Here is my latest New York Times column (non-gated).  Excerpt:

Their [Gabaix and Landier) core argument is simple. If we look at recent history,
compensation for executives has risen with the market capitalization of
the largest companies. For instance, from 1980 to 2003, the average
value of the top 500 companies rose by a factor of six. Two commonly
used indexes of chief executive compensation show close to a
proportional sixfold matching increase (the correlation coefficients
are 0.93 and 0.97, respectively; 1.0 would be a perfect match).

By the way, Japanese CEOs are paid much more than many popular or Internet sources indicate.  American CEOs are paid about three times more than their Japanese counterparts (on average), but not forty or so times more.

Following on my Op-Ed from yesterday, one loyal MR reader asks me, in an email, a few questions about immigration.  Here is my first cut at answers:

–Is there no amount of unskilled immigration that is too high? In other words, do you advocate open borders?

I don’t believe in open borders for today’s America.  I would increase current immigration quotas for all groups and allow illegals to move back and forth more readily.  Many current illegals would prefer to spend more time in their home country than is currently possible.  I don’t know exactly how much we can boost immigration and of course I don’t expect political progress on the issue.  But we should start with a twenty percent boost in the yearly quotas.    And how about another twenty percent increase two years later?

–Why do you have faith that federal policy can address the regionalized problems [with immigration] when you don’t trust federal policy to correctly judge which immigrant skills we ought to give priority?

I think the federal government is capable of giving more money to subsidize emergency rooms near the border.  This is an easier task than judging what professions we will need thirty years down the road.

–You mention the success of second-generation offspring of most immigrant groups, but let’s get real, this whole issue is about Mexicans, mostly, not Canadian economists. How have their offspring done? Of course, it might not even matter; if you’re right that a growing supply of unskilled labor isn’t bad, then does it make any difference if the second generation is also unskilled?

David Card and others have plenty of data on how well the second and third generations of Latinos do in assimilating and entering the mainstream of American life.  I find the overall portrait a reassuring one.  I will look for data on Mexicans per se and let you all know if I find anything useful. 

N.B.: If the quality of current Mexican immigration is "lower than you would like," keep in mind the current mix is partly an artifact of current immigration law, which encourages the least rooted and the most desperate to cross the border.   Young male teenagers are those who least mind being cut off from returning home.  Allowing immigrants to come and go would raise the quality of the pool.

"The book is called judge and jury and it’s not just the juries that we put on trial."  That’s from the online video of AEI’s event on my book, Judge and Jury: American Tort Law on Trial.

The Mexican government has tapped international markets to issue a
special catastrophe bond to finance rescue and rebuilding in case of a
disastrous earthquake, finance ministry…

Swiss Re, the Zurich-based reinsurance group, issued the bonds,
which pay 230 basis points over the Libor benchmark interest rate.

"If
there’s no disaster in three years," the finance minister, Francisco
Gil Diáz, said, "the investors keep the premium and the interest" and
get back the bond.

But if a quake hits, the  government gets the full value of the bonds, and investors lose their money.

Catastrophe
bonds were started in the 1990’s, and have largely been issued by
private companies to cover losses from natural disasters. Taiwan is the
only other government that has issued such a bond against a quake, but
it covers damages from losses.

In Mexico’s case, the government
collects the $450 million in the bonds and the insurance payout if a
quake of 7.5 or 8 magnitude on the Richter scale hits specific regions,
regardless of damage. Mr. González Anaya said that meant the government
would have money for rescue operations immediately after a disaster.

Mexico has a special fund for natural disasters but the fund has only $80 million.

Last
year, the Mexican government spent $1.2 billion to cover rescue and
rebuilding operations after Hurricanes Stan and Wilma. Mr. González
Anaya hopes to issue a similar kind of catastrophe bond against
hurricanes.

Here is the full story.

Less is certainly not more for the American Economic Association. According to David Warsh’s latest column, Broader, Deeper, they have adopted plans to produce four more economic journals, all titled – prosaically enough – American Economic Journal. They will cover macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic policy and applied economics.

Here is much more information.  Is this good news?  I fear greater fragmentation in an already-splintering profession.  Could this mean fewer idea pieces and greater room for excess specialization?  I like the idea of whacking commercial journal publishers but is it wise to centralize so much influence in one centrally-chosen set of editors?