Worthy Reads at Equitable Growth and Elsewhere... August 16, 2018
Worthy Reads at Equitable Growth...
An excellent piece from Marinescu, Dinan, and Hovenkamp: one of our working papers laying out how the analysis of how antitrust policy should be done given that compensated firms face their counter parties not just in the product but in labor markets. I think this is the most important thing I have seen out of our shop here at Equitable Growth this week*Ioana Marinescu, James G. Dinan, and Herbert Hovenkamp*: Anticompetitive mergers in labor markets: "Increased market concentration in labor markets threatens to facilitate coordinated interaction among employers that could lead to lower output and wage suppression in employment markets...
As Michael Kades writes, “the stakes are much higher than an ideological battle or technical adjustments to a legal regime” here. We need to understand how anti-trust practice affects the degree of monopoly in the United States and Hal monopoly effects equitable growth and societal well being. We do not. I think that attempting to understand these two issues is the most important analytic issue for policy relevant economic research in the United States today: Michael Kades: Why market competition matters to equitable growth: "At first glance, competition in the U.S. economy may seem far afield of the topic of equitable growth.... What could antitrust enforcement have to do with maintaining a healthy economy?...
The analysis of rising inequality and its effects in the United States and elsewhere over the past generation has suffered from a relative downplaying of the role of the family and how income gets earned and then transformed Into well-being. Central to this is the rapidly changing economic role of women in the workforce, but that is not all of it. We need more and better analyses of her public policy needs to shift in the context of changing family structure and rising inequality. Elizabeth Jacobs presents some of our thinking about how Equitable Growth is and will be trying to support this effort: Elizabeth Jacobs: Rethinking 20th century policies to support 21st century families: "...As a raft of research illustrates, economic growth is increasingly concentrating at the top...
Our Kate Bahn Reminds us: Kate Bahn: "This needs to be screamed from the rooftops.... We cannot have a substantive conversation about how tight the labor market is without examining demographic disparities..." ands sends us to Equitable Growth alumnus John Schmitt quoting Janelle Jones at: Laura Maggi: Despite Drop in Black Unemployment, Significant Disparities Remain: "The African-American unemployment rate... low—compared to historic numbers. In July, it was 6.6 percent...
Not to put the pressure on or anything, but I expect very good things from our Equitable Growth grant to: Matthew Staiger: Parental Resources And The Career Choices of Young Workers: "With a specific focus on the impact of parental resources on entrepreneurship and job mobility...
Worthy Reads Elsewhere...
Dan Drezner: The invisible heroism of Paul Ryan: "Back in March, I wrote.... 'Why, exactly, is Paul D. Ryan being so quiet? What does he hope to accomplish at this point? I don’t know. I would love to hear from someone who does'...
The utility of history for rational self-government: David Walsh: "That Twitter is the major forum for this says a lot about the pitiful state of our institutional capacity...
Erica Groshen and Robert Groves: Better Data for a Better Economy: "Mov[ing] the Bureau of Labor Statistics—the source of statistics on jobs, wages, working conditions, productivity and prices—from the Labor Department to the Commerce Department...
Nancy L. Yu, Preston Atteberry, Peter B. Bach: Spending On Prescription Drugs In The US: Where Does All The Money Go?: "The US pharmaceutical industry is characterized by a complex and often opaque system of distribution and reimbursement...
No surprise: throwing people off Medicaid has substantial costs and no benefits at all: Thomas DeLeire: The Effect of Disenrollment from Medicaid on Employment, Insurance Coverage, Health and Health Care Utilization: "From July through September 2005, TennCare, the Tennessee Medicaid program, disenrolled approximately 170,000 adults following a change in eligibility rules...
A very good point here: there is good reason not to take a markup-free model as our benchmark from which we begin our analysis of Trump: Ben Golub: Krugman Thinks Efficiency Loss of a Trade War Is Small: "Krugman thinks efficiency loss of a trade war is small (Harberger triangle size) even though trade is now in intermediates along supply chains...
Smart proposal to unify U.S. statistical agencies in the Department of Commerce: Erica L. Groshen and Robert M. Groves: Op-Ed: "We depend largely on three professional government agencies: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau...
Cathy O'Neal: Mark Zuckerberg Is Totally Out of His Depth: "I might be the only person on Earth feeling sorry for the big boys of technology. Jack Dorsey from Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, all those Google nerds: They’re monumentally screwed, because they have no idea how to tame the monsters they have created...
Kate Aronoff: What the ‘New York Times’ Climate Blockbuster Missed: "Nathaniel Rich’s article illustrates American failures, not global ones...
Alexandra Erin: Fear, and Fear of Witches: "There's fear, and then there's fear of witches...
Michael Tomasky: Hail to the Chief: "It’s worth stepping back here to review quickly the steps by which the Republican Party became this stewpot of sycophants, courtesans, and obscurantists...
Paul Krugman: Supply Chains and Trade War: "There are three possible stories about how supply chains might increase the costs of trade war, and while two of them are right, I suspect that many economists are buying into the third, which isn’t...
Mattheew Fay: The U.S. Military is a Tool, but the President Thinks it’s a Trophy: "The president routinely complains that the United States can’t afford to maintain its alliance commitments... suggests military exercises on the Korean Peninsula are so costly that they can be traded for vague promises of North Korean denuclearization.... The president will preside over a military parade in Washington, D.C., later this year that will cost nearly as much as the exercises. What explains this apparent contradiction?...
Michael Tomasky: What Are Capitalists Thinking?: "Every once in a while in history, cause and effect smack us in the face.... The kind of capitalism that has been practiced in this country over the last few decades has made socialism look far more appealing.... If you’re 28 like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez... what have you seen during your sentient life?...
Why are Fox News's victims so easily-grifted with respect to making them scared of liberal universities?: Jacob T. Levy: "I’ve made a lot of arguments in my life to people who didn’t want to hear them. I argued about sodomy laws and Bowers vs Hardwick with my grandmother when I was 15...
Doug Irwin: Trump’s trade policy is an exercise in futility: "Yet for all the Sturm und Drang of his trade policy, the president is likely to end up being terribly disappointed by the results of his efforts...
#hoistedfromthearchives #noted
