Grasping Reality with All Tentacles: bradford-delong.com:

• Highlighted
• Teaching
• Reading, Videos, etc.

http://www.bradford-delong.com/highlighted.html

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Plus: Six Very Recent Must- and Should-Reads:

1. Jens H.E. Christensen and Glenn D. Rudebusch: New Evidence for a Lower New Normal in Interest Rates: "Inflation-indexed bond prices include a real term premium... face appreciable liquidity risk... http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/june/financial-market-evidence-for-lower-natural-interest-rate-r-star/
2. Nick Bunker: Is the Fed being misguided by the Phillips curve?: "Looking at the prime-age employment rate, the labor market might have a bit more tightening to do before wage growth is going to pick up significantly... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/is-the-fed-being-misguided-by-the-phillips-curve/
3. Donald A. Yerxa: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRYAN WARD-PERKINS ON THE FALL OF ROME http://www.webcitation.org/6O3GYBfS1?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fhistoric%2Fhs%2Fperkins.pdf: "'AT THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT THE SALERIAN GATE WAS silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet...
4. Sergio Espuelas: The inequality trap. A comparative analysis of social spending between 1880 and 1930: "Using social transfers as an indicator of redistribution and three alternative proxies for inequality... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0289.12062/full
5. Robert Waldmann (2007): The Simple Analytics of Progressive Income Redistribution: "Economists generally agree that redistribution reduces money-metric welfare... http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/06/possible-efficiency-gains-due-to-taxes.html
6. Michael Reich, Sylvia Allegretto, and Anna Godoey: Seattle’s Minimum Wage Experience 2015-16: "Seattle implemented the first phase of its minimum wage law on April 1, 2015... http://irle.berkeley.edu/seattles-minimum-wage-experience-2015-16/

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Plus: Six Very Recent Links:

1. Greg Leiserson: It’s no surprise that the Kansas tax cut experiment failed to create jobs: "Businesses already pay relatively little tax on the incremental return from investments in tangible capital due to tax benefits such as accelerated depreciation and interest deductibility, and they often pay no tax—or even receive a tax subsidy—on marginal investments in intangible capital..." http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/its-no-surprise-that-the-kansas-tax-cut-experiment-failed-to-create-jobs/
2. David Anderson: Tennessee’s Exchange is getting interesting: "Blue Cross and Blue Shield... are expanding their Silver gap strategy.... Oscar is jumping into greater Nashville..." https://www.balloon-juice.com/2017/06/21/tennessees-exchange-is-getting-interesting/
3. James J. O'Donnell: Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace http://amzn.to/2rV6X7p
4. Daniel Tompkins: Moses Finkelstein and the American Scene: The Formation of Moses Finley, 1932-1955 http://delong.typepad.com/finley-and-american-scene-offprint-2013.pdf
5. L. Dee Fink: A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning https://www.deefinkandassociates.com/GuidetoCourseDesignAug05.pdf
6. Eric Turkheimer, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard E. Nisbett: There’s still no good reason to believe black-white IQ differences are due to genes: "If you were persuaded by Murray and Harris’s conclusion that the black-white IQ gap is partially genetic, but uncomfortable with the idea that the same kind of thinking might apply to the personality traits of Jews, I have one question: Why? Couldn’t there just as easily be a science of whether Jews are genetically 'tuned to' (Harris’s phrase) different levels of materialism than gentiles?On the other hand, if you no longer believe this old anti-Semitic trope, is it because some scientific study has been conducted showing that it is false? And if the problem is simply that we haven’t run the studies, why shouldn’t we?..." https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white-iq-response-critics

Procrastinating on June 20, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Hoisted from the Archives from 2007: How Supply-Side Economics Trickled Down… http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/hoisted-from-the-archives-from-2007-how-supply-side-economics-trickled-down/
• Donald A. Yerxa: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRYAN WARD-PERKINS ON THE FALL OF ROME http://www.webcitation.org/6O3GYBfS1?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fhistoric%2Fhs%2Fperkins.pdf: "'AT THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT THE SALERIAN GATE WAS silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet...
• Heather Boushey: The unfortunate power of stereotypes: "If stereotypes lead judges to snap judgements that are racially biased... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-unfortunate-power-of-stereotypes/
• Nick Bunker: Weekend Reading: Shifting Targets Edition: "Some critics of the disability insurance system in the United States think it is too easy to access... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-shifting-targets-edition/
• Ben Thompson: Amazon’s New Customer: "the key to understanding the purchase of Whole Foods... is that Amazon is buying a customer—the first-and-best customer that will instantly bring its grocery efforts to scale... https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/
• Mark Thoma: Trump’s Apprenticeships are Based upon a Problem That Doesn’t Exist: "The evidence... points to a skills mismatch... http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/06/19/Trump-s-Apprenticeships-are-Based-upon-Problem-Doesn-t-Exist
• Izabella Kaminska: On the rise of unproductive entrepreneurs like Travis Kalanick https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/15/2190201/on-the-rise-of-unproductive-entrepreneurs-like-travis-kalanick/: "Robert E. Litan and Ian Hathaway... citing the work of William Baumol, who passed away last month...
• Paul Krugman: A Finger Exercise On Hyperglobalization: "I find myself trying to find simple ways to talk about 'hyperglobalization'... https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/a-finger-exercise-on-hyperglobalization/
• David Glasner: FIFTEEN THOUSAND WORDS ON TEMPORARY EQUILIBRIUM, EXPECTATIONS, AND CONSISTENCY OF PLANS
• Neel Kashkari: Why I Dissented Again: "The economy is sending mixed signals: a tight labor market and weakening inflation... https://medium.com/@neelkashkari/why-i-dissented-again-b8579ab664b7

Links for the Week of June 19, 2017

Must-Reads:

• David Glasner: FIFTEEN THOUSAND WORDS ON TEMPORARY EQUILIBRIUM, EXPECTATIONS, AND CONSISTENCY OF PLANS
• Neel Kashkari: Why I Dissented Again: "The economy is sending mixed signals: a tight labor market and weakening inflation... https://medium.com/@neelkashkari/why-i-dissented-again-b8579ab664b7
• Janet Yellen and Nancy Marchall Genzer: Janet Yellen Interested in Reevaluating 2% https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4673824/janet-yellen-interested-reevaluating-2: "Nancy Marchall Genzer, Marketplace: 'Recently, a group of economists sent the Fed a letter...
• Lawrence Summers: 5 reasons the Fed may be making a mistake http://delong.typepad.com/summers5-reasons.zip: "The... paradigm... is highly problematic.  Much better would be a “shoot only when you see the whites of the eyes of inflation” paradigm...
• David Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber, and Vincent Mor: You’re Probably Going to Need Medicaid: "Imagine your mother needs to move into a nursing home... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/opinion/youre-probably-going-to-need-medicaid.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
• Barry Ritholtz: Tax Reform Is Dead: "The long-awaited 'pivot towards being presidential' hasn’t arrived, and by all indications never will... http://ritholtz.com/2017/06/tax-reform-dead/
• Nick Bunker: On Twitter: "That staffer was probably looking for a long time..."
• Robert Waldmann (2007): The Simple Analytics of Progressive Income Redistribution: "Economists generally agree that redistribution reduces money-metric welfare... http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/06/possible-efficiency-gains-due-to-taxes.html

Procrastinating on June 16, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Brad DeLong (2007): Tom Grubisich Is One Unhappy Camper: "Tom Grubisich... a former Washington Post reporter and editor [says]... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/tom_grubisich_i.html
• Kavya Vaghul: Conservation easements and tax policies in the United States: "Deductions for conservation easement donations are taken by taxpayers in states that have small shares of conserved land... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/conservation-easements-and-tax-policies-in-the-united-states/
• Bridget Ansel: A research roundup on unpredictable schedules in the United States: "For Americans with a 9-to-5 job, it can be hard to imagine the life of a worker with an unpredictable, constantly shifting schedule... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/a-research-roundup-on-unpredictable-schedules-in-the-united-states/
• Janet Yellen and Nancy Marchall Genzer: Janet Yellen Interested in Reevaluating 2% https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4673824/janet-yellen-interested-reevaluating-2: "Nancy Marchall Genzer, Marketplace: 'Recently, a group of economists sent the Fed a letter...
• Lawrence Summers: 5 reasons the Fed may be making a mistake http://delong.typepad.com/summers5-reasons.zip: "The... paradigm... is highly problematic.  Much better would be a “shoot only when you see the whites of the eyes of inflation” paradigm...
• David Cutler and Emily Gee: Coverage Losses Under the ACA Repeal Bill for Congressional Districts in All States: "Within a decade, on average, an additional 55,000 more individuals in each congressional district, or nearly 8 percent... would lack coverage... https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/03/21/428914/coverage-losses-aca-repeal-bill-congressional-districts-states/
• Dodge Cahan and Niklas Potrafke: The Democratic-Republican Presidential Growth Gap and the Partisan Balance of the State Governments: "Higher economic growth was generated during Democratic presidencies compared to Republican presidencies... http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/cesceswps/_5f6517.htm
• David Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber, and Vincent Mor: You’re Probably Going to Need Medicaid: "Imagine your mother needs to move into a nursing home... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/opinion/youre-probably-going-to-need-medicaid.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
• Laura Tyson: Labor Markets in the Age of Automation: "Skill-biased and labor-displacing intelligent machines and automation drive income inequality in several other ways... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/automation-labor-market-inequality-by-laura-tyson-2017-06
• Barry Ritholtz: Tax Reform Is Dead: "The long-awaited 'pivot towards being presidential' hasn’t arrived, and by all indications never will... http://ritholtz.com/2017/06/tax-reform-dead/

Should-Read: Brad DeLong (2007): Tom Grubisich Is One Unhappy Camper: "Tom Grubisich... a former Washington Post reporter and editor [says]... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/tom_grubisich_i.html

Procrastinating on June 13, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• No, It Is Really Not Harder to Make the Case for Free Trade These Days… http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/no-it-is-really-not-harder-to-make-the-case-for-free-trade-these-days/
• I Am Heartened by the Improvement in the Prime-Age Employment Rate. Now Let Us Let It Continue Rather than Stopping It… http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/i-am-heartened-by-the-improvement-in-the-prime-age-employment-rate-now-let-us-let-it-continue-rather-than-stopping-it/
• Nick Bunker: Who loses disability insurance when it’s harder to apply?: "What actually happened when the closest Social Security field offices closed and the cost of applying increased?... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/who-loses-disability-insurance-when-its-harder-to-apply/
• William J. Collins and Marianne H. Wanamaker: Up from slavery? African American intergenerational economic mobility since 1880: "We document the intergenerational mobility of black and white American men from 1880 through 2000... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/african-american-intergenerational-mobility/
• Nick Bunker: Time for the Fed to look beyond 2 percent target inflation?: "The idea that a stable and credible inflation target must be 2 percent is an accident of history... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/time-for-the-fed-to-look-beyond-2-percent-target-inflation/
• Nick Bunker: On Twitter: "That staffer was probably looking for a long time..."
• Robert Waldmann (2007): The Simple Analytics of Progressive Income Redistribution: "Economists generally agree that redistribution reduces money-metric welfare... http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/06/possible-efficiency-gains-due-to-taxes.html
• B.G.: Because I said so: Why the Fed is likely to raise rates, despite low inflation: "Like a parent teaching a child it means business, the Fed may feel it must hike to preserve its credibility with financial markets... http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2017/06/because-i-said-so
• Cardiff Garcia: US capex, investment, and growth—re-re-upped: "Srinivas Thiruvadanthai... has passed along his interesting new note about capex... https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/06/2189480/us-capex-investment-and-growth/
• Dan Drezner: Why it is impossible for Donald Trump to rise to adequacy: "A few days ago I suggested that Trump’s NATO speech was a powerful signal that we had seen the limits of adult supervision at the White House... http://delong.typepad.com/drezner-chaos-muppet.zip
• Josh Bivens: Is 2 percent too low?: Rethinking the Fed’s arbitrary inflation target to avoid another Great Recession: "The end of 2017 will mark 10 years since the beginning of the Great Recession... http://www.epi.org/publication/is-2-percent-too-low/

Ten Years Ago in Grasping Reality: June 11-13, 2007

Two very much worth highlighting and hoisting:

• Is It Really Harder to Make the Case for Free Trade These Days? http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/is_it_really_ha.html: I think I have answers: (1) The kinds of win-win deals that Paul says we don't make are in fact deals that Democratic presidents do make--when they aren't blocked from making them, that is...
• FoucaultAlthusserDerridaJameson http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/foucaultalthuss.html

Links for the Week of June 13, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Josh Bivens: Is 2 percent too low?: Rethinking the Fed’s arbitrary inflation target to avoid another Great Recession: "The end of 2017 will mark 10 years since the beginning of the Great Recession... http://www.epi.org/publication/is-2-percent-too-low/
• EPI: The Color of Law Tickets, Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 11:00 AM: "On Thursday, June 8th the Economic Policy Institute and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council present Richard Rothstein as he discusses his new book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America... https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-color-of-law-tickets-34478748866
• Larry Summers: How elite universities meet the challenges of the Trump era: "Rebecca Blumenstein... our conversation focused on how elite universities are meeting the challenges of the Trump era... https://www.ft.com/content/99cc63cd-7e59-3390-a052-6fcb654eb161
• Narayana Kocherlakota: The Fed Needs a Better Inflation Target: "A higher goal, with more public support, would benefit the central bank and the economy... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-08/republicans-weren-t-smiling-about-comey-or-trump
• Tim Carmody (2010): Stock and Flow: "Stock and flow is the master metaphor for media today... http://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890
• Sarah Kliff: Nevada's legislature just passed a radical plan to let anybody sign up for Medicaid: "Nevada’s bill... just four pages... would allow any state resident... to buy into the state Medicaid program... under the name the Nevada Care Plan... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/6/15731622/nevada-medicaid-for-all
• Mark Thoma: The More Trump Fails, the Better Off We’ll Be: "The Trump administration has gone to war against independent sources of information that pose a challenge to its policy goals and the narratives... http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/06/05/More-Trump-Fails-Better-We-ll-Be
• Financial Times: The needless urge for higher borrowing costs: "Talk of ‘normalising’ interest rates betrays a mistaken belief... https://www.ft.com/content/b752f7dc-4782-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8
• Zack Beauchamp: What If It Happened Here?: "The events of the past 16 years have shown that presidents have extraordinary power to fundamentally alter the laws and culture of the US after a terror attack... https://www.vox.com/world/2017/5/26/15681154/trump-terrorism-manchester-islam

Procrastinating on June 10, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• My Sections: As Delivered: Fed Up Rethink 2% Inflation Target Blue-Ribbon Commission Conference Call http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/my-sections-as-delivered-fed-up-rethink-2-inflation-target-blue-ribbon-commission-conference-call/
• Rethink 2% http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/rethink-2/
• Why the Fed Should Rethink Its 2%/Year No-Lookback Inflation Target http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/why-the-fed-should-rethink-its-2year-no-lookback-inflation-target/
• “Populism” or “Neo-Fascism”?: Rectification of Names Blogging http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/populism-or-neo-fascism-rectification-of-names-blogging/
• Kavya Vaghul: Weekend reading: the “real-live experiment” edition: "Monetary policy can help increase consumption through redistributing income across households...
• EPI: The Color of Law Tickets, Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 11:00 AM: "On Thursday, June 8th the Economic Policy Institute and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council present Richard Rothstein as he discusses his new book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America... https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-color-of-law-tickets-34478748866
• Noah Smith: Actually good Silicon Valley critiques?: "Suppose we did want to criticize Silicon Valley and not end up looking foolish... http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/05/actually-good-silicon-valley-critiques.html
• Larry Summers: How elite universities meet the challenges of the Trump era: "Rebecca Blumenstein... our conversation focused on how elite universities are meeting the challenges of the Trump era... https://www.ft.com/content/99cc63cd-7e59-3390-a052-6fcb654eb161
• Narayana Kocherlakota: The Fed Needs a Better Inflation Target: "A higher goal, with more public support, would benefit the central bank and the economy... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-08/republicans-weren-t-smiling-about-comey-or-trump
• Tim Carmody (2010): Stock and Flow: "Stock and flow is the master metaphor for media today... http://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890

Procrastinating on June 7, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• On the Negative Information Revealed by Marvin Goodfriend’s “I Don’t Teach IS-LM” http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/on-the-negative-information-revealed-by-marvin-goodfriends-i-dont-teach-is-lm/
• Sarah Kliff: Nevada's legislature just passed a radical plan to let anybody sign up for Medicaid: "Nevada’s bill... just four pages... would allow any state resident... to buy into the state Medicaid program... under the name the Nevada Care Plan... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/6/15731622/nevada-medicaid-for-all
• Olivia P. Judson: The energy expansions of evolution: "The history of the life–Earth system can be divided into five ‘energetic’ epochs... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0138
• Henry Farrell: The Strange Death of Anglo-American Liberalism: "The Financial Times... committed to free markets, but with a undertone that they had to have decent outcomes... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/31/the-strange-death-of-anglo-american-liberalism/
• Laura Panza and Jeffrey G. Williamson: Australian Squatters, Convicts, and Capitalists: Dividing Up a Fast-Growing Frontier Pie 1821-1871: "Compared with its nineteenth century competitors, Australian GDP per worker grew exceptionally fast... http://www.nber.org/papers/w23416
• (1995): Trade Policy and America’s Standard of Living: An Historical Perspective http://pages.ucsd.edu/~jlbroz/Courses/POLI142B/syllabus/delong.pdf: Before the Great Depression, the U.S. went through waves of protection and liberalization...
• Mark Thoma: The More Trump Fails, the Better Off We’ll Be: "The Trump administration has gone to war against independent sources of information that pose a challenge to its policy goals and the narratives... http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/06/05/More-Trump-Fails-Better-We-ll-Be
• Financial Times: The needless urge for higher borrowing costs: "Talk of ‘normalising’ interest rates betrays a mistaken belief... https://www.ft.com/content/b752f7dc-4782-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8
• Zack Beauchamp: What If It Happened Here?: "The events of the past 16 years have shown that presidents have extraordinary power to fundamentally alter the laws and culture of the US after a terror attack... https://www.vox.com/world/2017/5/26/15681154/trump-terrorism-manchester-islam
• Katia Porzecanski: Ray Dalio Is Changing His Mind About Donald Trump: "'When faced with the choices between what’s good for the whole and what’s good for the part, and between harmony and conflict, he has a strong tendency to choose the part and conflict... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-05/dalio-concerned-by-consequences-of-trump-s-pursuit-of-conflict
• Nick Bunker: Monetary policy via income redistribution: "Combining these three redistribution channels... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/monetary-policy-via-income-redistribution/

Procrastinating on June 5, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Simon Wren-Lewis: GE2017 and the Stages of Leaver Grief: "The EU knows that No Deal would be a disaster for the UK... https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-stages-of-leaver-grief.html
• Reuters: Fed's Harker Still Sees Two More Interest Rate Hikes in 2017: "Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick Harker said on Friday that the U.S. central bank remains on track... https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/06/02/business/02reuters-usa-fed-harker.html
• Luciano Floridi: A fallacy that will hinder advances in artificial intelligence: "The best definition of AI was written in 1955 by US computer scientist John McCarthy and colleagues... https://www.ft.com/content/ee996846-4626-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8

Links for the Week of June 4, 2011

Must-Reads:

• Luciano Floridi: A fallacy that will hinder advances in artificial intelligence: "The best definition of AI was written in 1955 by US computer scientist John McCarthy and colleagues... https://www.ft.com/content/ee996846-4626-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8
• Dean Baker: Job Growth Slows Sharply: "the overall employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) dropp[ed] from 60.2 percent in April to 60.0 percent in May... http://cepr.net/data-bytes/jobs-bytes/jobs-2017-06
• Lael Brainard: Navigating the Different Signals from Inflation and Unemployment: "The labor market has continued to strengthen... https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20170530a.htm
• Samuel Osborne: Angela Merkel says Germany can no longer rely on Donald Trump's America: "'We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands'... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-donald-trump-germany-us-no-longer-rely-european-union-climate-change-g7-a7760486.html
• Gavyn Davies: The Fed’s Lowflation Dilemma: "The [last] two months together have left core CPI inflation 0.4 percentage points lower than expected... https://www.ft.com/content/b165f756-e4bf-3a70-880f-74474f6538fa

Weekend Reading: Leon Trotsky's Not-Entirely-Reliable-Narrator View of Lenin's New Economic Policy of the 1920s

Leon Trotsky's Not-Entirely-Reliable-Narrator View of Lenin's New Economic Policy of the 1920s http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/02/daily-economic-history-leon-trotskys-not-entirely-reliable-narrator-view-of-lenins-new-economic-policy-of-the-1920s.html: "With the bourgeois economists we no longer anything to quarrel over...

...Socialism has demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Das Kapital, but in an industrial arena comprising a sixth part of the earths surface--not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity. Even if the Soviet Union, as a result of internal difficulties, external blows and the mistakes of leadership, were to collapse--which we firmly hope will not happen--there would remain an earnest of the future this indestructible fact, that thanks solely to a proletarian revolution a backward country has achieved in less than 10 years successes unexampled in history.

Procrastinating on June 2, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Unstable incomes, uncertain world” edition: "'Conversations about inequality often miss something essential... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-unstable-incomes-uncertain-world-edition/
• Equitable Growth: Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: May 2017 Report Edition | Equitable Growth: "The unemployment rate for African Americans is back to pre-recession levels... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/equitable-growths-jobs-day-graphs-may-2017-report-edition/
• Ben Thompson: Blue Apron Files for IPO, Network Effects and Customer Acquisition Costs, Uber Concerns: "I did find this bit in The Information article interesting... https://stratechery.com/2017/blue-apron-files-for-ipo-network-effects-and-customer-acquisition-costs-uber-concerns/
• Pseudoreasmus: The Cold War Triumph of Liberal Capitalism—in Hindsight https://medium.com/@pseudoerasmus/if-we-ask-the-retrospective-question-why-did-western-liberal-capitalism-actually-triumph-then-e025706801e0: "The tête-à-tête Soviet-American global struggle over the Third World...
• Dean Baker: Job Growth Slows Sharply: "the overall employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) dropp[ed] from 60.2 percent in April to 60.0 percent in May... http://cepr.net/data-bytes/jobs-bytes/jobs-2017-06
• Larry Summers: What History Tells Us about Trump’s Budget Fantasy: "The Trump economic team has not engaged in serious analysis or been in dialogue... http://larrysummers.com/2017/05/30/what-history-tells-us-about-trumps-budget-fantasy/

Procrastinating on June 1, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Perhaps Today We See Not a New Crisis of Liberal Democratic Capitalism, But an Old Condition Recurring http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/perhaps-today-we-see-not-a-new-crisis-of-liberal-democratic-capitalism-but-an-old-condition-recurring-like-herpes-if-you-will/
• Bridget Ansel: Venture capital’s gender gap is costly for firms and the economy: "The absence of women in VC firms, of course, trickles down into the success of female entrepreneurs... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/venture-capitals-gender-gap-is-costly-for-firms-and-the-economy/
• Lael Brainard: Navigating the Different Signals from Inflation and Unemployment: "The labor market has continued to strengthen... https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20170530a.htm
• Anatole Kaletsky: The Divergence of US and British Populism: "Trump’s key economic officials... plus a galaxy of Congressional officials and business leaders, made clear that Trump... is only a temporary aberration... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-resistance-brexit-acceptance-by-anatole-kaletsky-2017-05
• Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman**: Tax Evasion and Inequality: "We combine stratified random audits... with new micro-data leaked from two large offshore financial institutions, HSBC Switzerland (“Swiss leaks”) and Mossack Fonseca (“Panama Papers”)... http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/AJZ2017.pdf
• Nick Bunker: What unconventional policies are likely to stay in central bankers’ toolkits?: "Blinder... Ehrmann... de Haan... and... Jansen... academic economists... and central bankers... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/what-unconventional-policies-are-likely-to-stay-in-central-bankers-toolkits/

Procrastinating on May 30, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Why Is the FOMC So Certain the U.S. Is “Essentially at Full Employment”? http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/why-is-the-fomc-so-certain-the-u-s-is-essentially-at-full-employment/
• The Future of Work: Automation and Labor: Inclusive AI: Technology and Policy for a Diverse Human Future http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/delong-the-future-of-work-automation-and-labor-inclusive-ai-technology-and-policy-for-a-diverse-human-future/
• Charles Evans: Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead: "These policies... produced results. Unemployment began to fall... https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/speeches/2017/05-25-lessons-learned-and-challenges-ahead-bank-of-japan
• Samuel Osborne: Angela Merkel says Germany can no longer rely on Donald Trump's America: "'We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands'... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-donald-trump-germany-us-no-longer-rely-european-union-climate-change-g7-a7760486.html
• Gavyn Davies: The Fed’s Lowflation Dilemma: "The [last] two months together have left core CPI inflation 0.4 percentage points lower than expected... https://www.ft.com/content/b165f756-e4bf-3a70-880f-74474f6538fa
• Chad Stone: Donald Trump's Indefensible Economic Growth Forecasts: "The 1.1 percentage point gap between the Trump annual growth forecast over the next decade and CBO's is the largest on record and much larger than any since the Reagan-Bush era... https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/articles/2017-05-26/donald-trumps-indefensible-economic-growth-forecasts

Links for the Week of May 28, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Kavya Vaghul: Trump administration 2018 budget swaps heavy cuts to education for focus on school choice: "The more fundamental problem is that there isn’t much evidence that school choice programs, specifically vouchers, have substantial positive effects... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/trump-administration-2018-budget-swaps-heavy-cuts-to-education-for-focus-on-school-choice/
• Kevin Drum: Trump: I'll Put a Stop to Germany Selling Cars in the US: "This from Der Spiegel... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/05/trump-ill-put-stop-germany-selling-cars-us
• Ben Bernanke: Some reflections on Japanese monetary policy: "The BOJ shouldn’t stop its determined pursuit of its inflation target... https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2017/05/23/some-reflections-on-japanese-monetary-policy/
• Haley Byrd: CBO on Health Care Bill: Sick People Could Face Higher Premiums and Even Be Priced Out of the Market: "Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.)... hadn't read the full report... said he saw it as “good news”... http://ijr.com/2017/05/881482-cbo-health-care-bill-sick-people-face-higher-premiums-even-priced-market/
• Martin Wolf: Conservatism Buries Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: "Trump... has ended up with “pluto-populism”—policies that benefit plutocrats, justified by populist rhetoric... https://www.ft.com/content/970bbdcc-3f1e-11e7-82b6-896b95f30f58
• Larry Summers: A warning on Trump’s budget: "You cannot use the growth benefits of tax cuts once to justify an optimistic baseline and then again to claim that the tax cuts do not cost revenue... https://www.ft.com/content/2ae4722a-f82f-3bbe-aba1-5b89dd8ac314
• Nicholas Bagley: Taking the Nuclear Option Off the Table: "Last Thursday, fifteen states and the District of Columbia moved to intervene in House v. Price... http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/taking-the-nuclear-option-off-the-table/
• Matthew Yglesias: The Case for Impeaching Trump—and Fast: "Andrew Johnson... the move... to remove him... reeked... of...resolv[ing] a policy dispute by ginning up a legal one... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/22/15655296/impeach-trump
• Dara Lind: It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jared Kushner is part of Trump’s Russia problem: "Jared Kushner: the young, pragmatic, hardheaded businessman out to modernize the US government and moderate the worst tendencies of his father-in-law—Donald Trump... https://www.vox.com/2017/5/20/15668162/kushner-trump-russia-corruption
• Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti: Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation: "We quantify the amount of spatial misallocation of labor across US cities and its aggregate costs... http://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/growth.pdf
• Jim Acosta: On Twitter: "Talked to a former Trump campaign staffer: who has hired attorney in Russia probe and feels Trump himself should help pay for legal costs... https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/865762200757170176
• Berkeley Behaviorial Economics Initiative: Celebration of 30 Years of Behavioral Economics at Berkeley: May 20, 2017 :: Wells Fargo Room at U.C. Berkeley

Procrastinating on May 26, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• The Future of Education and Lifelong Learning: DeLong Opening DRAFT | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/the-future-of-education-and-lifelong-learning-delong-opening-draft/
• The Benefits of Free Trade: Time to Fly My Neoliberal Freak Flag High!: Hoisted from March 2016 | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/the-benefits-of-free-trade-time-to-fly-my-neoliberal-freak-flag-high-hoisted-from-march-2016/
• Kavya Vaghul: Weekend reading: the “fantasy budget” edition: "Greg Leiserson discusses... fantasy budgeting around policies and plans that have yet to be developed... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/weekend-reading-the-fantasy-budget-edition/
• Kavya Vaghul: Trump administration 2018 budget swaps heavy cuts to education for focus on school choice: "The more fundamental problem is that there isn’t much evidence that school choice programs, specifically vouchers, have substantial positive effects... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/trump-administration-2018-budget-swaps-heavy-cuts-to-education-for-focus-on-school-choice/
• Kevin Drum: Trump: I'll Put a Stop to Germany Selling Cars in the US: "This from Der Spiegel... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/05/trump-ill-put-stop-germany-selling-cars-us
• Ben Bernanke: Some reflections on Japanese monetary policy: "The BOJ shouldn’t stop its determined pursuit of its inflation target... https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2017/05/23/some-reflections-on-japanese-monetary-policy/
• Nicholas MacPherson: Joseph Chamberlain sets the Tories a bad example: "On the big national issues of his day, he was on the wrong side of history... https://www.ft.com/content/00a5c60c-3f0a-11e7-82b6-896b95f30f58
• Nick Bunker: U.S. over-education and underemployment over the course of a lifetime | Equitable Growth: "Ammar Farooq also finds that almost half of the moves into underemployment—defined as having a job for which one is overqualified... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/u-s-over-education-and-underemployment-over-the-course-of-a-lifetime/
• Elizabeth Jacobs: Why enforcing U.S. labor standards may be more important than ever: "Effective enforcement of basic labor standards is key for functional capitalism... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/why-enforcing-u-s-labor-standards-may-be-more-important-than-ever/

Procrastinating on May 25, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• A Note on Coursera CEO Rick Levin’s Clark Kerr Lecture… | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/a-note-on-coursera-ceo-rick-levins-clark-kerr-lecture/
• A Few Notes on the CUNY “After Piketty” Panel… | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/a-few-notes-on-the-cuny-after-piketty-panel/
• Haley Byrd: CBO on Health Care Bill: Sick People Could Face Higher Premiums and Even Be Priced Out of the Market: "Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.)... hadn't read the full report... said he saw it as “good news”... http://ijr.com/2017/05/881482-cbo-health-care-bill-sick-people-face-higher-premiums-even-priced-market/
• Martin Wolf: Conservatism Buries Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: "Trump... has ended up with “pluto-populism”—policies that benefit plutocrats, justified by populist rhetoric... https://www.ft.com/content/970bbdcc-3f1e-11e7-82b6-896b95f30f58
• Branko Milanovic: Liberation from the Shackles of Space: "A couple of things are worth noticing regarding the second unbundling... http://glineq.blogspot.ch/2016/12/liberation-from-shackles-of-space.html
• Larry Summers: A warning on Trump’s budget: "You cannot use the growth benefits of tax cuts once to justify an optimistic baseline and then again to claim that the tax cuts do not cost revenue... https://www.ft.com/content/2ae4722a-f82f-3bbe-aba1-5b89dd8ac314
• James D. Hamilton: Why You Should Never Use the Hodrick-Prescott Filter: "Here's why. (1) The HP filter produces series with spurious dynamic relations that have no basis in the underlying data-generating process... http://www.nber.org/papers/w23429
• Nicholas Bagley: Taking the Nuclear Option Off the Table: "Last Thursday, fifteen states and the District of Columbia moved to intervene in House v. Price... http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/taking-the-nuclear-option-off-the-table/
• Dan Drezner: Trump’s first foreign trip is all downhill from here: "This is day two of the trip, and he’s about to do more flying. He’s only going to get crankier and more error-prone from here...
• Stan Collender: This Week's Rollout Of Trump 2018 Budget Could Be His Biggest Failure Yet: "There was no Trump speech to... Congress last week at which his budget was featured... https://www.forbes.com/sites/stancollender/2017/05/21/due-tuesday-2018-budget-could-be-trumps-biggest-failure-yet/

Procrastinating on May 22, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Larry Summers: 5 Suggestions for Avoiding Another Banking Collapse: "First, it is essential to take a dynamic view of capital...
• Matthew Yglesias: The Case for Impeaching Trump—and Fast: "Andrew Johnson... the move... to remove him... reeked... of...resolv[ing] a policy dispute by ginning up a legal one... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/22/15655296/impeach-trump
• Bridget Ansel: Weekend Reading: “Mind the Gap” Edition: "Alana Semuels reports... a growing number of men... turning towards jobs...traditionally dominated by women, especially within... healthcare sector... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-mind-the-gap-edition/
• Dara Lind: It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jared Kushner is part of Trump’s Russia problem: "Jared Kushner: the young, pragmatic, hardheaded businessman out to modernize the US government and moderate the worst tendencies of his father-in-law—Donald Trump... https://www.vox.com/2017/5/20/15668162/kushner-trump-russia-corruption
• Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti: Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation: "We quantify the amount of spatial misallocation of labor across US cities and its aggregate costs... http://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/growth.pdf
• Fabio Ghironi: On Twitter: to @MESandbu: "Some readings and thoughts on Macron’s plans and macro policy in the euro area... https://twitter.com/FabioGhironi/status/865695595566030848
• Jim Acosta: On Twitter: "Talked to a former Trump campaign staffer: who has hired attorney in Russia probe and feels Trump himself should help pay for legal costs... https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/865762200757170176
• John Gruber: Announcing JSON Feed https://jsonfeed.org/version/1: "Brent Simmons and Manton Reece... https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/05/17/json-feed
• Berkeley Behaviorial Economics Initiative: Celebration of 30 Years of Behavioral Economics at Berkeley: May 20, 2017 :: Wells Fargo Room at U.C. Berkeley:
• Heather Boushey et al.: "After Piketty" panel at the Graduate Center, CUNY: "Heather Boushey, Paul Krugman, Branko Milanovic, and Salvatore Morelli discuss After Piketty at the Graduate Center of CUNY on May 11, 2017. http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/after-piketty-panel-at-the-graduate-center-cuny/
• Nick Bunker: Just how big does the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet need to be?: "The balance sheet grew so much over the past 10 years because the Fed was purchasing massive amounts of assets to stimulate the economy... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/just-how-big-does-the-federal-reserves-balance-sheet-need-to-be/

Links for the Week of May 20, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Heather Boushey et al.: "After Piketty" panel at the Graduate Center, CUNY: "Heather Boushey, Paul Krugman, Branko Milanovic, and Salvatore Morelli discuss After Piketty at the Graduate Center of CUNY on May 11, 2017. http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/after-piketty-panel-at-the-graduate-center-cuny/
• Paul Krugman: Calling Literatures From The Vasty Deep: "Noah [Smith's]... Two Paper Rule...
• Lionel Barber et al.: Trump’s Failures Risk a Constitutional Crisis: "No president is above the law... https://www.ft.com/content/872a9e2a-3af8-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec
• Eric Miller: The Unnamed Behemoth: Review of "Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena" http://amzn.to/2pSZyVd: "Deep learning eloquently brought to bear on the contemporary moment has, quite evidently, not been enough to shore up the aging foundations of our republic... https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/unnamed-behemoth
• Jack Goldsmith et al.: Bombshell: Initial Thoughts: "H.R. McMaster... Rex Tillerson... very carefully worded statements that leave open the possibility that classified information was disclosed other than sources and methods... https://www.lawfareblog.com/bombshell-initial-thoughts-washington-posts-game-changing-story
• David Rennie: An Economist reporter dishes on Trump's 'priming the pump' interview: "On trade deals... [Trump] seems to think that... if the Mexicans seem to be doing well out of the deal at all... https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-05-12/economist-reporter-dishes-trumps-priming-pump-interview
• David Luban: The Case Against Serving: "Masha Gessen, writing in NYRDaily, fears the worst: that Trump will be an American Erdoğan or a Putin on the Potomac... https://www.justsecurity.org/34404/case-serving-trump/
• David Roberts: We Overanalyze Trump. He Is What He Appears to Be: "Why is it so hard to accept that Trump is acting out of pique, on impulse, because Comey on his TV gave him bad feels?... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/12/15621140/interpret-trump

Procrastinating on May 19, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Rick Levin: Toward Sustainable Financing of Higher Education: "In the face of rising costs of attendance and an escalating burden of student debt... http://www.cshe.berkeley.edu/events/toward-sustainable-financing-higher-education-0
• Paul Krugman: Calling Literatures From The Vasty Deep: "Noah [Smith's]... Two Paper Rule...
• Ben Thompson: Apple-WeChat Follow-up: "I did make one additional addition to the article... this... https://stratechery.com/2017/apple-wechat-follow-up-windows-10-s-and-the-education-market/
• Branko Milanovic: Reducing inequality by deconcentrating capital: "The capital–income ratio continues to rise... http://voxeu.org/article/reducing-inequality-deconcentrating-capital
• David Anderson: Revisiting Cassidy-Collins: "Engagement either leads to burning Senate time if there is no productive grounds for a deal... https://www.balloon-juice.com/2017/05/16/revisiting-cassidy-collins/
• Lionel Barber et al.: Trump’s Failures Risk a Constitutional Crisis: "No president is above the law... https://www.ft.com/content/872a9e2a-3af8-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec

Procrastinating on May 17, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Some Notes on Eric Miller’s Review of “Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena”… | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/some-notes-on-eric-millers-review-of-public-intellectuals-in-the-global-arena/
• Bridget Ansel: Climbing the career ladder, switching jobs, and the gender wage gap in the United States: "For workers with a college education, gender-based gaps in pay are primarily caused by disparities that emerge within a single workplace... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/climbing-the-career-ladder-switching-jobs-and-the-gender-wage-gap-in-the-united-states/
• Nick Bunker: A reminder on the current size of the gig economy: "From 2005 to 2015, the share of workers in alternative work arrangements rose from 10.1 percent to 15.8 percent... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/a-reminder-on-the-current-size-of-the-gig-economy/
• Nick Bunker: Home is where the government subsidy is: "Matthew Desmond outlines how U.S. government policy toward housing has become a source of inequality... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/home-is-where-the-government-subsidy-is/
• Lachlan Markay et al.: White House Staff ‘Hiding’ as Russia Chaos Engulfs West Wing: "“With news like this I’m beginning to wonder why Trump ran in the first place and if he really cares about the country” said a senior Trump appointee... http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/15/white-house-staff-hiding-as-russia-chaos-engulfs-west-wing
• Noah Smith: Vast Literatures as Mud Moats: "My solution to this problem is what I call the Two Paper Rule... http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/05/vast-literatures-as-mud-moats.html
• Jack Goldsmith et al.: Bombshell: Initial Thoughts: "H.R. McMaster... Rex Tillerson... very carefully worded statements that leave open the possibility that classified information was disclosed other than sources and methods... https://www.lawfareblog.com/bombshell-initial-thoughts-washington-posts-game-changing-story
• Scott Lemieux: Our Presidential Manchild: "It’s sad that none of the details in Shane Goldmacher’s story about how Trump’s aides deal with him are even surprising anymore... http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/05/our-presidential-manchild-2
• Bob Davis: Why Trump’s Scorn for Pacific Trade Pact May Have Been Hasty: "On his first workday in the Oval Office, President Trump killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He will probably spend the rest of his term trying to revive parts of it... https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-trumps-scorn-for-pacific-trade-pact-may-have-been-hasty-1494763203
• Bill Janeway: Which Productivity Puzzle?: "It is now, just 50 years from the invention of the microprocessor, that the complex of digital technologies have matured... https://medium.com/@bjaneway/which-productivity-puzzle-ffe1d574ae96

Some Notes on Eric Miller's Review of "Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena"...

Eric Miller: The Unnamed Behemoth: Review of "Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena" http://amzn.to/2pSZyVd: "Deep learning eloquently brought to bear on the contemporary moment has, quite evidently, not been enough to shore up the aging foundations of our republic... https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/unnamed-behemoth

...And a live-from-the-West-Wing Twitter feed is not likely to advance our fortunes, either.... Is the liberal democratic tradition up to the challenge—the challenge of disciplining an economic order that exists not to prosper democracy but itself? On such crucial questions this volume sounds an uncertain note—and a rather quiet uncertain note at that.... No thoroughgoing leftists (seemingly) number among the contributors—none, that is, disposed to warn of enlarging catastrophic conflict between democracy and capital...

(1) But I thought I had done so! Was I too elliptical?

Procrastinating on May 15, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Joseph Stiglitz: Illiberal Stagnation: "What went wrong? Who, if anyone, is to blame?... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/illiberal-stagnation-russia-transition-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2017-04
• David Rennie: An Economist reporter dishes on Trump's 'priming the pump' interview: "On trade deals... [Trump] seems to think that... if the Mexicans seem to be doing well out of the deal at all... https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-05-12/economist-reporter-dishes-trumps-priming-pump-interview
• Barry Eichengreen: Is Germany Unbalanced or Unhinged?: "The question... is why Germany should seek to reduce its current-account surplus... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/german-external-surplus-requires-public-investment-by-barry-eichengreen-2017-05

Procrastinating on May 14, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Nick Bunker: How the opening to China may have partially fueled the U.S. housing bubble: "Barrot, Loualiche, Plosser, and Sauvagnat find that increased import competition does explain a good amount of the variation in household debt... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/how-the-opening-to-china-may-have-partially-fueled-the-u-s-housing-bubble/
• Kavya Vaghul: Weekend reading: the #WorkingPaperTuesday edition: "Matthew Desmond tackles the relationship between homeownership and inequality... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/weekend-reading-the-workingpapertuesday-edition/
• David Luban: The Case Against Serving: "Masha Gessen, writing in NYRDaily, fears the worst: that Trump will be an American Erdoğan or a Putin on the Potomac... https://www.justsecurity.org/34404/case-serving-trump/
• Graydon Saunders (2016): The End: "Well, it's the events of the end; we can count 2017-01-01 or 2016-12-19 or 2017-01-20 if we want... http://dubiousprospects.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-end.html
• David Roberts: We Overanalyze Trump. He Is What He Appears to Be: "Why is it so hard to accept that Trump is acting out of pique, on impulse, because Comey on his TV gave him bad feels?... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/12/15621140/interpret-trump
• David Anderson: Mulvaney and the Deserving Sick: "OMB Director Mulvaney... Dennis Shea makes a very good point... https://www.balloon-juice.com/2017/05/14/mulvaney-and-the-deserving-sick/
• Dani Rodrik: Can Macron Pull it Off?: "Le Pen received more than a third of the second-round vote... And turnout was apparently sharply... indicating a large number of disaffected voters... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/macron-germany-eurozone-fiscal-union-by-dani-rodrik-2017-05
• Matthew Yglesias: The latest Trump interview once again reveals appalling ignorance and dishonesty https://www.vox.com/2017/5/11/15622900/trump-economist-interview: "It seems overwhelmingly likely [Trump] is speaking nonsense out of ignorance...

Links for the Week of May 14, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Matthew Yglesias: The latest Trump interview once again reveals appalling ignorance and dishonesty https://www.vox.com/2017/5/11/15622900/trump-economist-interview: "It seems overwhelmingly likely [Trump] is speaking nonsense out of ignorance...
• Will Bunch: The problem with NY Times and climate change isn't what you think: "So many people were so mad... [is] about what people... thought they were getting... http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/The-big-problem-with-NY-Times-climate-isnt-what-you-think.html?mobi=true
• Tom Nichols: @RadioFreeTom on Twitter: "I am often astonished at the President's tweets... https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom
• After Piketty: "The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue | 1201: Elebash Recital Hall | May 11, 2017: 6:30 PM http://www.gc.cuny.edu/publicprograms...
• Josh Marshall: TPM and The Future of Digital News Publishing http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tpm-and-the-future-of-digital-news-publishing: "The engrossment of most of the ad revenue by two big monopolies will spell the end of a lot of ad-supported websites...
• Thomas Piketty: Lessons from "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" http://amzn.to/2qgPIRE: "I would like to see Capital in the Twenty-First Century as a work-in-progress of social science...
• Francis Wilkinson: Trade Is the Scapegoat for Political Failure: "Democrats have no viable plans to bring back sustainable, high-paying, blue-collar jobs... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-03/trade-is-the-scapegoat-for-political-failure

Procrastinating on May 10, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Inclusive AI: Technology and Policy for a Diverse Urban Future | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/inclusive-ai-technology-and-policy-for-a-diverse-urban-future/
• Tim Duy: The Fed Is on the Right Side of Its 'Transitory' Bet: "The Fed is betting that residual seasonal adjustment issues negatively impacted the first-quarter gross domestic product and that the data does not reflect the true pace of economic growth... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-08/the-fed-is-on-the-right-side-of-its-transitory-bet
• Bill Emmott: Escaping the Wage Trap: "The main reason governments are leery of intervening in labor markets... https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/escaping-the-wage-trap-by-bill-emmott-2017-05
• Eric Rauchway: From Scarcity to Abundance: "The recent burst of writing on the roboticization of labor... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/09/from-scarcity-to-abundance/
• Aaron Reeves: Economics: The architecture of inequality: "After Piketty, edited by Heather Boushey, Bradford Delong and Marshall Steinbaum... https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v543/n7645/full/543312a.html
• Mark Thoma: Killing Banking Rules Will Invite a Whopper of a Recession: "As for repealing Dodd-Frank, consider this statement by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin... http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/05/08/Killing-Banking-Rules-Will-Invite-Whopper-Recession
• Will Bunch: The problem with NY Times and climate change isn't what you think: "So many people were so mad... [is] about what people... thought they were getting... http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/The-big-problem-with-NY-Times-climate-isnt-what-you-think.html?mobi=true
• Bruno Caprettini and Joachim Voth: Rage against the machines: New technology and violent unrest in industrialising Britain: "New machines have increasingly replaced humans... http://voxeu.org/article/rage-against-machines-new-technology-and-violent-unrest
• Tom Nichols: @RadioFreeTom on Twitter: "I am often astonished at the President's tweets... https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom

Procrastinating on May 8, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Globalization in the Crosshairs: Trade, Jobs, Inequality, Globalization, Robots II | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/globalization-in-the-crosshairs-trade-jobs-inequality-globalization-robots-ii/
• Reflecting on Masterclasses in Rhetoric Taught in Recent Videos… | Equitable Growth: http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/reflecting-on-masterclasses-in-rhetoric-taught-in-recent-videos/
• “After Piketty” Publication Day | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/after-piketty-publication-day/
• “After Piketty” at Harvard University Press | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/after-piketty-at-harvard-university-press/
• Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: April 2017 Report Edition | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/equitable-growths-jobs-day-graphs-april-2017-report-edition/
• Nick Bunker: Changes in U.S. lifetime income inequality | Equitable Growth: http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/changes-in-u-s-lifetime-income-inequality/
• Bridget Ansel: Weekend reading: “When it rains, it pours” edition | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-when-it-rains-it-pours-edition/
• Peter Coy: Piketty’s Capital Was So Popular There’s a Sequel: "Another hefty volume that looks at the connection between capitalism and inequality... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-08/piketty-s-capital-was-so-popular-there-s-a-sequel
• Thomas Piketty: After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality http://amzn.to/2qSUgdl: "Had I believed that the one-dimensional neoclassical model of capital accumulation...
• After Piketty: "The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue | 1201: Elebash Recital Hall | May 11, 2017: 6:30 PM http://www.gc.cuny.edu/publicprograms...
• Josh Marshall: TPM and The Future of Digital News Publishing http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tpm-and-the-future-of-digital-news-publishing: "The engrossment of most of the ad revenue by two big monopolies will spell the end of a lot of ad-supported websites...
• Thomas Piketty: Lessons from "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" http://amzn.to/2qgPIRE: "I would like to see Capital in the Twenty-First Century as a work-in-progress of social science...
• Josh Barro: On Twitter: "These claims aren't mutually exclusive, but they reflect how Trump is running a double con https://t.co/BvlSUFuThH..." https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/860402293258113024
• Raj Chetty et al.: Trends in US absolute income mobility since 1940: "Under the current distribution... we would need real GDP growth rates above 6% per year to return... http://voxeu.org/article/trends-us-absolute-income-mobility-1940
• Nick Bunker: What’s going to reduce U.S. corporate savings?: "What, then, is behind the rise in corporate savings?... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/whats-going-to-reduce-u-s-corporate-savings/

Links for the Week of May 7, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Francis Wilkinson: Trade Is the Scapegoat for Political Failure: "Democrats have no viable plans to bring back sustainable, high-paying, blue-collar jobs... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-03/trade-is-the-scapegoat-for-political-failure
• Martin Wolf: Donald Trump’s pluto-populism laid bare: "For all the sound and fury, the president is governing like a traditional Republican..." https://www.ft.com/content/69fe4862-2f20-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a
• Arthur Goldhammer: The Piketty Phenomenon: "I will discuss anticipations of the book’s reception... show that even the most optimistic forecasts failed to predict the extent of the Piketty phenomenon... http://amzn.to/2pynukp
• Suresh Naidu: A Political Economy Take on W/Y: "The full political-economy equilibrium... lets us see the determinants of the wealth/income ratio... http://amzn.to/2pynukp
• Mark Thoma: The Demand for Education: "One of the most rewarding parts of deciding to go online 12 years ago... http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/03/the-demand-for-education.html
• Sarah Kliff: Trump doesn't know what's in his health bill: "Either the president doesn’t understand the proposal — or isn’t telling the truth about it... http://www.vox.com/2017/4/30/15492354/trump-ahca-interview
• Jeremy Cliffe: On Twitter: Today's FAZ Report on May's Disastrous Dinner with Juncker https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858810953353367552: "Today's FAZ report on May's disastrous dinner with Juncker...

Procrastinating on May 4, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” Three Years Later | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-three-years-later/
• Nick Bunker: Some very worrying trends in U.S. lifetime income growth: "Concerns about outright income stagnation for many Americans are not overhyped... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/some-very-worrying-trends-in-u-s-lifetime-income-growth/
• Tamim Bayoumi and Barry Eichengreen: Shocking Aspects of European Monetary Unification: "Data on output and prices for 11 EC member nations... http://www.nber.org/papers/w3949
• Martin Wolf: Asia’s dynamism at risk in US and China’s competing visions for global trade: "China is promoting a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)... https://www.ft.com/content/343e8300-0288-11e7-aa5b-6bb07f5c8e12
• Ezra Klein: Health Care Hot Potato: "[Like the Tea Party] Caucus... the Coverage Caucus... don’t want to be blamed for [the bill's] defeat... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/4/15536422/health-care-hot-potato-ahca

Procrastinating on May 3, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Where US Manufacturing Jobs Really Went | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/where-us-manufacturing-jobs-really-went/
• Francis Wilkinson: Trade Is the Scapegoat for Political Failure: "Democrats have no viable plans to bring back sustainable, high-paying, blue-collar jobs... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-03/trade-is-the-scapegoat-for-political-failure
• Ernest Gellner (1990): The Civil and the Sacred: "The bourgeois fantasy lay in its doctrine that work was the very essence of man... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/02/weekend-reading-from-ernest-gellner-1990-the-civil-and-the-sacred.html
• Martin Wolf: Donald Trump’s pluto-populism laid bare: "For all the sound and fury, the president is governing like a traditional Republican..." https://www.ft.com/content/69fe4862-2f20-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a
• Larry Summers: Steven Mnuchin’s big claims show him in a poor light: "Last week... I felt sorry for... Mnuchin... https://www.ft.com/content/e5ad91fa-9409-384e-aaa1-ea0e81bf62b4
• Kevin Drum: Paul Ryan Isn't Even Trying to Pass a Health Care Bill Anymore: "They just want to be able to tell their base that they tried... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/paul-ryan-isnt-even-trying-pass-health-care-bill-anymore
• Binyamin Applebaum: A Look Inside Airbus’s Epic Assembly Line https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/magazine/a-look-inside-airbuss-epic-assembly-line.html: "A confluence of political and economic forces has prompted Europe’s largest airplane manufacturer to place a factory in Alabama...

Tuesday Hoisted from the Archives: Ben Thompson on Medium...

Live from the Internet from 2015: Ben Thompson (May 22, 2015): Medium the Network: "The most pertinent analysis is from The Facebook Reckoning. Specifically:

Procrastinating on May 2, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Nick Bunker: Should policymakers worry about the level of debt or the pace of credit growth?: "Other research on the impact of debt and credit on economic output has emphasized the role of household debt... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/should-policymakers-worry-about-the-level-of-debt-or-the-pace-of-credit-growth/
• Henry Farrell: The Thousand Day Reich: The Double Movement: "A simple Polanyian account of Trump and right wing populism would explain it... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/01/the-thousand-day-reich-the-double-movement/#comment-708419
• Arthur Goldhammer: The Piketty Phenomenon: "I will discuss anticipations of the book’s reception... show that even the most optimistic forecasts failed to predict the extent of the Piketty phenomenon... http://amzn.to/2pynukp
• Suresh Naidu: A Political Economy Take on W/Y: "The full political-economy equilibrium... lets us see the determinants of the wealth/income ratio... http://amzn.to/2pynukp
• UC Berkeley: Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society: Othering & Belonging: "How Do We Think About, Talk About, and Give Birth to a World Where All Belong?_: "The Othering & Belonging Conference is a dynamic gathering over 2.5 days... http://conference.otheringandbelonging.org/
• Mark Thoma: The Demand for Education: "One of the most rewarding parts of deciding to go online 12 years ago... http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/03/the-demand-for-education.html
• Sarah Kliff: Trump doesn't know what's in his health bill
• Jeremy Cliffe: On Twitter: Today's FAZ Report on May's Disastrous Dinner with Juncker https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858810953353367552: "Today's FAZ report on May's disastrous dinner with Juncker...

Links for the Week of April 30, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Branko Milanovic: El Super Clasico: Trade and Technology Duke It Out at CUNY: "The panelists seemed to agree... http://glineq.blogspot.com/2017/04/el-super-clasico-trade-and-technology.html
• Heather Boushey, Brad DeLong and Marshall Steinbaum: Equitable Growth in Conversation: Marshall Steinbaum: "I think the key question... in Piketty terms [is]... http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/equitable-growth-in-conversation-brad-delong-and-marshall-steinbaum/
• Gauti Eggertsson, Neil Mehrotra, and Jacob A. Robbins: To accommodate or not: The Federal Reserve’s new normal http://voxeu.org/article/accommodate-or-not-federal-reserve-s-new-normal: "Current [monetary] policy may be at or close to the natural rate...
• INET: Education Initiative: "We are thrilled that you are joining us at the Berkeley Spring 2017 Education Convening, Friday, April 28th 9am-5pm Blum Hall, B100 #5570, Berkeley, CA 94720-5570... https://www.ineteconomics.org/education/curricula-modules/education-initiative
• Matthew Yglesias: If you really respect Trump voters, tell them the truth: "A wave of recent columns argue that what Trump superfans... http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/24/15375206/respect-trump-voters-truth
• Ezra Klein: The GOP’s biggest health care achievement has been making Obamacare more popular: "It is bizarre watching House Republicans persuade themselves that the problem they face on health care... https://www.vox.com/obamacare/2017/4/20/15373092/republicans-made-obamacare-more-popular

Procrastinating on April 29, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Trade, Jobs, and Inequality | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/trade-jobs-and-inequality/
• What Can Be Done to Improve the Episteme of Economics? | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/what-can-be-done-to-improve-the-episteme-of-economics/
• Branko Milanovic: El Super Clasico: Trade and Technology Duke It Out at CUNY: "The panelists seemed to agree... http://glineq.blogspot.com/2017/04/el-super-clasico-trade-and-technology.html
• Trade, Jobs, and Inequality http://www.gc.cuny.edu/All-GC-Events/Calendar/Detail?id=38997: "CUNY :: The Graduate Center :: 365 Fifth Avenue :: C200: Proshansky Auditorium :: April 26, 2017: 6:30 PM http://www.gc.cuny.edu/publicprograms...
• INET: Education Initiative: "We are thrilled that you are joining us at the Berkeley Spring 2017 Education Convening, Friday, April 28th 9am-5pm Blum Hall, B100 #5570, Berkeley, CA 94720-5570... https://www.ineteconomics.org/education/curricula-modules/education-initiative
• Peter Ganong and Pascal Noel: Consumer spending during unemployment: Positive and normative implications: "We study... unemployment insurance... using de-identified data from nearly 200,000 bank accounts... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/consumer-spending-during-unemployment/
• Nisha Chikhale: The importance of unemployment benefits for protecting against income drops: "Jesse Rothstein... and Robert Valletta... the role that unemployment insurance plays in supporting family incomes... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-importance-of-unemployment-benefits-for-protecting-against-income-drops/
• Dietrich Vollrath: Topics in Economic Growth: "I just created some new pages... https://growthecon.com/blog/Topics-Pages/
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Link pass-through entity” edition | Equitable Growth: "Arindarjit Dube summarizes his recent research on the effect of minimum wage hikes on family incomes... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-link-pass-through-entity-edition/

Procrastinating on April 24, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• A Low-Pressure Economy Is Not Only Dark But Invisible in the Horserace Noah Smith is Running… | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/a-low-pressure-economy-is-not-only-dark-but-invisible-in-the-horserace-noah-smith-is-running/
• Bridget Ansel: Weekend reading: “This post is tax-ing” edition | Equitable Growthhttp://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-this-post-is-tax-ing-edition/
• Matthew Yglesias: If you really respect Trump voters, tell them the truth: "A wave of recent columns argue that what Trump superfans... http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/24/15375206/respect-trump-voters-truth
• Ezra Klein: The GOP’s biggest health care achievement has been making Obamacare more popular: "It is bizarre watching House Republicans persuade themselves that the problem they face on health care... https://www.vox.com/obamacare/2017/4/20/15373092/republicans-made-obamacare-more-popular
• Fatih Guvenen and Greg Kaplan: Top Income Inequality in the 21st Century: Some Cautionary Notes: "IRS and SSA data reveal diverging patterns in top income shares... http://papers.nber.org/w23321.pdf
• Kevin Drum: We're Now In the Second Biggest Housing Boom of All Time: "The most remarkable feature of this chart... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/were-now-second-biggest-housing-boom-all-time
• Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor: Monetary Policy Medicine: Large Effects from Small Doses?: "How do we know that higher interest rates will bring prices under control?... http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/april/monetary-policy-medicine-using-quasi-random-experiments/
• Chris Hayes: On escaping the “doom loop” of Trump's presidency: "I tend to think of it in terms of my own behavior... https://www.vox.com/2017/4/19/15356534/chris-hayes-donald-trump-media-elections-2016-criminal-justice
• Hyun Song Shin: Accounting for global liquidity: reloading the matrix: "In emerging market economies especially, a weakening of the domestic currency against the dollar saps both cross-border bank lending and investment... http://www.bis.org/speeches/sp170419.htm

Links for the Week of April 23, 2017

Must-Reads:

1. Kevin Drum: We're Now In the Second Biggest Housing Boom of All Time: "The most remarkable feature of this chart... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/were-now-second-biggest-housing-boom-all-time
2. Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor: Monetary Policy Medicine: Large Effects from Small Doses?: "How do we know that higher interest rates will bring prices under control?... http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/april/monetary-policy-medicine-using-quasi-random-experiments/
3. Rick Perlstein: I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrongs: "Direct-mail pioneers like Richard Viguerie created hair-on-fire campaign-fund-raising letters... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/magazine/i-thought-i-understood-the-american-right-trump-proved-me-wrong.html
4. Financial Times: Donald Trump Beats a Retreat: "Another week, another series of flip-flops by America’s president... https://www.ft.com/content/039d80ae-21cb-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16
5. Ezra Klein: The GOP’s problem on health reform is they’ve spent years hiding their real position: "The most interesting policy argument... is the debate between conservatives’ real position on health care and their fake position... http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15325366/gop-problem-on-health-reform

Procrastinating on April 21, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Against Alasdair Macintyre’s “After Virtue” | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/against-alasdair-macintyres-after-virtue/: "That is a very powerful statement that what is sought after is successful managerialism–a successful managerialism with a preferential option for the poor..."
• Nick Bunker: What would rules-based monetary policy look like?: "All of this isn’t to say that the reaction functions of central banks or individual central bankers aren’t important http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/what-would-rules-based-monetary-policy-look-like/..." http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/04/what-would-rules-based-monetary-policy-look-like-equitable-growth.html
• Mark Thoma: The Fed’s Inflation Goal: What Does the Public Know?: "'Lately, various Committee members... and Chair Yellen... http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/04/the-feds-inflation-goal-what-does-the-public-know.html
• Jamelle Bouie: The Muted Response to the Retail Apocalypse Shows Which Workers Count in Trump’s America: Fake Working Class: "The retail industry’s recent decline... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/the_response_to_the_retail_apocalypse_shows_which_workers_count_in_trump.html
• Rick Perlstein: I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrongs: "Direct-mail pioneers like Richard Viguerie created hair-on-fire campaign-fund-raising letters... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/magazine/i-thought-i-understood-the-american-right-trump-proved-me-wrong.html
• Tim Carmody: Pour some out for the sites that aren’t here: Google Reader: "Some of the best things ever seen or used on the web can’t be saved... http://kottke.org/17/04/pour-some-out-for-the-sites-that-arent-here

Procrastinating on April 18, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Nick Bunker: U.S. income inequality trends in the 21st century | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/u-s-income-inequality-trends-in-the-21st-century/
• Kavya Vaghul: A few graphs for Tax Day 2017 | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/a-few-graphs-for-tax-day-2017/
• Financial Times: Donald Trump Beats a Retreat: "Another week, another series of flip-flops by America’s president... https://www.ft.com/content/039d80ae-21cb-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16
• Ezra Klein: The GOP’s problem on health reform is they’ve spent years hiding their real position: "The most interesting policy argument... is the debate between conservatives’ real position on health care and their fake position... https://www.ft.com/content/039d80ae-21cb-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16
• Paul Krugman: On Twitter: "The CA/KS comparison—Brown and Brownback took office same time—never gets old, because the derp keeps coming..." https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/853693665239326720
• Willa Friedman et al. (2011): Education as Liberation?: "We assess the political and social impacts of a randomized girls' merit scholarship incentive program in Kenya that raised test scores and secondary schooling... http://www.nber.org/papers/w16939

Procrastinating on April 17, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Shaken and Stirred: Weekend Reading: Hoisted from 2005 | Equitable Growth: "..." http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/shaken-and-stirred-weekend-reading-hoisted-from-2005/
• Nick Bunker: U.S. income inequality trends in the 21st century | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/u-s-income-inequality-trends-in-the-21st-century/
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “This post has intangible assets” edition | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-this-post-has-intangible-assets-edition/
• Tony Nog: On Twitter: "18) This may explain why Brexiteers are in this unhappy cycle. The 'intellectual' basis for Brexit has collapsed. But no one told them..." https://twitter.com/tony_nog/status/849648920313683970 https://t.co/ivecEkaJIT
• Seshat: Global History Databank publishes first set of historical data: "Can be accessed at http://dacura.scss.tcd.ie/seshat/... http://seshatdatabank.info/dacura/
• Simon Wren-Lewis: Henry Farrell on economists and austerity: "as [Kevin] Drum says, it is not all gloom for economists... https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2017/04/henry-farrell-on-economists-and.html
• Ernest Gellner (1990): The Civil and the Sacred: "The history of the Soviet Union... falls into two main periods: Terror and Squalor... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/02/weekend-reading-from-ernest-gellner-1990-the-civil-and-the-sacred.html
• Josh Marshall: Trump and The Problem of Militant Ignorance: "President Trump is a deeply ignorant man... http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-the-problem-of-militant-ignorance

Links for the Week of April 16, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Seshat: Global History Databank publishes first set of historical data: "Can be accessed at http://dacura.scss.tcd.ie/seshat/... http://seshatdatabank.info/dacura/
• Barry Eichengreen and Brad DeLong (2013): New Preface to Charles Kindleberger, "The World in Depression 1929-1939": "Anyone fortunate enough to live in New England in 1970-1985 or so and possessed of even a limited interest in international financial and monetary history... http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/new-preface-to-charles-kindleberger-the-world-in-depression-1929-1939.html
• Dani Rodrik: A Foreword to Kari Polanyi Levitt: "I first encountered Karl Polanyi as an undergraduate, in a course on comparative politics... http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2017/03/a-foreword-to-kari-polanyi-levitt.html
• Christina Starmans, Mark Sheskin, and Paul Bloom: Why People Prefer Unequal Societies http://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0082: "There is immense concern about economic inequality...
• Pedro Nicolaci da Costa: Lacker's resignation raises big question about the real Fed leaker http://www.businessinsider.com/lackers-resignation-raises-big-question-about-the-real-fed-leaker-2017-4: "Despite appearances to the contrary, we also don't know who the actual leaker was...

Procrastinating on April 14, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Notes: Working, Earning, and Learning In the Age of Intelligent Machines | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/notes-working-earning-and-learning-in-the-age-of-intelligent-machines/
• Nick Bunker: A new way to look at how U.S. firms affect their workers’ pay now and in the future | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/a-new-way-to-look-at-how-u-s-firms-affect-their-workers-pay-now-and-in-the-future/
• Josh Marshall: Trump Threatens to Torch More Republicans: "the President is threatening... CSR payments to sabotage the Obamacare exchanges and... force Democrats to the bargaining table... http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-threatens-to-torch-more-republicans
• Barry Eichengreen and Brad DeLong (2013): New Preface to Charles Kindleberger, "The World in Depression 1929-1939": "Anyone fortunate enough to live in New England in 1970-1985 or so and possessed of even a limited interest in international financial and monetary history... http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/new-preface-to-charles-kindleberger-the-world-in-depression-1929-1939.html
• Dani Rodrik: A Foreword to Kari Polanyi Levitt: "I first encountered Karl Polanyi as an undergraduate, in a course on comparative politics... http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2017/03/a-foreword-to-kari-polanyi-levitt.html

Procrastinating on April 12, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Owen Zidar: Tax cuts for whom? Heterogeneous effects of income tax changes on growth and employment | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/effects-of-income-tax-changes-on-economic-activity/: "the positive relationship between tax cuts and employment growth is largely driven by tax cuts for lower-income groups, and that the effect of tax cuts for the top 10% on employment growth is small..."
• Nick Bunker: A new way to look at how U.S. firms affect their workers’ pay now and in the future | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/a-new-way-to-look-at-how-u-s-firms-affect-their-workers-pay-now-and-in-the-future/: "Think of the U.S. labor market as a series of ladders, with firms being different ladders and wage levels corresponding to rungs on the ladders..."
• Nick Bunker: JOLTS Day Graphs: February 2017 Report Edition | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/jolts-day-graphs-february-2017-report-edition/: "After a jump in January, the quits rate moved down to 2.1 percent in February. Quitting is often interpreted as a sign of labor market health and recently it’s been quite steady..."
• Nick Bunker: How corporate profit-shifting distorts the measurement of U.S. productivity | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/how-corporate-profit-shifting-distorts-the-measurement-of-u-s-productivity/: "Productivity growth from 2006 to 2008—after accounting for profit-shifting—was almost a full percentage point higher than unadjusted productivity..."
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Diversity, discrimination, and wage gaps” edition | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-diversity-discrimination-and-wage-gaps-edition/: "Claudia Sahm writes:'I get it that technocratic credibility and the independence it allows are crucial ingredients to monetary policy, but isn’t that earned by outcomes not words?'..."
• Matthew C Klein: Tarullo Exits Federal Reserve https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/02/10/2184358/tarullo-exits-federal-reserve/: "Daniel K. Tarullo submitted his resignation... as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, effective on or around April 5, 2017...
• Thomas Barnebeck et al.: The Heavy Plough and the Agricultural Revolution in Medieval Europe http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Skovsgaard.pdf: "Lynn White, Jr. (1962)... the adoption of the heavy plough in Northern Europe led to increased population density and urbanization...
• Josh Barro (2012): Yes, the 1990 Budget Deal Spending Cuts Were Real https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-12-27/yes-the-1990-budget-deal-spending-cuts-were-real: "When you talk with conservatives about why they resist deficit-cutting deals...
• Dean Baker: Prime-Age Employment Rate Hits Record High for Recovery http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/prime-age-employment-rate-hits-record-high-for-recovery-in-february: "0.5 percentage points above its year-ago level...
• Paul E. Smaldino and Richard McElreath: The Natural Selection of Bad Science http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/160384: "Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings...
• David Leonhardt: The Original Republican Lie About Obamacare https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/opinion/the-original-lie-about-obamacare.html : "It’s often said in a tone of regret: I wish Obama had done health reform in a bipartisan way...
• Financial Times: The Fed and ECB keep a cautious eye on the exit https://www.ft.com/content/a0180496-1b7b-11e7-a266-12672483791a: "Making a promise... and then breaking that promise tends to have more severe consequences for central banks...
• Jonathan Portes: Spreadsheets are people too: statistics and reality http://notthetreasuryview.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/spreadsheets-are-people-too-statistics.html: "[David] Goodhart’s response will be... that I am...
• Christina Starmans, Mark Sheskin, and Paul Bloom: Why People Prefer Unequal Societies http://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0082: "There is immense concern about economic inequality...
• Pedro Nicolaci da Costa: Lacker's resignation raises big question about the real Fed leaker http://www.businessinsider.com/lackers-resignation-raises-big-question-about-the-real-fed-leaker-2017-4: "Despite appearances to the contrary, we also don't know who the actual leaker was...
• David L. Ikenberry, Richard L. Shockley, and Kent L. Womack (1998): Why Active Fund Managers Often Underperform the S&P 500: The Impact of Size and Skewness http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/kent.womack/publications/publications/skewness.pdf: "The S&P 500 index... comparison has generally cast an unfavorable impression of active fund managers...
• Noah Smith: Keynesian Economics Is Hot Again https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-10/keynesian-economics-is-hot-again: "Lawrence Christiano... after the Great Recession...

Links for the Week of April 9, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson: The spread of modern manufacturing to the poor periphery http://voxeu.org/article/spread-modern-manufacturing-poor-periphery: "Factor endowments: had a profound impact...
• Josh Barro (2012): Yes, the 1990 Budget Deal Spending Cuts Were Real https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-12-27/yes-the-1990-budget-deal-spending-cuts-were-real: "When you talk with conservatives about why they resist deficit-cutting deals...
• Dean Baker: Prime-Age Employment Rate Hits Record High for Recovery http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/prime-age-employment-rate-hits-record-high-for-recovery-in-february: "0.5 percentage points above its year-ago level...
• Paul E. Smaldino and Richard McElreath: The Natural Selection of Bad Science http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/160384: "Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings...
• David Leonhardt: The Original Republican Lie About Obamacare https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/opinion/the-original-lie-about-obamacare.html : "It’s often said in a tone of regret: I wish Obama had done health reform in a bipartisan way...

Procrastinating on April 7, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• John Schmitt: Evidence of ongoing gender discrimination in the U.S. labor market | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/evidence-of-ongoing-gender-discrimination-in-the-u-s-labor-market/
• Equitable Growth: Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: March 2017 Report Edition | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/equitable-growths-jobs-day-graphs-march-2017-report-edition/
• Alex Pareene: The Long, Lucrative Right-wing Grift Is Blowing Up in the World's Face http://fusion.net/the-long-lucrative-right-wing-grift-is-blowing-up-in-t-1793944216: "If you want to understand intra-GOP warfare...
• Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson: The spread of modern manufacturing to the poor periphery http://voxeu.org/article/spread-modern-manufacturing-poor-periphery: "Factor endowments: had a profound impact...
• Neville Morley: Keep Lectures Live! https://thesphinxblog.com/2017/03/03/keep-lectures-live/: "Sitting in silence, concentrating on the real-time exposition and exegesis of material and the development of arguments and analysis...

Procrastinating on April 5, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Why Were Economists as a Group as Useless Over 2010-2014 as Over 1929-1935? | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/why-were-economists-as-a-group-as-useless-over-2010-2014-as-over-1929-1935/
• Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Problems | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/artificial-intelligence-and-artificial-problems/
• Sluggish Future: No Longer Fresh Over at Finance and Development | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/sluggish-future-no-longer-fresh-over-at-finance-and-development/
• Austin Clemens: The once and future measurement of economic inequality in the United States | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-once-and-future-measurement-of-economic-inequality-in-the-united-states/
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Looking to Alaska” edition | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-looking-to-alaska-edition/
• Nick Bunker: Time for an inflation rethink? | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/time-for-an-inflation-rethink/
• Heather Boushey: Remembering who pays Uncle Sam this year’s Tax Day | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/remembering-who-pays-uncle-sam-this-years-tax-day/
• Bridget Ansel: Do U.S. women choose low-paid occupations, or do low-paid occupations choose them? | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/do-u-s-women-choose-low-paid-occupations-or-do-low-paid-occupations-choose-them/
• Gabriel Matthews: Despite increases, diversity still comes up short in U.S. venture capital | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/despite-increases-diversity-still-comes-up-short-in-u-s-venture-capital/
• John Cassidy: Theresa May’s Empty Brexit Promises: "May’s [BREXIT] speech was filled with so many false claims, so much cant, and so many examples of wishful thinking...
• Ross Douthat: Is Obamacare a Lifesaver?: "Now that the Republican Party has beclowned itself on health care... Obamacare repeal... in rubble...
• Noah Smith: Thoughts on Will Wilkinson's Post on Cities: "Will Wilkinson, one of the greatest essayists working today...
• Paul Krugman (2015): Nobody Said That: "Imagine yourself as a regular commentator on public affairs...
• Craig Garthwaite and John A. Graves: Success and Failure in the Insurance Exchanges: "President Donald Trump and large fractions of the Republican majority... campaigned on an explicit pledge to repeal and replace the ACA...

Links for the Week of April 2, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Ann Marie Marciarille (2014): The Medicaid Gamble: "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was an unprecedented gamble...

• Stephen Shortell, Jesse Choper, Brad DeLong, Ann O'Leary, Ann Marie Marciarille, and John Ellwood (2012): Reactions to the Supreme Court's Ruling on the Affordable Care Act

• Steve M.: I Know This Sounds Wacky, but I Think Trump and Bannon Are Actually Conservatives: "The Donald Trump administration didn't come into office holding out an olive branch to Chuck Schumer... and The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt finds that baffling...

• Stephen Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz: The Fed’s Price Stability Achievement: "US monetary policy has been the target of substantial criticism over the years...

• Ronald Klain (2016): It’s a Trap!: "President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan: Don’t do it. It’s a trap...

• Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman: Economic growth in the US: A Tale of Two Countries: "Given the generation-long stagnation of the pre-tax incomes among the bottom 50% of wage earners in the US...

• Michael T. Kiley and John M. Roberts: Monetary policy in a Low Interest Rate World: "Nominal interest rates may remain substantially below the averages of the last half-century...

• Noah Smith: The Blogs vs. Case-Deaton: "Selection effects are very real...

• Ross Douthat: Is Obamacare a Lifesaver?: "Now that the Republican Party has beclowned itself on health care... Obamacare repeal... in rubble...

• Paul Krugman (2015): Nobody Said That: "Imagine yourself as a regular commentator on public affairs...

Procrastinating on March 29, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Arindrajit Dube: Minimum wages and the distribution of family incomes | Equitable Growth
• Nick Bunker: Another take on declining productivity growth in high-income countries | Equitable Growth
• Brad DeLong: Interview: The Politics Guys | Equitable Growth
• Jeffrey Toobin: Behind Neil Gorsuch’s Non-Answers: "The hard cases are the ones that matter...
• Steve M.: I Know This Sounds Wacky, but I Think Trump and Bannon Are Actually Conservatives: "The Donald Trump administration didn't come into office holding out an olive branch to Chuck Schumer... and The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt finds that baffling...
• Stephen Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz: The Fed’s Price Stability Achievement: "US monetary policy has been the target of substantial criticism over the years...
• Ronald Klain (2016): It’s a Trap!: "President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan: Don’t do it. It’s a trap...
• Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman: Economic growth in the US: A Tale of Two Countries: "Given the generation-long stagnation of the pre-tax incomes among the bottom 50% of wage earners in the US...
• Noah Smith: The Blogs vs. Case-Deaton: "Selection effects are very real...

Procrastinating on March 27, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Heather Boushey: Look to the 49th state for basic-income guidance | Equitable Growth
• Mike Konczal: Four Lessons from the Health Care Repeal Collapse: "I [had] thought President Trump would sign a reconciliation bill gutting the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by the time Congress took their February recess...
• Ann Marie Marciarille (2014): The Medicaid Gamble: "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was an unprecedented gamble...
• Stephen Shortell, Jesse Choper, Brad DeLong, Ann O'Leary, Ann Marie Marciarille, and John Ellwood (2012): Reactions to the Supreme Court's Ruling on the Affordable Care Act
• The Roanoke Times: Editorial: Trump Breaks a Promise to Coal Country: "Donald Trump... invariably talked up his support for coal... investing in the “clean coal” technology...
• Pseudoerasmus: Economic Growth in Ancient Greece: "The causes of [Ancient] Greek economic growth may have been 'ordinary'...