Results for “Acemoglu” 116 found
Sunday assorted links
1. The Boudreaux and Palagashvili paper on the economics of overtime pay.
2. A correction on psychoticism, politics and personality, further information here.
3. Acemoglu and Cowen on Robert Gordon.
4. What if GPS jammers become more common?
5. Cuba is running out of beer.
6. Does chess training generalize to other cognitive benefits?
Saturday assorted links
1. Which are over- and underrated dog breeds?
2. The newly unveiled painted portrait of Bernanke in the Fed. And Clickhole explains Bitcoin (short video, funny).
3. Laser-cloaking device could help hide us from aliens.
4. I hadn’t known that Zika had its first recorded outbreak on Yap island, where they use stone discs for money. NYT link, here is Wikipedia.
5. Interviewing Acemoglu about the Post Office.
6. Wikileaks on the IMF and Greece. No huge revelations, but lots of egg on face, and a caution looking forward around the time of the Brexit vote.
7. Historian and economic historian William L. O’Neill has passed away.
Skill mismatch unemployment is real and significant
Even during demand-driven recessions. Part of the problem is that cyclical and structural causes of unemployment interact and magnify each other. Here is the job market paper of Pascual Restrepo, one of the stars from MIT currently on the job market. I turn the floor over to him:
To study the effect of structural change on labor markets, I build a model in which structural change creates a mismatch between novel jobs skill requirements and workers’ current skills. When the mismatch is severe, labor markets go through a prolonged adjustment process wherein unemployment is amplified and job creation is low. Due to matching frictions, firms find less workers with the requisite skills for novel jobs and they respond by creating fewer jobs. The paucity of novel jobs creates an external amplification effect that increases unemployment for all workers—including those who already hold the requisite skills—and discourages rapid skill acquisition by workers. Structural change is not only a secular process; it also interacts with the business cycle, causing a large and long-lasting increase in unemployment that concentrates in recessions. I demonstrate that the decline in routine-cognitive jobs outside manufacturing—a pervasive structural change that has affected U.S. labor markets since 2000—caused a severe skill mismatch that contributed to the long-lasting increase in unemployment observed during the Great Recession. My evidence suggests that this external amplification effect is important. Moreover, I find that the skill mismatch amplified and propagated demand shocks at the local labor market level.
How many times during the last five years have I read or heard critiques of structural theories which neglect their more sophisticated forms? (“What, did everyone in 2008 simply forget…?” etc. Be very suspicious of the structure of that argument.)
Here are two other interesting papers by Restrepo, including one on how to share income with the robots, co-authored with Acemoglu. I agree with their conclusion: “We find that inequality increases during transitions, but the self-correcting forces of the economy limit the increase in inequality over longer periods.”
My International Trade reading list for Fall 2015
This is quite long, so it goes under the fold…class starts tomorrow night!
Books: Jacob Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (on-line, optional).
All videos can be found on MRUniversity.com, if not in the international trade section than in the development economics class or a few on Mexico in the Mexico class. In general I recommend viewing the videos before tackling the readings.
I. Comparative advantage and free trade
Bernhofen, Daniel and John C. Brown. 2005. “An Empirical Assessment of the Comparative Advantage Gains from Trade: Evidence from Japan.” American Economic Review.
Autor, David H. David Dorn and Gordon H. Hanson. Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labour Markets. The Economic journal, 2015, 125 (584), p. 621 – 646.
Acemoglu, Daron, David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson. 2014. “Import Competition and the Great US Employment Sag of the 2000s.” NBER Working Paper.
Feenstra, Robert C. 2008. “Offshoring in the Global Economy.” Ohlin Lecture Series, Lecture 1 only, through p.66 only.
Grossman, Gene M. and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg. 2006. “The Rise of Offshoring: It’s Not Wine for Cloth Anymore.” Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Donaldson, David. 2011. “Trade and Labor Markets.” powerpoint.
Khandelwal, Amit. 2009. “The Long and Short (of) Quality Ladders.” Review of Economic Studies.
Baldwin, Richard. 2011. “How Trade and Industrial Organization After Globalization’s 2nd Unblundling: How Building and Joining a Supply Chain are Different and Why it Matters.” NBER Working Paper. Also this is a chapter in the NBER book Globalization in an Age of Crisis: Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century (2014), Robert C. Feenstra and Alan M. Taylor, editors, pp. 165–212.
Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou and Nina Pavcnik. 2007. “Distributional Effects of Globalization in Developing Countries.” Journal of Economic Literature.
Tyler Cowen, “Why the theory of comparative advantage is overrated,” Marginal Revolution blog post, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/09/why-the-theory-of-comparative-advantage-is-overrated.html
Videos: The two videos on Comparative Advantage, Sources of Comparative Advantage, Development and Trade, empirical evidence, Evidence on Comparative Advantage from Japan, Factor price equalization, Specific Factors Models, Economics of Offshoring, The Rybczynski Theorem, Trade, Investment, and Migration as Substitutes, Unbundling the Supply Chain.
II.Tariffs
Paul Krugman. “The One-Minute Trade Policy Theorist.” (powerpoint)
The Economic Benefits of U.S. trade, Office of the President of the United States, May 2015.
Broda, Christian, Nuno Limao, and David Weinstein. 2008. “Optimal Tariffs and Market Power: The Evidence.” American Economic Review.
Arkolakis, Costas, Arnaud Costinot and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 2012. “New Trade Models, Same Old Gains?” American Economic Review.
Melitz, Marc J. “The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity,” Econometrica 2003.
Kehoe, Timothy J. and Kim J. Ruhl. 2006. “How Important Is the New Goods Margin in International Trade?” NBER Working Paper, and now just published, Journal of Political Economy 2013.
Bernhofen, Daniel M., Zouheir El-Sahli, and Richard Kneller. 2012. “Estimating the Effects of the Container Revolution on World Trade.” University of Nottingham Discussion Paper Series.
Nunn, Nathan and Daniel Trefler. 2010. “The Structure of Tariffs and Long-Term Growth.” American Economic Review.
Dave Donaldson, “Trade and Growth (Empirics)”, MIT Lectures notes.
Videos: Tariffs v. Quotas, International Trade Disciplines Monopolies, Monopolistic Competition and International Trade, Effective rate of protection, Theory of Optimal Tariffs, Trade and Variety, Does “fair trade” help?, Malawi restrict trade in corn, Market reforms in Bangladesh, John Stuart Mill Terms of trade, The Shipping Container.
III. Heckscher-Ohlin and factor abundance theories of trade
Helpman, Elhanan. 1999. “The Structure of Foreign Trade.” Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Debaere, Peter. 2003. “Factor Abundance and Trade.” Journal of Political Economy.
Deardorff, Alan V. 1979. “Weak Links in the Chain of Comparative Advantage.” Journal of International Economics.
Trefler, Daniel. 1993. “International Factor Price Differences: Leontief Was Right!” Journal of Political Economy.
Davis, Donald R. and David E. Weinstein. 2001. “What Role for International Trade.” NBER Working Paper.
Davis, Donald R. 1995. “Intra-Industry Trade: A Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo Approach.” Journal of International Economics.
Trefler, Daniel. 1995. “The Case of the Missing Trade and Other Mysteries.” American Economic Review.
Costino, Arnaud and Jonathan Vogel. “Beyond Ricardo: Assignment Models in International Trade,” NBER Working Paper, October 2014.
Videos: What is at Stake in Trade Theories?, The Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem, Evidence on the Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem.
IV. Increasing Returns
Donaldson, David. “Increasing Returns to Scale and Monopolistic Trade.” Powerpoint, on-line, http://economics.mit.edu/files/7444
Helpman, Elhanan. 1987. “Imperfect Competition and International Trade: Evidence from Fourteen Industrial Countries.” Journal of the Japanese and International Economics.
Davis, Donald R. and David E. Weinstein. 2003. “Market Access, Economic Geography, and Comparative Advantage: An Empirical Test.” Journal of International Economics.
Antweiler, Werner ; Trefler, Daniel. Increasing Returns and All That: A View from Trade, American Economic Review, 1 March 2002, Vol.92(1), pp.93-119.
Debaere, Peter. 2005. “Monopolistic Competition and Trade, Revisited: Testing the Model Without Testing for Gravity.” Journal of International Economics.
Yi, Kei-Mu. 2003. “Can Vertical Specialization Explain the Growth of World Trade?” Journal of Political Economy.
Harrigan, James. 2001. “Specialization and the Volume of Trade: Do the Data Obey the Laws?” NBER Working Paper.
Bernard, Andrew B. ; Jensen, J. Bradford ; Redding, Stephen J. ;Schott, Peter K. “Firms in International Trade,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1 July 2007, Vol.21(3), pp.105-130.
Helpman, Elhanan. Foreign Trade and Investment: Firm‐level Perspectives,” Economica, 2014, Vol.81(321), pp.1-14.
Tybout, James R. 2001. “Plant- and Firm-Level Evidence on “New” Trade Theories.” NBER Working Paper.
Bernard, Andrew B. and J. Bradford Jensen. 2004. “Why Some Firms Export.” Review of Economics and Statistics.
Baldwin, Richard ; Harrigan, James. Zeros, Quality, and Space: Trade Theory and Trade Evidence,” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 1 May 2011, Vol.3(2), pp.60-88.
Armenter, Roc and Koren, Miklos. “A Balls-and-Bins Model of Trade.” American Economic Review, 2014, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.104.7.2127.
Videos: Trade and External Economies of Scale, Monopolistic Competition and International Trade, Trade and Increasing Returns: Evidence, Paul Romer, Robert Torrens on strategic trade policy, The Economics of Bollywood.
V. Is there a trade and industrialization slowdown?
Hausmann, Ricardo, Jason Hwang, and Dani Rodrik. “What You Export Matters.” Journal of Economic Growth, 12, 1, March 2007, 1-25.
Rodrik, Dani. “The Future of Economic Convergence.” Harvard Kennedy School, August 2011, RWP11-033.
Rodrik, Dani. “Unconditional Convergence in Manufacturing.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2012.
Rodrik, Dani. “The Perils of Premature Deindustrialization.” Project Syndicate, 11 October 2013.
Rodrik, Dani. “Are Services the New Manufactures?” Project Syndicate, October 13, 2014.
Davies, Gavyn. “Why world trade growth has lost its mojo.” The Financial Times, January 9, 2015.
VI. Gravity models
Anderson, James and Eric van Wincoop. 2004. “Trade Costs” Journal of Economic Literature.
Head, Keith. 2011. “Gravity for Beginners.” Presented at US-Canada Border Conference.
Donaldson, David. 2011. “Gravity Models.” No Journal—powerpoint.
Hummels, David. 2007. “Transportation Costs and International Trade in the Second Era of Globalization.” Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Anderson, James and Eric van Wincoop. 2003. “Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle.” American Economic Review.
Eaton, Jonathan and Samuel Kortum. 2002. “Technology, Geography, and Trade.” Econometrica.
Chaney, Thomas. “The Network Structure of International Trade,” American Economic Review 2014.
Video: The Gravity Equation and the Costs of Trade.
VII. Trade in economic history
Harrison, Ann and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 2010. “Trade, Foreign Investment, and Industrial Policy for Developing Countries.” Handbook of Development Economics, Volume 5, Ch 63, also the same is Ann Harrison and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 2009. “Trade, Foreign Investment, and Industrial Policy for Developing Countries.” NBER Working Paper.
Irwin, Douglas. 2002. “Interpreting the Tariff-Growth Correlation of the Late Nineteenth Century.” American Economic Review.
Irwin, Douglas. 2002. “Did Import Substitution Promote Growth in the Late Nineteenth Century?” NBER Working Paper.
John Nye, “The Myth of Free Trade Britain and Fortress France,” Journal of Economic History, 1991.
Irwin, Douglas. 1997. “From Smoot-Hawley to Reciprocal Agreements: Changing the Course of U.S. Trade Policy in the 1930s.” NBER Working Paper.
Irwin, Douglas. 1998. “The Smoot-Hawley Tariff: A Quantitative Assessment.” The Review of Economic Statistics.
Crowley, Meredith A. and Xi Luo. 2011. “Understanding the Great Trade Collapse of 2008-09 and the Subsequent Trade Recovery.” Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Francois, Joseph and Julia Woerz. 2009. “The Big Drop: Trade and the Great Recession.” No Journal, article online.
Videos: Corn Law debates, Friedrich List, Robert Torrens on sliding tariffs, The Deindustrialization of India, Tariffs and Growth in the late 19thCentury, South Korea and Industrial Policy, The Smoot-Hawley Tariff, Why Did Trade Plummet in the Great Recession?
VIII. FDI and multinationals
Blonigen, Bruce. A Review of the Empirical Literature on FDI Determinants, Atlantic Economic Journal, 2005, 33, 4, pp.383-403
Ramondo, Natalia and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 2013. “Trade, Multinational Production, and the Gains from Openness.” Journal of Political Economy, 2013, vol. 121, no. 2.
Antras, Pol and Stephen R. Yeaple. 2013. “Multinational Firms and the Structure of International Trade.” NBER Working Paper, it is also Pol Antras and Stephen Yeaple, “Multinational Firms and the Structure of International Trade,” 2013, Handbook of International Economics,Volume 4, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-54314-1.00002-1
Cole, Harold L., Jeremy Greenwood, and Juan M. Sanchez. “Why Doesn’t Technology Flow From Rich to Poor Countries?” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, 20856, January 2015.
Videos: Basics of multinational corporations, Intra-firm Trade, Intra-industry Trade, Gains from Multinationals, Who Gains from FDI?, Productivity in firms, Foreign investment in India, Competition from foreign retailers, What is a Maquiladora? Introduction to NAFTA, NAFTA and Mexican Agriculture, The Effect of NAFTA on the Mexican Economy.
IX. The politics of trade
Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman. 1994. “Protection for Sale.” American Economic Review.
Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou and Giovanni Maggi. 1999. “Protection for Sale: An Empirical Investigation.” American Economic Review.
Mayda, Anna Maria and Dani Rodrik. 2005. “What are Some People (and Countries) More Protectionist than Others?” European Economic Review.
Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman. 1995. “The Politics of Free-Trade Agreements.” American Economic Review.
Harrison, Ann and Jason Scorse. 2010. “Multinational and Anti-Sweatshop Activism.” American Economic Review.
Videos: The Political Economy of Tariffs, Does Trade Help the Environment?, Regulation as a Major Trade Barrier, Who Supports Free Trade?, The Cultural Diversity Critique of Markets.
Extra readings and videos will be added, as global events indicate.
Tuesday assorted links
1. Citing benefits doesn’t really address the wage stagnation puzzle.
2. Do cortisol and testosterone destabilize markets?
3. Why are so many people so averse to GMOs?
4. Daron Acemoglu on effective altruism.
5. Amartya Sen was trending on Twitter; please don’t think I understand or endorse any of those links, which mostly concern Indian higher education.
6. An interesting, Buiter-led proposal to bail out Greek banks but not the Greek state; maybe impossible to pull off but worthy of consideration. And the Calomiris forced redenomination proposal.
Assorted links
1. What are the new status symbols? (for one operator of private flights, the number of pets exceeded the number of people on a flight sixty-five different times; actually that strikes me as possibly efficient). And here is an article on the Four Seasons private jet experience: “We didn’t sleep much on the flights, because we were always having much too much fun drinking champagne and giving our neighbors nicknames,” said passenger Davidson. An interior designer from Calgary, she booked the trip to celebrate her 55th birthday and wound up forging new friendships. “We loved our space and all of the people who were surrounding us.”
2. Russia has a steam locomotive reserve, still. In case of nuclear war.
3. We have figured out why the earth hums.
4. Svetozar Pejovich attacks Milovan Djilas.
5. Acemoglu’s lecture notes on weak and strong states.
6. Fortunately, the Somewhat More Serious People seem to be taking over the Greek debt negotiations.
Networks and the Macroeconomy
That is the next NBER macro session, the authors are Acemoglu, Akcigit, and Kerr, the pdf is here, and here is the abstract:
The propagation of macroeconomic shocks through input-output and geographic networks can be a powerful driver of macroeconomic fluctuations. We first exposit that in the presence of Cobb-Douglas production functions and consumer preferences, there is a specific pattern of economic transmission whereby demand-side shocks propagate upstream (to input supplying industries) and supply-side shocks propagate downstream (to customer industries) and that there is a tight relationship between the direct impact of a shock and the magnitudes of the downstream and the upstream indirect effects. We then investigate the short-run propagation of four different types of industry-level shocks: two demand-side ones (the exogenous component of the variation in industry imports from China and changes in federal spending) and two supply-side ones (TFP shocks and variation in knowledge/ideas coming from foreign patenting). In each case, we find substantial propagation of these shocks through the input-output network, with a pattern broadly consistent with theory. Quantitatively, the network-based propagation is larger than the direct effects of the shocks, sometimes by severalfold. We also show quantitatively large effects from the geographic network, capturing the fact that the local propagation of a shock to an industry will fall more heavily on other industries that tend to collocate with it across local markets. Our results suggest that the transmission of various different types of shocks through economic networks and industry interlinkages could have first-order implications for the macroeconomy.
Tyler’s Conversation with Jeff Sachs
It’s a great conversation. Sachs really opened up when discussing how his pediatrician wife influenced his approach to economics. The anger he still feels from the US treatment of Russia during its reform period is evident. He is startling forthright, calling out Acemoglu and Robinson and Krugman for mistakes and errors.
The youtube link is here. The audio edition is here and this is the ITunes link. Finally, here is the elegantly presented transcript on Medium, also with lots of links and additional material.
Sachs’ work on many fronts has influenced both Tyler and I, most notably in the geography section of our MRU development course.
Facts about MIT economics
1. It is believed that MIT graduating Ph.d. students are more likely to stay in academia than those from any other school or field.
2. Across 1977-2011, MIT economists made up 34 percent of the members of the CEA, and Robert Solow supervised one-third of that group.
3. Even in the early days of MIT, Paul Samuelson was not a major thesis advisor, and his students were not so likely to return to MIT as faculty.
4. Out of 35 J.B. Clark medalists until 2012, 47% of them have some affiliation with MIT, either a degree from there or teaching there.
5. As of a few years ago (I am not sure of the exact date), there were 1316 holders of an MIT Ph.d. in economics.
6. In the 2000s, Daron Acemoglu was the most active thesis advisor at MIT.
That is all from “MIT’s Rise to Prominence: Outline of a Collective Biography,” by Andrej Svorenčík. There are various versions of that article here, the jstor version here, and it is reprinted in MIT and the Transformation of American Economics, edited by E. Roy Weintraub.
Was it the middle class that favored infrastructure investment in 19th century England?
Jonathan Chapman, a job market candidate at CalTech, has a new paper (pdf) which suggests that was the case:
Many theories of democratization suggest that extending the right to vote will lead to increased government expenditure (e.g. Meltzer and Richard, 1981; Lizzeri and Persico, 2004; Acemoglu and Robinson, 2000). However, these models frequently assume that government can engage in transfer expenditure, which is often not true for local governments. This paper presents and tests a model in which government expenditure is limited to the provision of public goods. The model predicts that the poor and the rich desire lower public goods expenditure than the middle class: the rich because of the relatively high tax burden, and the poor because of a high marginal utility of consumption. Consequently extensions of the franchise to the poor can be associated with declines in government expenditure on public goods. This prediction is tested using a new dataset of local government financial accounts in England between 1867 and 1900, which captures government expenditure on key infrastructure projects that are not included in many studies of national democratic reform. The empirical analysis exploits plausibly exogenous variation in the extent of the franchise to identify the effects of extending voting rights to the poor. The results show strong support for the theoretical prediction: expenditure increased following relatively small extensions of the franchise, but fell following extensions of the franchise beyond around 50% of the adult male population.
It is perhaps too quick a jump from 19th century England to contemporary advanced economies. Still, it is an interesting hypothesis that the current thinning out of the middle class will decrease the political support for infrastructure investment.
Import Competition and the Great U.S. Employment Sag of the 2000s
In the new NBER paper on this topic by Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, and Brendan Price, we see the evidence for this proposition piling up:
Even before the Great Recession, U.S. employment growth was unimpressive. Between 2000 and 2007, the economy gave back the considerable gains in employment rates it had achieved during the 1990s, with major contractions in manufacturing employment being a prime contributor to the slump. The U.S. employment “sag” of the 2000s is widely recognized but poorly understood. In this paper, we explore the contribution of the swift rise of import competition from China to sluggish U.S. employment growth. We find that the increase in U.S. imports from China, which accelerated after 2000, was a major force behind recent reductions in U.S. manufacturing employment and that, through input-output linkages and other general equilibrium effects, it appears to have significantly suppressed overall U.S. job growth. We apply industry-level and local labor market-level approaches to estimate the size of (a) employment losses in directly exposed manufacturing industries, (b) employment effects in indirectly exposed upstream and downstream industries inside and outside manufacturing, and (c) the net effects of conventional labor reallocation, which should raise employment in non-exposed sectors, and Keynesian multipliers, which should reduce employment in non-exposed sectors. Our central estimates suggest net job losses of 2.0 to 2.4 million stemming from the rise in import competition from China over the period 1999 to 2011. The estimated employment effects are larger in magnitude at the local labor market level, consistent with local general equilibrium effects that amplify the impact of import competition.
There are more details in this version of the paper than in an earlier version cited on this blog. Here is my related column on economic contraction, from a few days back.
The Declining Fortunes of the Young Since 2000
That is a new piece in the May AER by Paul Beaudry, David A. Green, and Benjamin M. Sand, here is the clincher scary paragraph:
The data reveal a clear break in 2000. Between 1992 and 2000, each successive entry cohort has a higher share in cognitive occupations at the outset of their working lives, with the proportion increasing by 0.1 between the 1994 and 1998 cohorts. After 2000, with the exception of the difference between the 2004 and 2006 entry cohorts, each successive cohort has a lower share in these occupations, with the share at entry for the 2010 cohort being approximately the same as for the 1990 cohort. Given all the attention that has been paid to growing demand for cognitive skills, this complete reversal is striking.
Do you know of an ungated version? Here is a related Brookings piece of research (pdf). Here is a related piece by Acemoglu, Auor, Dorn, Hanson, and Price.
Can too much cultural similarity cause war?
Akos Lada has a new research paper (pdf) on this question:
Does sharing the same religion, civilization or racial proximity lead to more peaceful relations between countries? This paper argues that cultural similarity can actually cause wars, which occur to combat diffusion. This new theory of war combines the models of Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) and Fearon (1995), and shows that cultural similarity can lead to more warfare when old elites are afraid of losing their position to a newly inspired citizenry, as these elites try to destroy the external source of inspiration. The microfoundation for inspiration is derived from revealed information about the income level under given institutions, which are assumed to have positive correlation with cultural proximity. On the empirical side, I present case studies on the 1848 Revolutions, the 2013 Korean Crisis (using content analysis of official North Korean articles) and on the First World War, as well as statistical analysis on all the wars of the last two centuries.
Here is Lada’s blog post on Ukraine and Russia. Excerpt:
Perhaps because a more democratic Ukrainian government may serve as an example to Russian citizens of how culturally-similar people can be alternatively governed. As history shows, a dictator with an army does not wait for this to happen.
How does democracy affect inequality?
Acemoglu and Robinson have a good post on this and some related issues, excerpt:
…there is a much more limited effect of democracy on inequality. Democracy just doesn’t seem to affect inequality much. Though this might reflect the poorer quality of inequality data, there is likely more to this lack of correlation between democracy and inequality. In fact, we do find heterogeneous effects of democracy on inequality consistent with the theories mentioned above, which would not have been possible if the poor quality of inequality data made it hard to find any empirical relationship.
Overall, our results suggest that democracy does represent a real shift in political power away from elites and has first-order consequences for redistribution and government policy. But the impact of democracy on inequality may be more limited than one might have expected.
The pointer is from Samir Varma. Here is an earlier post on democracy and inequality, broadly consistent with the claims of Acemoglu and Robinson.
New issue of Econ Journal Watch
The link is here, here are the contents:
One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Summer: In a 2014 AER article, Zacharias Maniadis, Fabio Tufano, and John List grapple with the problem of the credibility of empirical results by presenting a framework for statistical inference. Here Mitesh Kataria discusses some of the assumptions and restrictions of their framework and simulation, suggesting that their results do not, in fact, allow for general recommendations about which inference approach is most appropriate. Maniadis, Tufano, and List reply to Kataria.
Should the modernization hypothesis survive the research of Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James Robinson, and Pierre Yared? New evidence and analysis is provided by Hugo Faria, Hugo Montesinos-Yufa, and Daniel Morales, supporting the hypothesis that there is a long-run positive relation between socio-economic development and political democracy.
Ill-Conceived, Even If Competently Administered: In a 2013 JEP article, Stuart Graham and Saurabh Vishnubhakat argue that the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is doing a good job of interpreting patent law, and suggest that the “smart phone wars” and related disputes are not evidence that the patent system is broken. Here Shawn Miller and Alexander Tabarrok argue that the main problem is not with the PTO but with patent law as it has been applied, particularly to software, resulting in patents that are overly broad and ambiguous, and hence vexing and stifling.
Ragnar Frisch and Norway: Arild Sæther and Ib Eriksen contend that for several decades bad policy derived in part from the climate of opinion among the country’s eminent economists.
The ideological evolution of Milton Friedman: Lanny Ebenstein explores developments in Friedman’s thinking, particularly after the mid-1950s.
EJW Audio: Lanny Ebenstein on Milton Friedman’s Ideological Evolution