Grasping Reality by Brad DeLong

• Christopher A. Sims: Bayesian Methods in Applied Econometrics, or, Why Econometrics Should Always and Everywhere Be Bayesian: Noted
• Brock Mendel and Andrei Shleifer: Chasing Noise
• Henry Aaron: It's Good That Insurers Are Canceling Their Lousiest Health Insurance Plans
• Mark Gongloff: Paul Krugman Trolls Deficit Hawks With One Amazing Chart

And:

1. "It could be that a belief in rational markets is performative, and did help to contribute to the bubble in credit derivatives. This is one message of Shleifer and Mendel's chasing noise (pdf) paper": Chris Dillow: Stumbling and Mumbling: Economics, good and bad
2. "[In] the market power case... a minimum wage is good for wages and good for employment. We're just eating into the monopsonist's surplus.... The turnover cost case.... In the short run, yes, firms will increase employment.... But in the long run there's a much greater incentive for reducing employment--maybe. There is also an incentive to reduce turnover or invest in human capital.... The potential for something bad--[a] reducing employment in the long-run as a result of the minimum wage, or something really good--[b] increasing employment and job tenure for low wage workers. So monopsony makes the minimum wage waters murkier.... And the monopsony argument is more complex than a lot of people appreciate": Daniel Kuehn: Monopsony and expectations about the minimum wage
3. "Different patterns in childrearing are key to understanding class differences in marriage and parenthood. Heterogeneity in preferences for--or ability to invest in--child human capital explain marriage and fertility patterns across socioeconomic groups.... Non-marital births now account for 72% of non-Hispanic black births, 53% of Hispanics births, and 29% of non-Hispanic white births. Within each of these race-ethnicity categories, there is a steep education gradient": Shelly Lundberg and Robert A. Pollak: Get together for the kids
4. "From a performance standpoint the iPad Air is a great upgrade to the iPad (4th Generation). With most recent Mac updates showing only modest performance improvements, it's exciting to see iOS devices do the opposite with substantial improvements between generations. I wonder how much longer Apple can keep this up?": John Poole: iPad Air Benchmarks

Plus: Long:

Jason DeBacker et al.: Rising Inequality: Transitory or Persistent? New Evidence from a Panel of U.S. Tax Returns | Martha Bailey: Fifty Years of Family Planning: New Evidence on the Long-Run Effects of Increasing Access to Contraception |