The Angry Bear

Whither Social Capital? This past Friday there was yet another retirement conference, this time honoring “Mr. Social Capital,” Robert S. Putnam, who is retiring from Harvard’s Kennedy School at age 77.  I was not invited, but I know some people who attended, including my sister and brother-in-law, the latter speaking at the dinner as family, the brother of  Bob’s wife, Rosemary.  As it is, I have known Bob Putnam since before he became Robert S. “Mr....

Higher wage growth for job switchers: more evidence of a taboo against raising wages? Yesterday the Atlanta Fed published a note touting the wage growth for those who quit their jobs and transfer to a different line of work, writing that: Although wages haven’t been rising faster for the median individual, they have been for those who switch jobs. This distinction is important because the wage growth of job-switchers tends to be a better cyclical...

(Dan here…better late than not!) by New Deal democrat A better name for The Kids Today: iGeneration You know the drill. It’s Sunday so I get to ruminate about all stuff that isn’t dry economics. The oldest member of the Millennial generation is 38. Not only do I not think that The Kids Today would want to be lumped with that age group, but their uncool parents are probably precisely members of that group! So what to name the generation that came after...

Paul Krugman demonstrates just how simple models can and should be. He presented a trade model on the New York Times opinion pages. He also apologised for extreme wonkishness, but I don’t think he had to. His aim is to find an example in which Trump’s tariffs on steel cause lower wages (also for steel workers). Here the trick is to make sure that everyone has the same income “not gonna get into income distribution today”. This means that a reduction...

by Joseph Joyce   A Guide to the (Financial) Universe: Part 1 A decade after the global financial crisis, the contours of the financial system that has emerged from the wreckage are becoming clearer. While the capital flows that preceded the crisis have diminished in size, most of the assets and liabilities they created remain. But there are significant differences between advanced economies and emerging markets in their size and composition, and those...

I’m teaching “Economics for Non-Economists” this semester. This is an interesting experiment, and is strongly testing my belief that you can teach economics without mathematics so long as people understand graphs and tables. (It appears that people primarily learn how to read graphs and tables in mathematics-related courses. Did everyone except me know this?) Since economics is All About Trade-offs, our textbook notes that minimum wage increases should...

by Jeff Soplop What Happened to the Political Price for Lying? (Part 2) Recently I wrote about the political price of lying and how there is a serious disconnect between voters (including republican voters) saying they want honesty in a politician and how they act. My initial conclusion was that many voters are lying to themselves and so, consequently, end up lying to pollsters. With this in mind, the next question is this: just how dishonest are voters...

Can Nudging Become A New Road To Serfdom? Last weekend I attended a conference at NYU Law School on “Behavioral Economics and the New Paternalism, organized by Austrian economist Mario Rizzo and classical liberal law professor Richard Epstein. It included economists, lawyers, philosophers, and a couple of psychologists.  While there was a range of views present a theme for many and especially of the organizers was bashing the ideas about “libertarian...