog post attracts more comments when it a) has implications for who should be raised and lowered in status, and b) has some framework in place which allows you to make analytical points, but points which ultimately translate into a conclusion about a).

Posts about immigration, the minimum wage, Greece and Germany, the worthiness of entrepreneurs vs. workers, and the rankings of different schools of thought or economists all seem to fit this bill.

Sometimes I am tempted to simply serve up the list and skip the analytics.

Addendum: Arnold Kling comments.

Bank of England (!) has started a blog

by  Tyler Cowen in

It is called Bank Underground, a clever title.  There is one interesting post on insurance for driverless cars, and another on deflation risk.

Can you imagine the Fed doing the same?  The bloggy voice and the need for institutional conformity are not always in perfect synch.  Still, perhaps central banks are learning that if they do not define their own image, others will do it for them.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed…