Fifteen Worthy Reads for September 6, 2018
Worthy Reads from Equitable Growth:
A working paper I thought was very good, but that for some reason did not get a lot of attention: My take was always that this was overwhelmingly that "feminized" occupations have low pay. But Folbre and Smith make a strong case that other causes are also important: Nancy Folbre and Kristin Smith: The wages of care: Bargaining power, earnings and inequality: "The earnings of managers and professionals employed in care industries (health, education, and social services), characterized by high levels of public and non-profit provision, are significantly lower than in other industries...
Another working paper from our past that should have gotten more buzz than it did: Yes, "overeducation" is a thing: Ammar Farooq: The U-shape of over-education? Human capital dynamics & occupational mobility over the life cycle: "The proportion of college degree holders working in occupations that do not require a college degree is U-shaped over the life cycle and that there is a rise in transitions to non-college jobs among prime age college workers...
Applause for our attempt to focus on the broader implications of rising monopoly: Noah Smith: [Economists Gear Up to Challenge the Monopolies(https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-04/economists-gear-up-to-challenge-the-monopolies): "The antitrust movement is making a comeback.... Think tanks like the Washington Center for Equitable Growth are starting to zero in on the issue as well": Jacob Robbins: How the rise of market power in the United States may explain some macroeconomic puzzles - Equitable Growth: "Gauti Eggertsson, Ella Getz Wold, and I at Brown University argue that these diverse trends are closely connected, and that the driving force behind them is an increase in monopoly power together with a decline in interest rates...
Equitable Growth alumnus makes an excellent catch here: Nick Bunker: Fascinating: "Fascinating dive into the data on industries with above-average earnings in the 90s, but now pay less than average": Andrew Van Dam and Heather Long: How the U.S. economy turned six good jobs into bad ones: "Six industries that provided an above-average weekly paycheck in the 1990s but now pay less than an average wage.... These downgraded jobs have one thing in common: They don’t require a college degree...
Homeowner bankruptcy and foreclosure are liquidity events, not solvency events: Peter Ganong and Pascal Noel: Liquidity vs. wealth in household debt obligations: Evidence from housing policy in the Great Recession: "We use variation in mortgage modifications to disentangle the impact of reducing long-term obligations with no change in short-term payments ('wealth'), and reducing short-term payments with approximately no change in long-term obligations ('liquidity')...
Elsewhere than Equitable Growth:
A plea for us to focus on unionization, societal priorities, and worker bargaining power—rather than speculate about "artificial intelligence" trends that are, really, probably fifty years away from achieving criticality: Sarita Gupta, Stephen Lerner, and Joseph A. McCartin: It’s Not the 'Future of Work,' It’s the Future of Workers That’s in Doubt: "Nearly every discussion of labor’s future in mainstream media quickly becomes mired in a group of elite-defined concerns called 'The Future of Work'...
Is shale burning cash because its future is so bright, or because it is a financial bubble grift?: Schumpeter: America’s Shale Firms Don’t Give a Frack About Financial Returns: "Shale fracking... is booming once again... But... the business has burned up cash for 34 of the last 40 quarters.... With the exception of airlines, Chinese state enterprises and Silicon Valley unicorns—private firms valued at more than $1bn—shale firms are on an unparalleled money-losing streak. About $11bn was torched in the latest quarter......
A pointer to a very nice attempt to grapple with how we communicate and listen in the pubic sphere these days: Roland Nikles: News, Reviews & Views: Sovereign of My Opinions: "The unholy intimacy between readers and writers on the Internet, say the N+1 editors, has made op-ed writers of us all...
Jeet Heer: McCain's Funeral: "McCain's funeral was very moving and appropriately political (as befits the funeral of a major political figure)...
This ex-President of the Minneapolis Fed has become one of the very best Fed-watchers and Fed-analysts: Narayana Kocherlakota: The Fed Should Prepare for the Unexpected: "The staff paper downplayed and Powell ignored what I see as the most important risk...
This is correct: Laura McGann: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is being held to a higher standard than men: "Male politicians aren’t told to put training wheels back on after a fact check...
Yet, somehow, manufacturing managers learned to understand electricity in the 1920s and 1930s. How? Why? On Kevin's theory, it would be that they were forced to learn or watch their firms disappear in the Great Depression. Alex Field might agree: Kevin Drum: Technology Is the Key to Success, But Probably Not the Technology You Enjoy: "I’d put it more bluntly: unless they’re forced to at the point of a metaphorical gun... service-sector managers are lazy... in a very specific way: they don’t really understand technology...
Learn the right lessons from Scandinavia: Martin Sandbu: What The Nordic Mixed Economy Can Teach Today’s New Left: "Ten years ago, the global crisis laid bare the failures of financial capitalism. This gave the political left an opportunity to win support for its agenda. Yet almost every established centre-left party in the developed world bungled this shot at political dominance...
Sociological distance, present and the legacy of past discrimination, and preventive treatment in Oakland, CA: perhaps 20% of the black-white cardiovascular health gap due to the fact that Black patients are seen by sociologically-distant white doctors: Marcy Alsan et al.: Does Diversity Matter for Health? Experimental Evidence from Oakland: "We study the effect of diversity in the physician workforce on the demand for preventive care among African-American men...
I disagree with Jeff Frankel here: the Federal Reserve has not been doing a good job since 2010. Its central task as of 2010 was to (a) get the U.S. economy rapidly back to full employment at (b) a configuration of economic variables that would give it a short-term safe nominal interest rate of 5% or more so it would have room to properly fight the next recession whenever it should come. You could argue that the rest of the government make it impossible for the Fed to do a good job. But you cannot argue that the Fed should be satisfied with the job it has done since 2010: Jeffrey Frankel: The Depth of the Next US Recession: "Whatever the immediate trigger of the next US recession, the consequences are likely to be severe.... Pro-cyclical fiscal, macro-prudential, and even monetary policies... [leave] authorities are in a weak position to manage the next inevitable shock...
