Category: Web/Tech

Nordic model

A new blog, the topic is obvious, hat tip to New Economist.  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.  No matter what your politics, contemporary northern Europe represents a high point in human civilization.  If you’re not deeply interested in the region, you should be.  If you haven’t visited, you must.  Go, go, go.  Travel is the starting point of learning social science.

Addendum: Elsewhere Meghan O’Rourke notes: "It’s telling, for example, that in Scandinavia, where attitudes toward gender are more egalitarian, both men and women wear engagement rings."

The private provision of public goods

Here is a bizarre story, especially for traditional public finance economists.  Public.Resource.Org takes non-copyrighted documents that the federal government charges the public for and puts them into the public domain.  Not much is available now but the service wants to make available for free all of the millions of documents, videos and other material from National Technical Information Service.  To build their library Public.Resource.Org are asking people who want a government document to buy it through their service.  They will then make the document available to everyone else for free.

Public goods that the government charges for brought to you at P=MC by a private firm.  We live in a great world.

Addendum: I was pleased to see that Hal Varian is on the board of directors.

Markets in everything — roundup edition

1. $1 million for prostitutes who will out their Congressional customers 

2. Getting you through phone links to a real human being

3. Or rent a new credit score

4. Blockbuster movies backed by bonds

5. Insurance against losing your Michelin star

What a day.  Hail Gerard Debreu!  Hail the MR readers who sent these in!  I didn’t even have to pay them…

Guest Blogger: Bob Hormats

We are very pleased to have Bob Hormats guest blogging at MR this week.  Bob is currently vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International).  Bob has extensive experience in finance and politics having served in the State
Department as assistant secretary of state for economic and business
affairs, ambassador and deputy U.S. trade representative, and senior deputy assistant secretary for economic and
business affairs, among other positions.

Bob’s latest book is The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars, a superb history of wartime fiscal policy and a warning that entitlement programs and war spending are pushing America towards fiscal catastrophe

Welcome Bob!