Real-World Economics Review

from Peter Radford This is short: I have been accused recently of mis-using the word “coup” when I discuss the events of January 6th.  Worse, I have been called ignorant. Here is what the dictionary says: Coup = a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government. Perhaps my critics would feel safer with “insurrection” which seems to be the preferred word in the media. Here is what the dictionary says: Insurrection = a violent uprising against an authority or government. The...

from C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh The United States prepares for moving out of the Trump era with the incoming President promising more rounds of stimulus spending to revive an economy ravaged by Covid-19. Other members of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, a predominantly rich nation’s club, have also been generous with their spending and signalled that they are willing to keep their wallets open to spend more if necessary. The evidence clearly is that the...

from Lars Syll A non-trivial part of teaching statistics to social science students is made up of learning them to perform significance testing. A problem yours truly has noticed repeatedly over the years, however, is that no matter how careful you try to be in explicating what the probabilities generated by these statistical tests — p-values — really are, still most students misinterpret them. A couple of years ago I gave a statistics course for the Swedish National Research School in...

Intellectual property like pharmaceutical patents is part of the story why so many people face a long wait for COVID-19 vaccines says Dean Baker discussing the high cost of policy choices that make the rich richer at public expense.

from Peter Radford The aftermath of a coup attempt is one of those moments when a nation gets a really serious insight into its values.  Do, for instance, its politicians rally around some higher set of principles, or do they slide quickly back into the day-to-day argy-bargy of political positioning and infighting? Ours are perilously close to the latter.  And this after their own place of work was invaded and trashed while they hid and cowered in sundry hiding places.  Profiles in...

from Dean Baker With a Democrat in the White House, the season of the deficit hawk has returned. So, it’s worth going through the old arguments just to remind everyone that the best response to these people is ridicule. It looks like President Biden will propose a robust stimulus package of well over $1 trillion. According to press accounts, the package is likely to include another check for $2,000. (I believe it is supposed to $1,400 above the $600 in the last package.) It is likely to...

from Lars Syll When no formal theory is available, as is often the case, then the analyst needs to justify statistical specifications by showing that they fit the data. That means more than just “running things.” It means careful graphical and crosstabular analysis … When I present this argument … one or more scholars say, “But shouldn’t I control for every-thing I can? If not, aren’t my regression coefficients biased due to excluded variables?” But this argument is not as persuasive...

from Asad Zaman An article by Alan Hajek in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists six major categories of definitions. Many more are possible if causality is also taken into account. These definitions conflict with each other, and face serious problems as interpretations of real-world probabilities. The basic definition of probability we will offer in this lecture falls outside all of these listed categories. Before going on to present it, we briefly explain why there is such massive...

– the vital difference between a “firm” and a “corporation” from Peter Radford I am learning that it takes a while to come to terms with the trauma of an attempted coup. Various people are reacting differently depending on their state of mind prior to the attempt.  What catches my eye, given my own perspective on the role of business in society, is the pressure emerging on our large corporations.  Having spent the past few years busily ignoring the moral corruption and ineptitude of the...