Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Comment of the Day: JEC: "Any Community... Flourishes only When Our Members Feel Welcome and Safe...": "I see a couple of persistent misconceptions in this discussion... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/09/any-community-flourishes-only-when-our-members-feel-welcome-and-safe.html?cid=6a00e551f08003883401b7c922959a970b#comment-6a00e551f08003883401b7c922959a970b

Should-Read: Ann Marie Marciarille: Eat Out Much?: "With 16 dead and well over 400 documented as infected, it is fair to say San Diego is in the midst of an epidemic of Hepatitis A... http://www.marciarille.com/2017/09/eat-out-much.html

On fiscal policy, for my entire adult life, Republicans have fallen into four groups:

1. The few who care about a smaller government and about properly financing that government now and into the future.

2. Rather more who want a smaller government and who regard the higher debts and large deficits that result from tax-cutting policies misleadingly sold as not a bug but the feature: once the debt and deficit are created, some Democrats who sincerely believe in budget balancing will come over to the spending cut side.

3. Those who want to tax cuts and really don't care very much and whether they are good or sustainable policies.

4. Those who see an opportunity to profit personally by selling misleading rationales for tax cuts.

Should-Read: Jacob Leibenluft et al.: Like Other ACA Repeal Bills, Cassidy-Graham Plan Would Add Millions to Uninsured, Destabilize Individual Market: "Cassidy-Graham Block Grant and Medicaid Per Capita Cap Cut Federal Funding for Most States by 2026... https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/like-other-aca-repeal-bills-cassidy-graham-plan-would-add-millions-to-uninsured

Should-Read: Time to start trying to think about what books to assign for Econ 210b next semester...

Pseudoerasmus: The 25 most stimulating economic history books since 2000: "Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective... https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/01/12/9351/

Live from Harvard Professor John Stauffer Sets His Reputation on Fire: Apropos of the role of the university, we had this quote last week from Stauffer re Michelle Jones:

We didn’t have some preconceived idea about crucifying Michelle. But frankly, we knew that anyone could just punch her crime into Google, and Fox News would probably say that P.C. liberal Harvard gave 200 grand of funding to a child murderer, who also happened to be a minority. I mean, c’mon...

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

• “Any Community… Flourishes only When Our Members Feel Welcome and Safe…” | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/any-community-flourishes-only-when-our-members-feel-welcome-and-safe/
• Will Wilkinson: What Drives Opposition to Immigration? In-Group Favoritism, Out-Group Hostility, and Donald Trump: "Friedman contrasts 'xenophobia' and 'nationalism', but I’d like to reframe... (To many of us, xenophobia and nationalism go hand in hand.)... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/drives-opposition-immigration-group-favoritism-group-hostility-donald-trump/
• Josh Barro: : Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill has Alaska Purchase for Lisa Murkowski: "Making things odder: Neither VerBruggen nor I could locate the provision in the bill...
• Ezra Klein: Graham-Cassidy could’ve been the GOP’s best Obamacare replacement: "Instead, Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy wrote the worst plan yet... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/20/16333384/graham-cassidy-obamacare-health-care
• Ben Thompson: THE GDPR AND FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE, INTELLIGENT TRACKING PREVENTION, DATA PORTABILITY AND SOCIAL GRAPHS: "Several folks have suggested that the GDPR’s requirements around data portability... https://stratechery.com/2017/the-gdpr-and-facebook-and-google-intelligent-tracking-prevention-data-portability-and-social-graphs/
• Kristie De Peña: Entrepreneurial Visas: "Some of the most powerful and effective innovators are immigrant entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on the unique opportunities the United States offers... https://niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/EntrepreneurialStartupVisas.pdf
• Liz Hipple: : New federal antitrust legislation recognizes U.S. workers are not only consumers: "The introduction of two new antitrust bills by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, last week... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/new-federal-antitrust-legislation-recognizes-u-s-workers-are-not-only-consumers/
• Jeff Stein: GOP senators are rushing to pass Graham-Cassidy. We asked 9 to explain what it does: "Republican senators are struggling to articulate why they are rushing to pass their last-ditch effort to repeal and replace Obamacare... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/20/16333876/republican-senators-graham-cassidy
• Nick Bunker: Another lesson from the 1930s for the Federal Reserve: "Matthew Jaremski... and Gabriel Mathy... the excess reserves in the 1930s... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/another-lesson-from-the-1930s-for-the-federal-reserve/
• Janet Napolitano et al.: The Future of NAFTA and the State of U.S. Mexico Relations: "September 21 :: U.C. Washington Center :: 1608 Rhode Island Ave NW... California Assembly Passes Bill to Make Drug Prices Transparent: "The California Assembly passed Senate Bill 17... prescription drug price transparency... 66-9... https://www.thecppc.com/single-post/2017/09/13/California-Assembly-Passes-Bill-to-Make-Drug-Prices-Transparent
• Josh Bivens: An evidence-based Fed would hold rates steady in September: "The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets today and tomorrow to determine whether or not to raise interest rates... http://www.epi.org/blog/an-evidence-based-fed-would-hold-rates-steady-in-september/

Should-Read: Will says: "The standard form of liberal civic nationalism is egalitarian within the in-group of shared citizenship..." There has been something more with American civic nationalism: it is a nationalism of people who have come and whose ancestors have come from all over the world to a place where they can live freely, work hard, raise each other up, and build a utopia to show the rest of the world how good things can be: "He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, 'may the Lord make it like that of New England'. For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us...", in the words of my ancestor John Winthrop.

All that seems to be lost in the minds of an aging group of greedy white guys, scared that mysterious others are going to take away what they have somehow:

Will Wilkinson: What Drives Opposition to Immigration? In-Group Favoritism, Out-Group Hostility, and Donald Trump: "Friedman contrasts 'xenophobia' and 'nationalism', but I’d like to reframe... (To many of us, xenophobia and nationalism go hand in hand.)... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/drives-opposition-immigration-group-favoritism-group-hostility-donald-trump/

Should-Read: Republicans: worse than you can imagine, even after you have compensated for the fact that they are worse than you can imagine: http://www.businessinsider.com/graham-cassidy-health-care-bill-alaska-purchase-lisa-murkowski-vote-2017-9

Josh Barro: : Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill has Alaska Purchase for Lisa Murkowski: "Making things odder: Neither VerBruggen nor I could locate the provision in the bill...

UPDATE: I wrote a letter apropos of this to Chancellor Carol Christ...

Somehow I do think the New York Times could have put more thought into their questions for the community of the University of California at Berkeley https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/19/us/formacist-ucberkeley-callout.html?_r=0.

I think that they could have written better questions, if only they had read the "Terms of Service" they require those of us answering their questions to agree to.

Must-Read: Stuart Butler is the person who knows something about health care who should, given his values and his analytical judgments, be most favorably inclined toward Graham-Cassidy. He is strongly opposed: "[a] high probability of really bad outcomes..." is his bottom line.

And nobody else of any reputation or note has even as favorable a judgment...

Ezra Klein: Graham-Cassidy could’ve been the GOP’s best Obamacare replacement: "Instead, Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy wrote the worst plan yet... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/20/16333384/graham-cassidy-obamacare-health-care

Should-Read: Liz Hipple: New federal antitrust legislation recognizes U.S. workers are not only consumers: "The introduction of two new antitrust bills by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, last week... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/new-federal-antitrust-legislation-recognizes-u-s-workers-are-not-only-consumers/

Should-Read: "Harder"... I am not sure this is the way to look at it. Yes, it is becoming harder in the level-log specification they adopt. But why should that be the benchmark? And it is certainly true that innovations have less of an effect on human "utility" because we are so much richer. But why should that come as a surprise?

I have to think about this more...

Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?: "In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms... http://www.nber.org/papers/w23782

Should-Read: We seem to be headed toward a future in which governments—at least in Europe—both entrench and then heavily regulate Google and Facebook, with their information edge creating the possibility that they will be for the 21st century very much what AT&T in the United States was for the bulk of the 20th century:

Ben Thompson: THE GDPR AND FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE, INTELLIGENT TRACKING PREVENTION, DATA PORTABILITY AND SOCIAL GRAPHS: "Several folks have suggested that the GDPR’s requirements around data portability... https://stratechery.com/2017/the-gdpr-and-facebook-and-google-intelligent-tracking-prevention-data-portability-and-social-graphs/

Should-Read: Republican Senators can find nobody who will, even in public (with private reservations), even pretend to agree with them that GC will not result in massive losses of health insurance coverage by tens of millions. Not even Avik Roy. Nobody. Literally nobody:

Jeff Stein: GOP senators are rushing to pass Graham-Cassidy. We asked 9 to explain what it does: "Republican senators are struggling to articulate why they are rushing to pass their last-ditch effort to repeal and replace Obamacare... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/20/16333876/republican-senators-graham-cassidy

Should-Read: It is hard for me to see why anybody who is not a white nativist would be opposed to this—and thus hard to see why it has not already become law—unless you take a very pessimistic view of the present and future shape of the Republican coalition indeed...

Kristie De Peña: Entrepreneurial Visas: "Some of the most powerful and effective innovators are immigrant entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on the unique opportunities the United States offers... https://niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/EntrepreneurialStartupVisas.pdf

Apropos of Janet Napolitano's : The future of NAFTA and the state of U.S.-Mexico relations: "A forum hosted by the University of California and Tecnológico de Monterrey..." https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/initiative/uc-mexico-initiative/nafta-conference...

My present thoughts about NAFTA:

Nearly a quarter century ago, early in the Clinton administration, I was one of the leads on the team responsible for constructing estimate of the economic impact of NAFTA. And I definitely have some explaining to do.

Should-Read: Nick Bunker: Another lesson from the 1930s for the Federal Reserve: "Matthew Jaremski... and Gabriel Mathy... the excess reserves in the 1930s... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/another-lesson-from-the-1930s-for-the-federal-reserve/

Should-See: UC President Janet Napolitano is organizing a NAFTA conference in DC this week:

Janet Napolitano et al.: The Future of NAFTA and the State of U.S. Mexico Relations: "September 21 :: U.C. Washington Center :: 1608 Rhode Island Ave NW... Continue reading "" »

Live from Evans Hall: In this morning's mail, two books that look excellent and interesting: Bates's The Development Dilemma and Mulgan's Big Mind. But when will I have time to read either of them?

I'll give each of them away to anybody around here who will promise me 2000 words on what it says and why it is (or isn't) interesting and reliable...

Live from the Warming Atlantic: I'm no longer wimping out and saying "climate change". It's GLOBAL WARMING, b-----s!!:

Should-Read: Josh Bivens sounds a little... shrill this morning. I see the world much as he does. The longer I watch this, the more I think that the problems lie deep in Fed governance—specifically, in the failure of the Board of Governors and of Congress supervising the Board to insist that the "corporatist" structure of regional bank boards of directors be honored in reality by appointing people who genuinely know and will argue for policies that consider the interests of different economic groups. The Federal Reserve Act says that the one-third who are class "A" directors will:

represent stockholding banks...

and that the two-thirds who are class "B" and "C" directors will be:

chosen with due but not exclusive consideration to the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor and consumers...

But when has this ever been honored in substance?

Josh Bivens: An evidence-based Fed would hold rates steady in September: "The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets today and tomorrow to determine whether or not to raise interest rates... http://www.epi.org/blog/an-evidence-based-fed-would-hold-rates-steady-in-september/

Should-Read: Everybody outside California should be paying attention to see if its policies do in fact work:

CPPC: California Assembly Passes Bill to Make Drug Prices Transparent: "The California Assembly passed Senate Bill 17... prescription drug price transparency... 66-9... https://www.thecppc.com/single-post/2017/09/13/California-Assembly-Passes-Bill-to-Make-Drug-Prices-Transparent

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

• Ann Marie Marciarille: Patent Transfer to Trigger Sovereign Immunity Defense: "It is absolutely fascinating to  read that that Allergan and the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe have reportedly made arrangements for transfer of certain patent rights... http://www.marciarille.com/2017/09/patent-transfer-to-trigger-state-action-immunity-defense.html
• George Akerlof (1979): The Case against Conservative Macroeconomics: An Inaugural Lecture: "The old classical economics bases its case against the efficacy of fiscal policy on the low interest elasticity of money demand... http://delong.typepad.com/2553741.pdf
• Santiago Perez: Railroads and the Rural to Urban Transition: Evidence from 19th Century Argentina: "Seminar 211, Economic History: Seminar: Economic History | September 18 | 2-4 p.m. | 597 Evans Hall... http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/econ.html?view=summary&timeframe=range&startdate=2017-08-01&enddate=2017-12-31&filter=Secondary%20Event%20Type&filtersel=1057
• Josh Bivens and Dean Baker (2016): The Wrong Tool for the Right Job: "Raising interest rates is a poor strategy for managing asset bubbles... http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/bubbles-2016-05.pdf
• Jeffrey Friedman: TRUMP VOTERS AND ECONOMIC GRIEVANCES (IT'S THE MEDIA, STUPID): "This economic theory of Trump’s victory is attractive because it tracks many Trump voters’ words... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/trump-voters-economic-grievances-media-stupid/
• Jay Nordlinger: Seeing the Confederacy Clear: On the terrible issue of monuments and all that: "Ed Gillespie... is running for governor of Virginia... http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451399/seeing-confederacy-clear-terrible-issue-monuments-and-all
• Charlie Stross (2015): The Present in Deep History: "Assume you are a historian in the 30th century, compiling a pop history text about the period 1700-2300AD. What are the five most influential factors in that period of history?... http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/09/the-present-in-deep-history.html
• Liz Hipple: Weekend reading: “labor markets and income” edition: "Tax reform is unlikely to benefit workers, argues Kimberly Clausing... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-labor-markets-and-income-edition/
• Jerry Taylor: How to Change Public Opinion: "Political scientists... offer a pretty good road map for those who want to effectively go about “waging and winning the war of ideas”... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/how-to-change-public-opinion/
• David Card and A. Abigail Payne: High School Choices and the Gender Gap in STEM: "Women who graduate from university are less likely than men to specialize in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM)... http://www.nber.org/papers/w23769.pdf

Should-Read: Ann Marie Marciarille: Patent Transfer to Trigger Sovereign Immunity Defense: "It is absolutely fascinating to  read that that Allergan and the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe have reportedly made arrangements for transfer of certain patent rights... http://www.marciarille.com/2017/09/patent-transfer-to-trigger-state-action-immunity-defense.html

Must-Read: George Akerlof was right forty years ago to say that the "microfoundations" of Lucas and Sargent were simply fake:

Unemployment arising because workers can't tell what their wages really are because they are unable to observe the prices they pay, and thus confuse a downward nominal shock to incomes and prices with a downward real shock to their wages? The insistence that because most unemployment spells are short the bulk of unemployment that is medium- or long-spell is simply not there?

George Akerlof (1979): The Case against Conservative Macroeconomics: An Inaugural Lecture: "The old classical economics bases its case against the efficacy of fiscal policy on the low interest elasticity of money demand... http://delong.typepad.com/2553741.pdf

Should-See: Santiago Perez: Railroads and the Rural to Urban Transition: Evidence from 19th Century Argentina: "Seminar 211, Economic History: Seminar: Economic History | September 18 | 2-4 p.m. | 597 Evans Hall... http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/econ.html?view=summary&timeframe=range&startdate=2017-08-01&enddate=2017-12-31&filter=Secondary%20Event%20Type&filtersel=1057

No: They did not publish this. But worth noting is that they did not even try to get it right. And they still don't try:

Professor J. Bradford DeLong
Department of Economics
601 Evans Hall, #3880
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
September 15, 1997

Letters to the Editor
The Wall Street Journal
1155 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY

Dear Mesdames and Sirs:

Sigh: See what I meant http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/09/monday-smackdown-smackdown.html about Monday Smackdowns? Such a target-rich environment...

Must-Read: There are, as is always the case these days, a lot of lies in Avik Roy's latest on health care "reform".

But there is one nugget of important truth. Here it is:

Avik Roy: Take Two: Inside Bill Cassidy's Plan To Replace Obamacare: "Because Graham-Cassidy repeals Obamacare’s individual mandate, and the Congressional Budget Office views the individual mandate as driving the majority of Obamacare’s coverage expansion, the CBO is likely to view Graham-Cassidy the same way it has viewed other GOP bills..." https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/09/17/take-two-inside-bill-cassidys-plan-to-replace-obamacare/#5703ca351181

Live from Evans Hall: The purpose of having a "Monday DeLong Smackdown" was twofold: (a) to make me smarter by forcing me to go through and internalize smart critiques of things I had written; and (b) to provide some reward and recognition to those people who would do me a favor by writing a smart critique of something I had written.

It has failed.

Must-Read: Josh Bivens and Dean Baker (2016): The Wrong Tool for the Right Job: "Raising interest rates is a poor strategy for managing asset bubbles... http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/bubbles-2016-05.pdf

Must-Reads:

• Jerry Taylor: How to Change Public Opinion: "Political scientists... offer a pretty good road map for those who want to effectively go about “waging and winning the war of ideas”... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/how-to-change-public-opinion/
• Bin Yu: Three principles for data science: predictability, stability, and computability: "September 12, 2017 :: 4:10pm to 5:00pm :: 190 Doe Library" https://bids.berkeley.edu/events/three-principles-data-science-predictability-stability-and-computability
• Pedro Nicolaci da Costa: Fed may pause rate hikes if inflation weakness persists: "The Federal Reserve is embarking on an annual summer ritual: Downgrading its overly optimistic forecasts for economic growth... http://www.businessinsider.com/fed-may-pause-rate-hikes-if-inflation-weakness-persists-2017-7

I understand how to use "$" as delimiters for math expressions in Mathjax. For example:

(3)                 ${Y _{t}} = {K _{t}}^\alpha {\left(L _{t}E _{t}\right)}^{1 - \alpha}$

But how do I then use "$" to denote, say, $50? The markdown/mathJax processors turn this line into:

But how do I use "$" to denote, say, $50? The markdown/mathJax processors turn this line into:

Should-Read: On how today's Republican Party is sick, sick, sick...

Jay Nordlinger: Seeing the Confederacy Clear: On the terrible issue of monuments and all that: "Ed Gillespie... is running for governor of Virginia... http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451399/seeing-confederacy-clear-terrible-issue-monuments-and-all

Should-Read: Jeffrey Friedman: TRUMP VOTERS AND ECONOMIC GRIEVANCES (IT'S THE MEDIA, STUPID): "This economic theory of Trump’s victory is attractive because it tracks many Trump voters’ words... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/trump-voters-economic-grievances-media-stupid/

Book of the Month: Charles Petzold: The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine http://amzn.to/2ydNuDw

• A.M. Turing: ON COMPUTABLE NUMBERS, WITH AN APPLICATION TO THE ENTSCHEIDUNGSPROBLEM https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf
• A. M. Turing: ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers http://amzn.to/2xG2RHx
• A.M. Turing: Proposed Electronic Calculator http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/archive/p/p01/p01.php
• A.M. Turing: Intelligent Machinery http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/archive/l/l32/l32.php
• B.E. Carpenter: Turing and ACE: Lessons from a 1946 Computer Design https://cds.cern.ch/record/263304/files/p230.pdf
• Andrew Hodges: Alan Turing: the enigma http://www.turing.org.uk/
• Historian: Alan Turing's ACE http://www.i-programmer.info/history/9-machines/11-an-ace-of-a-machine.html

For the Weekend: Stephen Vincent Benet: The Devil and Daniel Webster IV http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602901h.html: "Well, Jabez told his family it was a lawyer, come to see him about a legacy...

...But he knew who it was. He didn't like the looks of the stranger, nor the way he smiled with his teeth.

Should-Read: Charlie Stross (2015): The Present in Deep History: "Assume you are a historian in the 30th century, compiling a pop history text about the period 1700-2300AD. What are the five most influential factors in that period of history?... http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/09/the-present-in-deep-history.html

Should-Read: Liz Hipple: Weekend reading: “labor markets and income” edition: "Tax reform is unlikely to benefit workers, argues Kimberly Clausing... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-labor-markets-and-income-edition/

Must-Read: How is one to think about America's transition from the age of interest-group liberalism to the age of Fox News?

Jerry Taylor: How to Change Public Opinion: "Political scientists... offer a pretty good road map for those who want to effectively go about “waging and winning the war of ideas”... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/how-to-change-public-opinion/

And now, moving from the twenty-first century back 2500 years to a much earlier age of information technology: John Ma https://twitter.com/Nakhthor/status/908024914011193344—much peace and strength attend him!—reminds me of his "accessible edition of some letters of a member of the Achaimenid elite, the actual satrap of Egypt", Prince Arshama, quite possibly the great-grandson of King of Kings Darayavush I, writing in the late 400s B.C. to various of his subordinates http://arshama.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:

• the Persian Artavanta on the ground on Egypt, who appears to be serving more-or-less in a public law capacity—recognizing property rights, and inflicting and remitting punishments.
• the Egyptian Nakhthor, bailiff of Arshama in more-or-less a private management capacity.
• the Persian Armapiya, commanding armed forces in Egypt, concerning his unwillingness to follow the instructions of Psamšek, who appears to be another of Arshama's bailiffs in Egypt.
• plus some others, and a few letters from others to Nakhthor as well...

Consider the 256 GB memory iPhone X: Implemented in vacuum tubes in 1957, the transistors in an iPhoneX alone would have:

• cost 150 trillion of today's dollars: one and a half times today's global annual product
• taken up a hundred-story square building 300 meters high, and 3 kilometers long and wide
• drawn 150 terawatts of power—30 times the world's current generating capacity

Should-Read: David Card and A. Abigail Payne: High School Choices and the Gender Gap in STEM: "Women who graduate from university are less likely than men to specialize in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM)... http://www.nber.org/papers/w23769.pdf

Suggestions?...

:-)

Should-Read: Nancy MacLean: DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS: THE DEEP HISTORY OF THE RADICAL RIGHT'S STEALTH PLAN FOR AMERICA http://amzn.to/2voi3qD: "As 1956 drew to a close, Colgate Whitehead Darden Jr., the president of the University of Virginia, feared...

...second Brown v. Board of Education ruling, calling for the dismantling of segregation in public schools with “all deliberate speed.” In Virginia, outraged state officials responded with legislation to force the closure of any school that planned to comply.... Darden... could barely stand to contemplate the damage.... Even the name of this plan, “massive resistance,” made his gentlemanly Virginia sound like Mississippi. On his desk was a proposal, written by the... chair of the economics department... James McGill Buchanan [who] liked to call himself a Tennessee country boy. But Darden knew better....

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

• Nick Bunker: Markups, macroeconomics, and the changing U.S. economy: "Over the past several decades, the U.S. economy experienced changes in key economic metrics that don’t bode well for the welfare of most people... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/markups-macroeconomics-and-the-changing-u-s-economy/
• Nick Bunker: JOLTS Day Graphs: July 2017 Report Edition | Equitable Growth: "The Beveridge Curve in July looks to be very close to its pre-recession trend: http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/jolts-day-graphs-july-2017-report-edition/
• Joseph E. Stiglitz: Where Modern Macroeconomics Went Wrong: "This paper provides a critique of the DSGE models that have come to dominate macroeconomics during the past quarter-century... http://www.nber.org/papers/w23795
• Matthew Kahn: Does Culture Matter? The Case of Academic Economics: "I stumbled across this very interesting (and depressing) post by Claudia Sahm... http://greeneconomics.blogspot.com/2017/09/does-culture-matter-case-of-academic.html
• Barbara Biasi and Petra Moser: Effects of Copyrights on Science: Evidence from the WWII Book Republication Program: "In 1942, the American Book Republication Program (BRP) allowed US publishers to reprint exact copies of German-owned science books... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2542879
• Caroline Freund and Dario Sidhu: Manufacturing and the 2016 Election: An Analysis of US Presidential Election Data: "Much of the public discourse and media analysis of the surprise outcome of the 2016 US presidential election has emphasized the role of manufacturing workers... ..." https://piie.com/system/files/documents/wp17-7.pdf
• Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, eds. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage: "The institutional differences that characterize the ‘varieties of capitalism’ found among the developed economies... http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0199247757.001.0001/acprof-9780199247752
• Bin Yu: Three principles for data science: predictability, stability, and computability: "September 12, 2017 :: 4:10pm to 5:00pm :: 190 Doe Library" https://bids.berkeley.edu/events/three-principles-data-science-predictability-stability-and-computability
• Austin Clemens: Previewing tomorrow’s annual income and poverty report: "'Income and Poverty in the United States', on Tuesday... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/previewing-tomorrows-annual-income-and-poverty-report/
• Michael Boskin (March 6, 2009): Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow: "our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy... https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123629969453946717
• Diane Coyle: Inequality, revisited: "Recently I’ve been dipping into The Contradictions of Capital in the 21st Century: The Piketty Opportunity, edited by Pat Hudson and Keith Tribe... http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2017/09/inequality-revisited/
• Pedro Nicolaci da Costa: Fed may pause rate hikes if inflation weakness persists: "The Federal Reserve is embarking on an annual summer ritual: Downgrading its overly optimistic forecasts for economic growth... http://www.businessinsider.com/fed-may-pause-rate-hikes-if-inflation-weakness-persists-2017-7
• Keven Drum: Here's Why I Never Warmed Up to Bernie Sanders: "As Bill Scher points out, the revolution that Bernie called for didn't show up...
• David Glasner: Milton Friedman Says that the Rate of Interest Is NOT the Price of Money: Don’t Listen to Him!: "Friedman’s repeated claims that the rate of interest is not the price of money... https://uneasymoney.com/2017/09/07/milton-friedman-says-that-the-rate-of-interest-is-not-the-price-of-money-dont-listen-to-him/
• Amanda Bayer and Cecilia Elena Rouse: Diversity in the Economics Profession: A New Attack on an Old Problem: "The economics profession includes disproportionately few women and members of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups... https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.4.221
• Frank Pasquale (2011): Economic Policy for the Worried Wealthy: "Why is the austerity movement so powerful in the US?... https://concurringopinions.com/archives/2011/04/economic-policy-for-the-worried-wealthy.html
• Noah Smith: Realism in macroeconomic modeling: "Ljungqvist and Sargent are trying to solve the Shimer Puzzle... http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/09/realism-in-macroeconomic-modeling.html
• Ann Marie Marciarille: Men First: "The New York Times had quite an interesting article... on cancer biopsy laboratory error rates... http://www.marciarille.com/2017/06/men-first.html

Should-Read: Nick Bunker: JOLTS Day Graphs: July 2017 Report Edition | Equitable Growth: "The Beveridge Curve in July looks to be very close to its pre-recession trend: http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/jolts-day-graphs-july-2017-report-edition/

Should-Read: Nick Bunker: Markups, macroeconomics, and the changing U.S. economy: "Over the past several decades, the U.S. economy experienced changes in key economic metrics that don’t bode well for the welfare of most people... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/markups-macroeconomics-and-the-changing-u-s-economy/

Should-Read: The argument that the mean and dick-like "Chicago" or "Minnesota" seminar style leads to faster progress in economics falls down in the face of the empirical fact that it has been used to enforce an empirically-falsified research program rather than to challenge received assumptions. There is great value in a "Talmudic" intellectual culture. But "Chicago" and "Minnesota" have never been that...

Joseph E. Stiglitz: Where Modern Macroeconomics Went Wrong: "This paper provides a critique of the DSGE models that have come to dominate macroeconomics during the past quarter-century... http://www.nber.org/papers/w23795

...It argues that at the heart of the failure were the wrong microfoundations, which failed to incorporate key aspects of economic behaviour, e.g. incorporating insights from information economics and behavioural economics. Inadequate modelling of the financial sector meant they were ill-suited for predicting or responding to a financial crisis; and a reliance on representative agent models meant they were ill-suited for analysing either the role of distribution in fluctuations and crises or the consequences of fluctuations on inequality. The paper proposes alternative benchmark models that may be more useful both in understanding deep downturns and responding to them...

Hoisted from Ten Years Ago: After World War I: Weber: Marxism, liberalism, and what we will here call "nationalism"—just to be polite... http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/09/lecture-notes-f.html

• We've talked about Marxism...
• We've talked about classical liberalism...
• We haven't talked about "nationalism"...

We read Norman Angell: We did not read Max Weber: nationalism as social-darwinist doctrine: