economics
Speaking of karma….
Appropos of my last post, it’s worth remembering that five years ago western investors were fretting about the implosion of China’s financial sector. In the here and now, you have this sort of gleeful comeuppance as reported by the FT’s Jamil Anderlini: Western governments must strengthen their oversight of financial markets and improve cross-border regulatory [...]
Because it’s been a while since this blog really angered feminists….
Matt Yglesias approvingly links to this New York Times story by Lisa Belkin from a few days ago arguing that women ae shut out of science and engineering because of rampant sexism: In the worlds of science, engineering and technology, it seems, the past is still very much present.
My first take on sovereign wealth funds
I have an article in the latest issue of The American entitled, “The Sovereigns Are Coming!” The main point: No question, the growth of SWFs puts advocates of open capital markets in a quandary. During debates over what to do with the Social Security trust fund a few years ago, there was deep resistance to [...]
What did GDP ever do to deserve this?
One of the more invidious comparisons analysts like to make is to compare the size of something with a country’s gross domestic product. An old warhorse of political economy/anti-corporate types, for example, is to say that the sales of multinational corporations exceeds many countries GDP. This is true but irrelevant — GDP measures the value-added [...]
That’s an…. interesting interpretation of recent economic history
Robert Lighthizer has an op-ed in today’s New York Times that essentially argues that conservatives have a long tradition of trade protectionism that John McCain should embrace: Free trade has long been popular with liberals, and it remains so with liberal elites today. The editorial pages of major newspapers consistently support free trade. Ted Kennedy [...]
NAFTA is not responsible for Ohio
Perhaps an unanticipated benefit of Clinton and Obama outbidding each other to see who could savage NAFTA more is that the mainstream media will actually point out that NAFTA is not responsible for the rust belt’s economic woes. David Leonhardt makes this point in his New York Times column today: The first problem with what [...]
Best title for an economics paper…. ever
Peter T. Leeson, “An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 115, no. 6 (December 2007): 1049-1094. Here’s the abstract: This article investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. To effectively organize their banditry, pirates required mechanisms to prevent [...]
With my deepest apologies to Abraham Lincoln….
My latest commentary for Marketplace concerns whether the penny should be abolished. In light of plagiarism accusations currently running rampant, I should acknowledge that I was “inspired” by a previously published work. Here’s how it opens: Four score and nineteen years ago, our national mint brought forth on this country a new coin, conceived to [...]
Why I’m screwed in the book publishing biz
Rachel Donadio’s essay in the New York Times Book Review asks a very good question: why, in this age of digitized publication, does it still take friggin’ forever for a completed book manuscript to actually become a book? Donadio’s answer — marketing a book is essentially like marketing a movie: The three-martini lunch and the [...]
How about some reciprocal gratitude?
A follow-upon my last post on sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). I quoted the head of the Norway’s fund saying, “”It seems you don’t like us, but you need our money.” It strikes me that one could flip that around. Not for norway, but for most of the countries now sprouting SWFs, the line should read: [...]
