Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Should-Reads:

• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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:

• Allen Lynch (2012): Deng’s and Gorbachev’s Reform Strategies Compared http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/Dengs-and-Gorbachevs-Reform-Strategies-Compared-15577
• Alan Kay: What made Xerox PARC special? Who else today is like them?: "There was a vision: 'The destiny of computers is to become interactive intellectual amplifiers for everyone in the world pervasively networked worldwide'..." https://www.quora.com/What-made-Xerox-PARC-special-Who-else-today-is-like-them/answer/Alan-Kay-11
• Johann Kepler: _Mysterium Cosmographicum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterium_Cosmographicum
• Giovanni Peri: Do immigrant workers depress the wages of native workers?: "Politicians, the media, and the public express concern that immigrants depress wages... but 30 years of empirical research provide little supporting evidence.... Native workers’ wages have been insulated by differences in skills, adjustments in local demand and technology, production expansion, and specialization of native workers as immigration rises..." https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/42/pdfs/do-immigrant-workers-depress-the-wages-of-native-workers.pdf
• Mark Thoma: The Fed, the Reality of Tax Cuts, and Donald Trump: "tax cuts had very little, if any, impact on economic growth. Deficits went up... income never trickled down–if anything, it trickled up. Today, Republicans are less likely to argue that tax cuts pay for themselves, though you still hear it, but they still insist tax cuts for the wealthy magically increase economic growth..." http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/04/10/Fed-Reality-Tax-Cuts-Reality-and-Donald-Trump
• Jenna Marshall (2016): Ulam Lectures Bring 'Information Edge' to Santa Fe: "Seth Lloyd, a professor of quantum mechanical engineering at MIT, introduced a new theory that sees cosmology, physics, biology, and even finance through the lens of information. In advance of the second lecture, Lloyd tells KSFR about 'The Information Edge: Creation and Destruction in Life, the Economy, and the Universe'..." http://ksfr.org/post/2016-ulam-lectures-bring-information-edge-santa-fe
• Charles Gaba: The Death Spiral is Dead; Long Live the Death Spiral!: "I'm calling for managed Medicare/Medicaid contracts to be locked at the hip with participation in the individual exchange..." http://acasignups.net/17/04/03/death-spiral-dead-long-live-death-spiral
• Seshat: Global History Databank publishes first set of historical data
• *Seshat *: Global History Database http://dacura.scss.tcd.ie/seshat/
• Seshat: Latium http://dacura.scss.tcd.ie/seshat/latium.html
• Seshat: Early Roman Republic Polity http://dacura.scss.tcd.ie/seshat/polities/itromer.html
• Jacob Gardenswartz: A brief history of the Trump administration’s flirtation with Holocaust denial: "Spicer’s claim that Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons wasn’t a one-off gaffe..." http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/12/15270970/trump-administration-holocaust-denial-sean-spicer
• Justin Fox: The De-Electrification of the U.S. Economy: "The 'old thermoelectric power complex' was decidedly not on the cusp of a big boom in 1999..." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-12/the-de-electrification-of-the-u-s-economy
• Afaf Lutfi Sayyid-Marsot (1984): Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali https://books.google.com/books?id=KCz7N-GYKRcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_book_other_versions#v=onepage&q&f=false
• Carlos F.Diaz Alejandro (1984): Essays on the Economic History of the Argentine Republic http://amzn.to/2p0D08V
• Peter Evans (1995): Embedded Autonomy http://amzn.to/2p0ID74
• William A. Darity Jr. and John Schmitt: Equitable Growth in Conversation: "A new graduate student really has to make a very careful choice about which department to go to, and once there, who they should work with in that department. I would say that’s the research that needs to be done carefully, rather than telling people they shouldn’t go into economics...." http://equitablegrowth.org/labor-markets/equitable-growth-in-conversation-an-interview-with-william-a-darity-jr-sandy-of-duke-university/
• Sylvan Lane: Trump flips on four policies in one day: "President Trump on Wednesday flipped to new positions on four different policy issues, backing off of several campaign promises.... China is not artificially deflating the value of its currency.... He’d consider renominating Yellen.... Trump also threw his support behind the Export-Import Bank.... Trump said NATO is 'no longer obsolete'..." http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/328568-trump-flips-on-four-policies-in-one-day
• Marcella Alsan: Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/SPH.html?event_ID=105948&date=2017-04-10: "[Learning about] Tuskegee affected beliefs, behaviors, and outcomes among African-American men in the years following 1872. Back of the envelope calculation suggest can account for approximately one year los expectancy, on average, among older black men conditional on reaching age 50..."
• (2015): Refereeing Mantoux-Keynes http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/05/refereeing-mantoux-keynes.html: "Recall that Etienne Mantoux's review of Keynes's General Theory is quite bad..."
• Paul Krugman: Europe Has Problems, But Le Pen Is Not the Answer https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/europe-has-problems-but-le-pen-is-not-the-answer: "French contacts tell me that the Le Pen campaign is trying to portray critiques of European policies from prominent economists as implicit endorsements of the FN platform. They aren’t..."
• Hector J. Sussman and Jan C. Willems (1997): Three Centuries of Optimal Control: From the Brachystocrone to the Maximum Principle http://yima.csl.illinois.edu/psfile/ECE553/sussmann-willems.pdf: "Calculus of variations deals mainly with optimization... in the space of 'all' curves.... Optimal control... involve[s] a minimization over a set C of curves... determined by some dynamical constraints..."