Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

1. The judge in the Roger Stone case appears to be doing the right thing here: Southpaw: @nycsouthpaw: "Apology not accepted. via @NatashaBertrand...

2. Rick Perlstein: The Jesus Landing Pad: "NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be 'the Christian Voice in the Nation’s Capital', the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state.... fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza... object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and Solomon’s temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won’t come back to earth. Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that 'the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph’s tomb or Rachel’s tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace'.... Affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church, the Apostolic Congress is part of an important and disciplined political constituency courted by recent Republican administrations. As a subset of the broader Christian Zionist movement, it has a lengthy history of opposition to any proposal that will not result in what it calls a “one-state solution” in Israel...

3. Bernard Finn: Underwater Cables: "In 1864 the India promoters laid a new flawless (but somewhat less ambitious) cable from the head of the Persian Gulf to Karachi.... Across the Atlantic... the Anglo-American Telegraph Company... complete[d] the 1865 cable, in 1866.... These first cables quickly spawned more. By 1873 they reached as far as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Sydney. The islands of the Caribbean were linked together and connected to the mainland; as were the islands of the eastern Mediterranean and those of the East Indies...

4. Equitable Growth's monthly charticle about the most useful monthly employment report—not the (usually) first-Friday report, but rather the JOLTS report: Kate Bahn and Raksha Kopparam: JOLTS Day Graphs: December 2018 Report Edition: "Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS. Today, the BLS released the latest data for December 2018. This report doesn’t get as much attention as the monthly Employment Situation Report, but it contains useful information about the state of the U.S. labor market. Below are a few key graphs using data from the report...

5. Continuing to make slow progress on understanding how to add information and behavior diffusion to economics: Leonardo Bursztyn, Florian Ederer, Bruno Ferman, Noam Yuchtman: Understanding Mechanisms Underlying Peer Effects: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Financial Decisions: "When someone purchases an asset, his peers may also want to purchase it, both because they learn from his choice ('social learning') and because his possession of the asset directly affects others' utility of owning the same asset ('social utility'). We randomize whether one member of a peer pair who chose to purchase an asset has that choice implemented... Then we randomize whether the second member of the pair: (1) receives no information... or (2) is informed of the first member's desire to purchase the asset and the result of the randomization.... This allows us to estimate the effects of learning plus possession, and learning alone.... Both social learning and social utility channels have statistically and economically significant effects.... Investors report updating their beliefs about asset quality after learning about their peer's revealed preference... report motivations consistent with 'keeping up with the Joneses' when learning about their peer's possession of the asset. These results can help shed light on the mechanisms underlying herding behavior...

6. Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Mauricio Ulate: Is Inflation Just Around the Corner? The Phillips Curve and Global Inflationary Pressures: "An expectations-augmented Phillips curve can account for inflation not just in the U.S. but across a range of countries, once household or firm-level inflation expectations are used.... We find that the implied slack was pushing inflation below expectations in the years after the Great Recession but the global and U.S. inflation gaps have shrunk in recent years thus suggesting tighter economic conditions. While we find no evidence that inflation is on the brink of rising, the sustained deflationary pressures following the Great Recession have abated...

7. For the first time ever, to my knowledge, the Congressional Black Caucus corresponds to the African-American share of the US population: Denise Oliver Velez: The Congressional Black Caucus has expanded in size and clout: "We’ve come a long way from the days when the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was founded 48 years ago. Back in 1971, 13 black members of Congress came together to found the organization. The CBC now has 55 members...

8. The invariable rule in America—except for African-Americans—is that it takes one or at most two generations for immigrants to essentially converge to white native-born outcomes as far as the labor market (but not wealth accumulation!) is concerned. It is true now: it was true for the Famine Irish: William J. Collins and Ariell Zimran: The Economic Assimilation of the Famine Irish in America: "The many John Kellys.... Negative sentiment towards immigrants is often based on fears about their ability to integrate into economic, political, and social institutions. This column analyses the impact of the influx of Irish immigrants into the US in the 19th century. It shows that the children of immigrants had assimilated in terms of labour market outcomes within one generation, providing some perspective for the current debate about immigration policy...

9. And another from Will McGrew, who is watching California begin trying to implement policies we at Equitable Growth had hoped to see implemented nationwide starting in 2017: Will McGrew: "Congrats to @AnnOLeary & Team Newsom_ on their bold plan for 6 months of paid leave in CA. Research by @HBoushey, @jacobselisabeth & others confirms paid leave can boost labor supply, family earnings & output, driving gov't savings from more tax revenue + less social spending...

10. A new book coming this fall: Heather Boushey: "On the inaugural weekend of the #womensmarch, I decided to write a book for the new economic era and made a plan. Feels really good to have sent the final manuscript in yesterday! 'Unbound' will be out in early fall...

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