Results for “becker” 166 found
Polls of German economists
A very interesting poll from the German FT is here (in German). In addition to answering other questions, German economists speak to who are the important economists for the 21st century. I'll add together the first two categories ("very important" and "somewhat important") for a total percentage measure for reported importance. (Correction: there were 1158 respondents.) The standings look like this:
1. Keynes: 92.4 percent
2. Paul Samuelson: 87.8 percent
3. Joseph Stiglitz: 86.0 percent
4. Milton Friedman: 84.6 percent
5. George Akerlof: 83.9 percent
6. Robert Solow: 82.5 percent
7. Joseph Schumpeter: 82.2 percent
8. Paul Krugman: 81.8 percent
9. Friedrich von Hayek: 74.6 percent
10. Amartya Sen: 71.4 percent
11. Gary Becker: 70.1 percent
12. Daniel Kahneman: 58.1 percent
13. Walter Eucken: 53.0 percent
14. Robert Shiller: 53.0 percent
15. Hyman Minsky: 34.2 percent
16. Ludwig Erhard: 30.3 percent
Based on my observation, I believe the supporters of Hayek, Eucken (a classical liberal), and Erhard are relatively old and that this strand of thought is losing ground in German academia.
The party membership of these same economists is striking for its relative rejection of the two largest parties:
SPD (the second major party and somewhat to the left of CDU/CSU)
FDP (the market-oriented party)
No preference
I take this to reflect that German economists are more intellectual, and more philosophical, than their American peers and thus more likely to adhere to a consistent philosophy of some kind or another. They are less likely to affiliate with mainstream political thought.
You will find more questions and answers here. By a 2.5 to 1 margin (roughly), German economists think that the U.S. taxation system should be more progressive. By almost 2 to 1 they think economics has become too formal. There are very mixed answers on whether Germany needs to overhaul its export-oriented growth model, but few German economists favor a total overhaul.
Here are their answers on what makes for a good economist, again all in German. These I did not find so startling.
For the pointers to this treasure trove of data, I thank Mathias Burger.
Assorted links
1. Some arguments against a VAT.
2. The term premium.
4. The quest to unravel the Koran.
5. Interview with Gary Becker.
6. Should Moir and Virtue date?
7. Home production; good photos for the "I, Pencil" crowd.
Put your comments here.
Interview with Kevin Murphy
Via Mark Thoma, here is an interview with the ever-impressive Kevin Murphy. One excerpt, on the topic of medical R&D:
What really does matter is the cost of treatment. If treatment costs
are $10 trillion, the project has a negative net present value even if
the research is free. With $2 trillion in treatment costs, the net gain
from success is $3 trillion, so that we would get a good return even if
the probability of success was one in 30. So when you think about
research, it’s not the dollars you spend that matter–what matters is
the cost of implementing the treatment that might be discovered. The
downside to research is not failure, but unaffordable success.
I think the following message comes out of that exercise: Cost
containment and health progress are complementary. That is, if we can
control costs, that makes research a much more attractive option.
That’s the most important lesson I learned from doing this work.
When you go to Washington and talk to people at NIH, what are they
excited about? They’re excited about that $5 trillion number. They’re
excited that, boy, we could do something that could generate tremendous
value for people. We can cure disease and lengthen lives, both of which
make people much better off. The work that Bob and I did quantifies
that number; it says it’s huge, $5 trillion for that 10 percent
reduction in cancer.
You walk across the street and talk to the guys who have to pay for
it, and they’re terrified that people are going to come up with more
new medical treatments that they’re somehow going to have to finance.
Is there any man who thinks more like an economist than does Kevin Murphy? Maybe one:
Region: Does Gary Becker ever stop working?
Murphy: No. He never stops working. He’s a machine. He outworks everybody half his age.
What I’ve been reading
1. Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, by Gene Heyman. This book overstates its claims, but if you wish to see a non-economist defending a (broadly) Beckerian model of addiction, here you go. I couldn't put it down!
2. Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care. I felt I should try one by her to stay in touch. It was better than I had expected though not really smarter than I had expected. Here is an NYT article about her.
3. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. This new translation by Julie Rose is more or less definitive. But it is heavy. If any book ought to be on Kindle…
4. Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us, by Alyssa Katz. There is lots of good material about our social and policy infatuation with housing, but she commits a mistake that I have been "waiting for" — she blames part of the housing bubble on the decline of rent control
5. Javier Cercas, AnatomÃa de un instante. A micro-study of one moment of time (Feb.23) when, post-Franco, Spain ended up sticking with the path to democracy rather than falling back to autocracy. The focus is on conservative Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez and the book blends fictional and non-fictional narrative techniques very effectively. Here is one review. This is a very strong book also with relevance to current events in Iran.
6. Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz, From Poverty to Prosperity. I've only been reading the Amazon blurb for it — the book isn't out yet — and here is Arnold on the book.
Gambling on the Future
A conversation with the ten year-old.
"For the third time. Do your homework."
"I HATE homework. Why should I do it!"
"You need to do your homework so you can get into college and get a good job."
"Oh, Dad," (exasperated), "by the time I'm ready to go to college I'll be able to download the answers directly into my brain in twenty seconds!"
Now here is Gary Becker on fat ten-year olds.
…the negative health consequences of being overweight and even obese will generally be significantly lower for children than for adults. The reason is that aside from very extreme obesity, the really harmful effects to overweight children will not usually kick in for another 25 or more years when they are in their forties or older. However, one can reasonably expect sizable progress during the coming decades in the development of drugs, such as lipitor, that will reduce the health consequences of high cholesterol and excess weight for heart conditions, diabetes, and some cancers. From that perspective, perhaps even ignorant and impulsive children are not acting so stupidly by indulging themselves in their eating since the future will likely see the development of drugs that will alleviate many serious medical conditions.
So who is most (ir)rational, my ten-year old, the fat-ten year old or the great Gary Becker?
He forgot about Hawtrey
Ezra reports, from his commentator Nylund:
Is it just me or do famous economists seem to live a really long time?
Friedman (94)
Mises (92)
John Kenneth Galbraith (98)
Hayek (92)
Leontief (93)
…besides Keynes (or any of the really old school guys like
Ricardo and Say), its rare to find a major economist that didn't make
it well into their 80's.
Samuelson is in his 90s and Ken Arrow is 87. Buchanan, Tullock, Coase, and Vernon Smith are all still with us and I wonder if Gary Becker might prove immortal. Frank Ramsey is one obvious exception, as is Miguel Sidrauski. Fischer Black and Amos Tversky are two more recent exceptions. Here is a paper on 16 notable economists who died prematurely.
Assorted links
1. Karol Boudreaux is now blogging.
3. Government as shareholder: trickier than you think.
4. Becker and Murphy on fiscal stimulus.
New issue from Econ Journal Watch
The issue is here, I was sent this summary of the articles:
The
Race between Education and Technology is the title of a new
book by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. In a review essay, Arnold Kling
and John Merrifield hail the book for its formulation of the problem and
theoretical core, but find ideological distortions in the execution,
diagnosis, and prescriptions.
Are the most capable women and the most
capable men equally capable? Previously, Garett Jones, John
Johnson, and Catherine Hakim questioned Christina Jonung's and
Ann-Charlotte Ståhlberg's call for more women in economics. Now
Jonung and Ståhlberg respond.
John Donohue reply to Carlisle Moody and Thomas Marvell.
Bandwagon
zigzag: Micha Gisser, James McClure, Giray Ökten, and Gary
Santoni investigate the upward-sloping segment of Gary Becker's (1991)
bandwagon demand.
Eviction notice:
Blair Jenkins reviews an Econlit-based sample of articles on rent
control.
Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
It is now on-line. Contributors include Armen Alchian, Gary Becker, Avinash Dixit, Claudia Goldin, Greg Mankiw, Paul Romer, Pete Boettke, Tyler Cowen, Bryan Caplan, Russ Roberts and many others.
On another topic, from elsewhere, here is Arnold Kling on net worth certificates. And here is Russ Roberts on home prices. Here is Bill Easterly’s Op-Ed on development and the crash.
My IO reading list
Industrial Organization I, Tyler Cowen (x2312, 4910), [email protected]
BOOKS:
Gordon, John Steele – An Empire of Wealth: An Epic History of American Economic Power
Lowenstein, Roger – When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
METHODS OF EVALUATION:
There will be weekly quizzes, a midterm, and a final exam.
READINGS:
I. The Firm
Holmstrom, Bengt and Tirole, Jean. “The Theory of the Firm,” in Handbook of Industrial Economics, vol.I.
Rotemberg, Julio. “A Theory of Inefficient Intrafirm Transactions.” American Economic Review (March 1991).
Holmstrom, Bengt and Roberts, John. “The Boundaries of the Firm Revisisted.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, 4 (Fall 1998): 73-94.
Demsetz, Harold and Lehn, Kenneth. “The Structure of Corporate Ownership: Causes and Consequences.” Journal of Political Economy 93 (December 1985): 1155-1177.
Gibbons, Robert. “Incentives in Organizations.” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Fall 1998): 115-132.
Chapters from Discover Your Inner Economist, by Tyler Cowen.
Montgomery, Cynthia. “Corporate Diversification,” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Summer 1994): 163-178.
Rasmusen, Eric. “Mutual Banks and Stock Banks.” Journal of Law and Economics 31 (1988): 395-422.
Hansemann, Henry. “Ownership of the Firm,” Journal of Law, Economics and Organization (Fall 1988).
Hansemann, Henry. “The Role of Non-Profit Enterprise.” Yale Law Journal (1980): 835-901.
Cowen, Tyler. “Response to David Friedman,” Economics and Philosophy, at http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/TYLER.doc.
Xavier Gabaix and David Laibson, “Shrouded Attributes, Consumer Myopia, and Information Suppression in Competitive Markets,” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=728545.
Glenn Ellison, “Bounded rationality in Industrial Organization,” http://cemmap.ifs.org.uk/papers/vol2_chap5.pdf
II. Capital structure and control
Miller, Merton, and commentators. “The Modigliani-Miller Propositions After Thirty Years,” and comments, Journal of Economic Perspectives (Fall 1988): 99-158.
Myers, Stewart. “Capital Structure.” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Spring 2001): 81-102.
Hart, Oliver. “Financial Contracting.” Journal of Economic Literature (December 2001): 1079-1100.
Easterbrook, Frank H. “Two Agency-Cost Explanations of Dividends.” American Economic Review (September 1984).
Fudenberg, Drew and Tirole, Jean. “A Theory of Income and Dividend Smoothing.” Journal of Political Economy (February 1995): 75-93.
Baker, Malcolm and Wurgler, Jeffrey. “A Catering Theory of Dividends,” Journal of Finance (2004), available at http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jwurgler/.
Baker, Malcolm and Ruback, Richard. “Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey,” found at http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/seminars/pegroup/BakerRubackWurgler.pdf
MacKinlay, A.C. (1997), “Event Studies in Economics and Finance”, Journal of
Economic Literature 35(1), 13-39.
“Symposium on Takeovers,” edited by Hal Varian, Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 1988): 1-82.
Andrade, Gregor, et. al. “New Evidence and Perspective on Mergers.” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Spring 2001): 103-120.
Holmstrom, Bengt and Kaplan, Steven. “Corporate Governance and Merger Activity in the United States,” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Spring 2001): 121-149.
Gompers, Paul and Lerner, Josh. “The Venture Capital Revolution.” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Spring 2001): 145-168.
Stein, Jeremy C. “Efficient Capital Markets, Inefficient Firms: A Model of Myopic Corporate Behavior.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 104 (November 1989): 655-670.
Stein, Jeremy C. “Takeover Threats and Managerial Myopia.” Journal of Political Economy (1988): 61-80.
Scharfstein, David S. and Stein, Jeremy C. “Herd Behavior and Investment.” American Economic Review 80 (June 1990): 465-479.
Hall, Brian and Murphy, Kevin J, “The Trouble with Stock Options,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2003, also at http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~kjmurphy/HMTrouble.pdf.
Murphy, Kevin J. and Zaboznik, Jan. “CEO Pay and Appointments,” American Economic Review, May 2004, also at http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~kjmurphy/CEOTrends.pdf
Jensen, Michael, Murphy, Kevin J., and Eric Wruck. “Remuneration: Where We’ve Been, How We Got to Here, What are the Problems, and How to Fix Them,” available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=561305#PaperDownload.
Robert J. Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker, “Unresolved Issues in the Rise of American Inequality,” http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~idew/papers/BPEA_final_ineq.pdf
III. Vertical control, antitrust, and related issues.
Tirole, Jean. “Vertical Control.” In Theory of Industrial Organization, Chapter 4.
Klein, Benjamin and Leffler, Keith. “The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual Performance.” Journal of Political Economy 89 (1981): 615-641.
Klein, Benjamin and Murphy, Kevin. “Vertical Restraints as Contract Enforcement Mechanisms,” Journal of Law and Economics (October 1988).
Breit, William. “Resale Price Maintenance: What do Economists Know and When Did they Know It?” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (1991).
Bernheim, R. Doug and Whinston, Michael. “Exclusive Dealing.” Journal of Political Economy (February 1998): 64-103.
Rasmusen, Ramseyer and Wiley, 1991, “Naked Exclusion,” American Economic Review, 1137-45.
Bittlingmayer, George. “Decreasing Average Cost and Competition: A New Look at the Addyston Pipe Case,” Journal of Law and Economics (October 1982).
Klein, Benjamin, and Kenney, Roy. “The Economics of Block Booking,” Journal of Law and Economics, (1983), 27, 3, 497-540.
Tirole, Jean. “Information and Strategic Behavior: Reputation, Limit Pricing, and Predation.” In Theory of Industrial Organization, Chapter 9.
Timothy Bresnahan, “Empirical Studies of Industries with Concentrated Power,” Handbook of Industrial Organization, vol.II.
Pakes, Ariel. “Theory and Empirical Work on Imperfectly Competitive Markets,” NBER Working Paper 14117, June 2008.
Sproul, Michael. “Antitrust and Prices.” Journal of Political Economy (August 1993): 741-754.
McCutcheon, Barbara. “Do Meetings in Smoke-Filled Rooms Facilitate Collusion?” Journal of Political Economy (April 1997): 336-350.
Hazlett, Thomas W. “Is Antitrust Anticompetitive?” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, (Spring 1986).
Crandall, Robert and Whinston, Clifford, “Does Antitrust Improve Consumer Welfare?: Assessing the Evidence,” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Fall 2003 ), 3-26, available at http://www.brookings.org/views/articles/2003crandallwinston.htm.
IV. Theory and Regulation of Natural Monopolies
Sanford Berg and John Tschirhart, Natural Monopoly Regulation, Cambridge University Press.
pp. 21-275.
Demsetz, Harold. “Why Regulate Utilities?” Journal of Law and Economics (April 1968): 347-359.
Williamson, Oliver. “Franchise Bidding for Natural Monopolies – in General and with Respect to CATV.” Bell Journal of Economics (Spring 1976): 73-104.
Crandall, Robert W. “An End to Economic Regulation?” available at http://www.brookings.org/views/papers/crandall/20030721.pdf.
Parente, Stephen L. and Prescott, Edward. “Monopoly Rights: A Barrier to Riches.” American Economic Review 89, 5 (December 1999): 1216-1233.
Shleifer, Andrei. “State vs. Private Ownership.” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Fall 1998): 133-151.
Berg and Tschirhart, pp. 480-522.
Associated other topics in regulation, depending on your interests; reading suggestions will follow later in the semester.
Some simple Ricardian thoughts on the Helmsley bequest for dogs
Here is Posner on the topic, here is Becker. As I understand the terms, it is about $12 million for her dog and $5 billion to $8 billion for dogs in general.
It’s only the $12 million for her dog that is objectionable; surely one million would have sufficed and in the language of the philosophic literature on inequality, the other dogs can rightfully hold a complaint against the recipient of Helmsley’s largesse.
$5 billion to $8 billion for dogs in general is not too much for our wealthy society to spend or to regard as a legitimate welfare objective, worthy of the standard tax deduction, at least provided it is distributed equitably. Here’s a list of possible ways to spend the money to help dogs. Here’s an estimate that there are more than 70 million dogs in the United States, so that is on average only $100 per dog. Do note that while not every dog needs help, helping even a single dog requires considerable infrastructure. If you think that’s too much aid, well, let crowding out operate and cut back on your transfers to dogs. There’s plenty of room for give there, believe me, since more than 40 million households own dogs and thus have their finger on this trigger, maybe yours too (not mine). It is we who control the net transfer from humans to dogs, not the dear departed Ms. Helmsley.
Lots of economic superstars on this blog
That includes Gary Becker, Ed Glaeser, Richard Posner, Bill Easterly and others, read them here, all debating Bill Gates’s theory of philanthropy. The outputs will be turned into a book and the project is being run by Michael Kinsley and Conor Clarke.
Economists who have endorsed John McCain’s economic plan
Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, Vernon Smith, Michael Boskin, John Cogan, Steven Davis, Francis X. Diebold, Martin Eichenbaum, Martin Feldstein, Kevin Hassett, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Glenn Hubbard, Anne Krueger, Deepak Lal, Burton Malkiel, Paul W. McCracken, Allan Meltzer, Tim Muris, June O’Neill, Michael E. Porter, Kenneth Rogoff, Richard Roll, Harvey Rosen, George Shultz, Beryl Sprinkel, John Taylor, and Arnold Zellner.
I was sent that list in an email. The opening of the statement reads:
We enthusiastically support John McCain‘s
economic plan. It is a comprehensive, pro-growth, reform agenda. The
reform focuses on the real economic problems Americans face today and
will face in the future. And it builds on the core economic principles
that have made America great.
His plan would control government
spending by vetoing every bill with earmarks, implementing a
constitutionally valid line-item veto, pausing non-military
discretionary government spending programs for one year to stop their
explosive growth and place accountability on federal government
agencies.
No, I don’t do endorsements but if I were tempted to (and I’m not) I would this year be even more suspicious than usual. I feel that the candidates are trying to trick me and the one who isn’t — Hillary Clinton, whose negatives are too transparent to my eyes — has been trying to trick everyone else.
I’ll put the rest of the letter in the first comment, but in the meantime my advice — at least for this year — is to vote on the basis of foreign policy.
How to behave when you’re old
Bryan Caplan presents us with his dilemma:
When I’m old, I want to be the octogenarian that the Young Turks
come to with their crazy new ideas. I don’t want to be the senior
professor that the whippersnapper assistant profs avoid. Above all
else, I never want to be a lunch tax – I like lunch too much.Unfortunately, by the time I’m 80 I’ll probably be too befuddled to
figure out how to do any of this. So I want to figure it out now, tape
it on my office wall, and refer to it when the time is ripe.…Not mentioning any names, what
are the biggest social mistakes elderly faculty make? What are some
simple strategies for them to ingratiate themselves to the next
generation? If you’ve got some good advice, I’ll thank you when I’m 80.
If I remember!
I remain a fan of Richard Posner’s book on old age, one of his best. I ask Bryan: would he still take the advice that his 12-year-old self might have taped to a door? Neurological changes aside, the elderly simply have less incentive to be deferential and to court their younger colleagues; Aristotle knew this too.
Bryan’s best lunchtime bet is that, when he is eighty, I am still around at ninety.
An alternative strategy is to find — today — the eighty-year olds who are still fascinating and run your new ideas by them. Most of them will gladly receive you. I used to fly out to Ann Arbor occasionally to meet with the great Marvin Becker, but in general I haven’t done much of this in my life. Call that my failing but it’s another reason why so many eighty-year-olds don’t bother to appeal to Young Turks as a constituency.
Overall I am struck by how little beneficial trade there is between the generations. I find this one of the most striking stylized facts of the social sciences; one simple model is that people don’t want to leave groups that produce fun and high relative status for them, and that is what switching across the generations usually entails.
Do you all have any other advice for Bryan?
Is Richard Posner right about air travel and its problems?
Who better to ask than Air Genius Gary Leff:?
…the usually sober, sometimes brilliant, and certainly prolific judge
and scholar offers up an unusually misguided rant on why he believes
“airline service is so bad” over at the Becker-Posner Blog…
Here is Posner’s charge, which I might add calls for air travel reregulation. Read Gary’s whole response. I don’t, as they say, have a horse in this race (noting that Gary and I work together at GMU). What I do know points to two major problems: badly run airports (rather than air travel deregulation per se) and too many flights clustered at peak hours. That puts me closer to Gary’s analysis than Posner’s. Congestion pricing and true markets for all airport services would solve many of the problems, in my view.