Some Fairly Recent Must- and Should-Reads About: Political Economy
David Glasner: Neo- and Other Liberalisms: "The point of neoliberalism 1.0 was to moderate classical laissez-faire liberal orthodoxy...
Not quite true. It is what the Left New Dealers' consensus was. They had lost power in the U.S. But enough of them made it across the Atlantic to do a lot of good: Daniel Davies: If you like the German social, political and economic model, it's worth remembering that what it really represents is the consensus of American opinion on how to build a stable non-Communist polity if you were starting from scratch, circa 1945..."
To a large extent the power of NIMBYism springs from the right-wing tax revolt of the 1980s: Issi Romem: America's New Metropolitan Landscape: Pockets of Dense Construction in a Dormant Suburban Interior: "City planners tend to favor concentrating residential development in dense hubs because they lend themselves to service by public transit, which helps reduce the impact of new residents on emissions and traffic congestion...
The extremely intelligent Martin Wolf reviews Maria Mazzucato. I blush to say that her book is still in THE PILE—I have not read it yet: Martin Wolf: Who creates a nation’s economic value?: "Who creates value? Who extracts value? Who destroys value?...
Thomas Piketty: Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right: Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict (Evidence from France, Britain and the US, 1948-2017): "Using post-electoral surveys from France, Britain and the US...
Robert Feenstra, Hong Ma, Akira Sasahara, and Yuan Xu: Reconsidering the ‘China shock’ in trade: "While previous studies focus on the job-reducing effect of the surging imports from China or other low-wage countries on US employment...
Peter Baehr (2001): The "Iron Cage" and the "Shell as Hard as Steel": Parsons, Weber, and the Stahlhartes Gehäuse Metaphor in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: "In the climax to The Protestant Ethic, Max Weber writes of the stahlhartes Gehäuse that modern capitalism has created...
Live from the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton: I wonder if he got affinity program points for his stay?: Erik Schatzker: Alwaleed Reveals Secret Deal Struck to Exit Ritz After 83 Days: "So you were not harmed or mistreated in any way?
A. J. Liebling: The Earl of Louisiana: "In the summer of 1959, A. J. Liebling, veteran writer for the New Yorker, came to Louisiana to cover a series of bizarre events...
Ernest Liu (2016): INDUSTRIAL POLICIES IN PRODUCTION NETWORKS: "Many developing countries adopt industrial policies that push resources towards selected economic sectors...
Noah Smith: California Affordable Housing Is No Mystery: Just Build More: "Urban California should emulate Tokyo, which ensured the supply of dwellings stayed ahead of population growth. By Noah Smith...
Evan A. Feigenbaum: A Chinese Puzzle: Why Economic "Reform" in Xi's China Has More Meanings than Market Liberalization: "What is going on that produces such a gaping disconnect between Beijing’s story about reform and the views of so many in the markets?...
Mark Belko: As new apartments are built around Pittsburgh, older stock is feeling the pressure: "Pittsburgh is in the midst of a supply surge, with about 4,600 units being built within the last three years...
Marshall Steinbaum: A tweetstorm on the recent intellectual history of monopsony: "Oh, one last thing: in... 2010... Syverson touched on the Chicago revolution in antitrust...
Gauti Eggertsson, Jacob A. Robbins, and Ella Getz Wold: Kaldor and Piketty’s Facts: The Rise of Monopoly Power in the United States: "The macroeconomic data of the last thirty years has overturned at least two of Kaldor’s famous stylized growth facts: constant interest rates, and a constant labor share...
Andrew Carnegie (1889): Wealth: "The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth...
Martin Wolf: Xi’s power grab means China is vulnerable to the whims of one man: "It had long been evident that... Xi Jinping... could not step down... too many enemies, particularly through his anti-corruption campaign...
Zachary Torrey: TPP 2.0: The Deal Without the US: "What’s new about the CPTPP and what do the changes mean?...
Willy Lam: China Paves Way For Xi Jinping To Extend Rule Beyond 2 Terms: "'Xi Jinping has finally achieved his ultimate goal when he first embarked on Chinese politics...
Steven K. Vogel: Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work (019069985X): "Modern-day markets do not arise spontaneously or evolve naturally..
Bishnupriya Gupta: Falling Behind and Catching up: India’s Transition from a Colonial Economy: "India fell behind during colonial rule...
John Lukacs: The Duel: The Eighty Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler: "The principal force of the twentieth century is nationalism...
Dani Rodrik: What Does a True Populism Look Like? It Looks Like the New Deal: "When populism succeeds, it does so not by cosmetic gimmicks but by going after the roots of economic injustice directly...
Helge Berger, Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, and Maurice Obstfeld: The Euro Area Needs a Fiscal Union: "Without more tangible elements of a fiscal union, the euro area will remain fundamentally vulnerable to shocks...
Michael Kades: Credit card competition case before U.S. Supreme Court leaves consumers and competition in the balance: "The Supreme Court next week will hear oral arguments in an antitrust case about competition and credit card merchants’ fees...
Paul Krugman: Budgets, Bad Faith and ‘Balance’: "my anger is... directed at... enablers, the professional centrists, both-sides pundits, and news organizations that spent years refusing to acknowledge that the modern G.O.P. is what it so clearly is...
Daniel Thomas: London life proves hard to give up for Brexit relocations: "Brexit.... Some of the most important conversations were... but in the kitchens and living rooms of those learning their fates in the first wave of company relocations...
Martin Wolf: Brexit has replaced the UK’s stiff upper lip with quivering rage: "In part, the UK is victim of its past successes...
Ezra Klein: Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and how democracies die: "Demagogues and authoritarians do not destroy democracies. It’s established political parties...
Dylan Matthews: In defense of Social Security Disability Insurance: "When Americans get too sick or injured to work, this program helps them survive...
T.S. Eliot (1944): Rejection of Animal Farm
Stan Collender: This Is The Real Reason The GOP Doesn't Want To Do A Budget This Year: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was the first high-level Republican to say Congress might not even consider let alone adopt a budget resolution this year...
John Holbo (2010): Libertarianism, Property Rights and Self-Ownership: "Jacob Levy has earnestly maintained in comments that it is unfair to judge libertarianism by the standard of Bryan Caplan’s attempts to turn the Gilded Age into a Golden Age of ladyfreedom...
John Holbo (2010): Libertarianism, Property Rights and Self-Ownership: "Jacob Levy has earnestly maintained in comments that it is unfair to judge libertarianism by the standard of Bryan Caplan’s attempts to turn the Gilded Age into a Golden Age of ladyfreedom...
Janelle Jones and Ben Zipperer: Unfulfilled promises: Amazon fulfillment centers do not generate broad-based employment growth: "When Amazon opens a new fulfillment center, the host county gains roughly 30 percent more warehousing and storage jobs but no new net jobs overall...
Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles: The Regulatory Subsidy for Extreme Leverage: A Reply to Mike Konczal: "We do not argue—although Konczal suggests we do—that the problem with financial regulation is a dearth of 'economic liberty'...
Peter Hall: Ideas and Interests: "Interests are always interpreted (by ideas), i.e. they do not arise unambiguously from the material world...
Charlie Stross: Dude, you broke the future!: "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. And if it looks like a religion it's probably a religion...
Simon Wren-Lewis: Does Brexit end not with a bang but a whimper?: "Most media commentary on Brexit makes a huge mistake... focuses on what the UK government may wish to do or should do...
Paul Krugman Notes on Farrell and Quiggin: "I’m not sure how many readers will realize the extent to which anti-Keynesian economic arguments, as opposed to those that Keynesians made, were invented on the fly...
Ian Perry: California is Working: The Effects of California’s Public Policy on Jobs and the Economy Since 2011: "Between 2011 and 2016, California enacted a set of 51 policy measures addressing workers’ rights, environmental issues, safety net programs, taxation, and infrastructure and housing...
Peter Whoriskey: ‘I hope I can quit working in a few years’: A preview of the U.S. without pensions: "Tom Coomer, 79... used to work at the McDonnell Douglas plant in Tulsa before it closed in 1994...
Matthew Yglesias: 2018 is the year that will decide if Trumpocracy replaces American democracy: "Loyalty to Donald Trump is the new principle of Republican Party politics...
Paul Krugman: "The central fact of U.S. political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites...
Ezra Klein: “Trump country” stories help explain our politics, not the next election: "Michael Kruse’s Politico story revisiting diehard Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania...
Peter Leyden: California is the Future-of American Politics: "The 21st-century hit California early, and the innovative state adapted quickly...
Jeffrey Friedman: What's Wrong with Libertarianism: "Libertarian arguments about the empirical benefits of capitalism are, as yet, inadequate...
Laura J Keller, Ben Steverman, and Charles Stein: Inside Wall Street's Towers, Traders Grouse Over Trump Tax Plan: "Many are figuring out greater benefits will go to billionaires. One, sipping a Bloody Mary, vows to quit the Republican party...
Nicholas Crafts: The Postwar British Productivity Failure: "British productivity growth disappointed during the early postwar period...
Brink Lindsey and Steve Teles: The Conservative Inequality Paradox: "Conservatives have two intellectual commitments that are increasingly incompatible...
Nathan Jensen: Exit options in firm-government negotiations: An evaluation of the Texas chapter 313 program: "A unique economic development incentive program in the state of Texas that holds almost all elements of bargaining constant...
Yingyi Qian: How Reform Worked in China: The Transition from Plan to Market: "A noted Chinese economist examines the mechanisms behind China's economic reforms, arguing that universal principles and specific implementations are equally important...
Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles: The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality: "For years, America has been plagued by slow economic growth and increasing inequality...
Enrico Moretti: Fires Aren’t the Only Threat to the California Dream: "The fires that ravaged Northern California in October claimed lives, weakened communities and scarred one of the West’s most distinctive landscapes...
Nathan Jensen: Learning public policy from Amazon: "Second, many of these state and local incentive programs are designed to provide very weak tests for providing incentives...
Andrew B. Hall and Daniel M. Thompson: Who Punishes Extremist Nominees?: Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in U.S. Elections: "The behavioral literature in American politics suggests that voters are not informed enough, and are too partisan, to be swing voters...
