Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: Simon Wren-Lewis: Confidence as a Political Device: "The leap from the statement that ‘in some circumstances confidence matters’...

Must-Read: Adam Ozimek: Can Economics Change Your Mind?: "Work from David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson has convinced me that in some local areas...

Live from Evans Hall : Is it wrong that I feel strongly driven to sign up immediately for every social network and texting app that crosses my desk in order to snarf up the "delong" ID?

Live from Toronto: The Trans Pacific Partnership: Options for Canada and the World: "In partnership with Global Affairs Canada’s Ministry of International Trade...

Are these the right five papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about unfree labor--slavery, serfdom, debt peonage, etc.? If not these, what are the right papers?

Must-Read: Wolfgang Münchau: Free Capital Flows Can Put Economies in a Bind: "We might now ask whether the removal of the policy instrument of capital controls may have contributed to a succession of financial crises...

Richard J. Evans (2012): Reviewing ‘Walther Rathenau’ by Shulamit Volkov: "On the morning of 24 June 1922, Walther Rathenau, the German foreign minister, set off for work from his villa in the Berlin suburb of Grunewald....

Must-Read: Timothy Aeppel: Silicon Valley Doesn’t Believe U.S. Productivity Is Down: "Contrarian economists at Google and Stanford say the U.S. doesn’t have a productivity problem...

Must-Read: Robert Greenstein: Jeb Bush, Please Talk to Bob Dole About Food Stamps: "[Jeb]Bush could profit from a conversation with... Bob Dole...

Must-Read: Dani Rodrik: From Welfare State to Innovation State: "A specter is haunting the world economy – the specter of job-killing technology...

Jefferson to Adams 11 January 1816:

I agree with you… on the 18th century. It certainly witnessed the sciences and arts, manners and morals, advanced to a higher degree than the world had ever before seen.…

Jonathan Chait: What Should We Believe: Marco Rubio or Math?: "Many of us have noted that Marco Rubio has carried out an eerie reprise of George W. Bush’s 2000 strategy...

Comment of the Day: Robert Waldmann: The Archives: January 6-9, 2015: "There is so much here that I don't know where to start...

...so I will comment on 'What Market Failures Underlie Our Fears of 'Secular Stagnation'?

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Ben Zipperer: El Niño adds to U.S. job growth in December
• Nick Bunker: Thinking about wealth taxes
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: New jobs numbers, #ASSA2016, and more
• Larry Summers: Heed the Fears of the Financial Markets
• Antonio Fatas: BIS Redefines Inflation (Again)
• Jared Bernstein: 2015 Was Solid Year for Job Growth: "Payrolls were up 292,000 in December and the unemployment rate held steady at a low rate of 5%..."
• Paul Krugman: Summarizing the Trialogue

Are these the right papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about extractive and developmental institutions? If not these, what are the right papers?

Must-Read: Larry Summers: Heed the Fears of the Financial Markets: "They understood the gravity of the 2008 crisis well before the Federal Reserve...

Must-Read: I agree with Antonio Fatas here. The BIS is using model-building 0% as a discovery mechanism and 100% to advance reasons for policy conclusions that have been set in stone in advance. The problem is that the various BIS models do not appear to codify any form of knowledge--for as their predictions are proved false by time the responses not to adjust the framework to reality but to put forward to a new framework. The latest such:

Antonio Fatas: BIS Redefines Inflation (Again): "An interview with Hyun Song Shin...

From One Year Ago:

• Hoisted from Other People's Archives from 97 Years Ago: The Already-Written Fidel Castro Obituary--(Rosa Luxemburg, "The Russian Revolution" Chapter 6)
• Over at Equitable Growth: What Was and Is the Real Macroeconomic Research Frontier?: Daily Focus

Connelly Papers: Cabinet Meeting Agenda and Minutes, January 11, 1946:

Must-Read: Adair Turner: Facing Up to Climate Reality: "Achieving a low-carbon economy is essential...

Latest Must-Reads:

• Jared Bernstein: 2015 Was Solid Year for Job Growth: "Payrolls were up 292,000 in December and the unemployment rate held steady at a low rate of 5%..."
• Paul Krugman: Summarizing the Trialogue

Latest Links:

• Janet L. Lauritsen et al.: When Choice of Data Matters: Analyses of U.S. Crime Trends, 1973–2012
• Tren Griffin: Charlie Munger
• Tobias Adrian, Richard Crump, Benjamin Mills, and Emanuel Moench: Treasury Term Premia: 1961-Present
• Dan Wang: Flexport
• ChronoZoom
• Cauliflower Pizza Crust
• GiveWell

History.com: First Meeting of the United Nations:

The first General Assembly of the United Nations, comprising 51 nations, convenes at Westminster Central Hall in London, England. One week later, the U.N. Security Council met for the first time and established its rules of procedure. Then, on January 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.

Hoisted from Others' Archives from Two Years Ago: Paul Krugman (2014): The Zombie Confidence Fairy: "First up: Brad DeLong is bothered by Robert Rubin’s latest deficit-hawk op-ed...

Ron Rosenbaum: Afterword from the Updated Edition of Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil:

Why Hitler Lost the War. Or Did He?

Have we come any closer now to explaining Hitler?...

Are these the right papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about cities and economic growth? If not these, what are the right papers?

Live: Chris Routledge: Raymond Chandler Invented Google: "I pick up one of the novels about once a year and I am always impressed...

Are these the right papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about accounting for economic growth? If not these, what are the right papers?

Live: Josh Marshall**: Is "Great Ground Game" the New Unskewed Polling?: "During the daily punishment of listening to Fox News...

I read:

Victoria Bernal, Karen Brodkin, Marisol de la Cadena, Donald Donham, Christine Gailey, David Goldberg, Akhil Gupta, Sandra Hale, Christine Hastorf, Suad Joseph, Saba Mahmoud Purina Mankekar, Stefania Gandolfo, Thomas Patterson, Lisa Rofel, Danilyn Rutherford, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, and Anna Tsing: On boycotts of Israeli academic institutions: a reply: "As anthropologists based in the University of California system...

...we object to Professor Robert Birgeneau’s and Professor George Breslauer’s attempt to interfere in the American Anthropological Association’s ongoing deliberation over the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.... We find it unacceptable that a former chancellor (Birgeneau) and former executive vice chancellor and provost (Breslauer) would lend their voices to the organized intimidation of critics of Israeli state policy, and we particularly worry about the effect of such intimidation on our junior and more vulnerable colleagues...

Nate Silver: Three Theories Of Donald Trump’s Rise:

‘HOW TRUMP WON’ blares the headline on this week’s Time magazine cover in 80-point Duplicate Ionic. ‘Now he just needs the votes,’ whispers the small subheadline underneath. Oh, just that little detail? Trump actually needs people to vote for him?

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day:

LONDON, Tuesday—These few days before the conference actually begins are the only ones when I think we will have an opportunity to meet friends and perhaps get some of the information which will help us to do our work better.

History.com: Elvis Presley receives his first guitar:

In competing versions of the story, what Elvis Presley really wanted for his birthday was a rifle or a bicycle—both fairly typical choices for a boy his age growing up on the outskirts of Tupelo, Mississippi. Instead, Elvis’s highly protective mother, Gladys—’She never let me out of her sight,’ Elvis would later say—took him to the Tupelo Hardware Store and bought a gift that would change the course of history: a $6.95 guitar. It was January 8, 1946, and Elvis Aaron Presley was 11 years old.

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day:

LONDON—Yesterday, being Sunday, as many people as could leave London, left it for the weekend, so it seemed a very quiet place, indeed, as we emerged from the hotel after a morning of work to find a place for lunch. The American Embassy canteen was closed, so we went to the Allies Club. This is the club where they have held discussion groups from time to time, I understand, and there is a nice quiet dining room that looks out on one of those little grassy squares surrounded by similar houses which one finds so unexpectedly in London.

Live from Evans Hall: Is eggnog chai a thing?

Pick of the Litter:

For the Weekend...:

More Picks of the Litter:

1. What Market Failures Underlie Our Fears of "Secular Stagnation"?
2. Sleights of Mind: Highly Recommended
3. Today's Essay at Trying to Understand Current FedThink: Daily Focus
4. The U.S. Economy: Overview and Prospect: Notes for Orinda, CA, Rotary Club Talk
5. Yes, the Past Four Years Are Powerful Evidence for the Keynesian View of What Happens at the Zero Lower Bound. Why Do You Ask?

For the Weekend...:

Live from Calgary: Ted Cruz: "I am too eligible to be president! My mother is a liar! She lied when she claimed to the enumerators to be a Canadian citizen!"

Catherine Thompson: Ted Cruz's Mother Was On Official List Of Canadian Citizens Eligible To Vote: "TPM shared an electronic copy of the document with Sen. Cruz's office when it originally obtained the document in 2013...

Live from the Banks of the Mississippi: The City Council of Nauvoo: Ordinance: "Be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Nauvoo...

Comment of the Day: Charles Steindel: Liveblogging the Cold War: January 5, 1946: Harry S Truman: "Very interesting on a number of levels...

Live from La Farine: Emily Crockett: Why are people talking about Marco Rubio’s boots? Here’s the real reason: "Daily reminder: The rigid gender stereotypes designed to keep women in line...

Must-Read: Jared Bernstein: 2015 Was Solid Year for Job Growth: "Payrolls were up 292,000 in December and the unemployment rate held steady at a low rate of 5%...

Over at Huffington World Post: Future Economists Will Probably Call This Decade the 'Longest Depression': Posted: 01/08/2016 9:28 am EST Updated: 49 minutes ago: Economist Joe Stiglitz warned back in 2010 that the world risked sliding into a 'Great Malaise.' This week, he followed up on that grim prediction, saying, 'We didn't do what was needed, and we have ended up precisely where I feared we would.' READ MOAR

Live from Topeka: "Well it'd certainly make chartered accountancy a much more interesting job": http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/01/chartered-accountancy Shakezula: "Courtesy of the Kansas City Star, from House Bill No. 2059:

For purposes of subdivision (2) of this subsection, the term ‘gift’ shall include sexual relations between a registered lobbyist and a member of the general assembly or his or her staff. Relations between married persons or between persons who entered into a relationship prior to the registration of the lobbyist, the election of the member to the general assembly, or the employment of the staff person shall not be reportable under this subdivision. The reporting of sexual relations for purposes of this subdivision shall not require a dollar valuation.

Live from Zachary's-Oakland: Keynes Pizza Dinner at Zachary's-Oakland: Inflation is under 5%. The United States has not turned into "Greece". The United States has not turned into "Argentina". Orthodox monetarism and the fiscal theory of the price level both fell before the mighty power of the IS-LM liquidity-trap model. And so Noah Smith owes me a pizza...

Stéphane Becuwe, Bertrand Blancheton, and Christopher M. Meissner: Stages of Diversification: France, 1836-1938: "A large literature has documented an association between economic growth and export diversification...

Comment of the Day: Robert Waldmann: How Much Did Larry Summers Fear the Invisible Bond Market Vigilantes in December 2008?: "Wow there is a lot here...

Comment of the Day: ChrisB: Essence of Decision: Understanding the Real History of the Imperial and Succession Wars: "By 'Awakens', the expectation that planet-sized deathstars...

Must-Read: Paul Krugman: Summarizing the Trialogue: "Martin Sandbu has a summary...

Live from La Farine: Scott Lemieux: What Obama Said on Gun Control Doesn't Matter--Republicans Oppose It: "Gun control is an issue--like... countless others...

Must-Read: By Max Ehrenfreund and Carolyn Y. Johnson: One of the Biggest Fears about Obamacare Never Happened: "Opponents warned that the law would discourage large numbers... from working...