Real-World Economics Review

from Dean Baker Last month George Soros had a New York Times column arguing that Mark Zuckerberg should not be running Facebook. (Does the NYT reserve space on its opinion page for billionaires?) The gist of Soros’ piece is that Zuckerberg has made a deal with Trump. He will allow all manner of outrageous lies to be spread on Facebook to benefit Trump’s re-election campaign. In exchange, Trump will defend Zuckerberg from efforts to regulate Facebook. Soros is of course right. Zuckerberg...

from Grazia Ietto-Gillies and WEA Commentaries  There is now a very large body of literature on theories of the transnational corporation (TNC) and the subject has reached a suitably mature stage to have a history of economic thought about it.2 The first theory of the ‘International Firm and its Operations’ was developed in 1960 by Steven Hymer, a Canadian student working for a doctorate under the supervision of Charles Kindleberger at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A British...

from Lars Syll Most work in econometrics and regression analysis is — still — made on the assumption that the researcher has a theoretical model that is ‘true.’ Based on this belief of having a correct specification for an econometric model or running a regression, one proceeds as if the only problem remaining to solve have to do with measurement and observation. When things sound to good to be true, they usually aren’t. And that goes for econometric wet dreams too. The snag is, of...

Dean Baker, the current construction manager for the famous Saranac Lake Ice Palace, has been helping construct the spectacular palace for 38 years. In this North Country Climate Story, Dean walks us through the trials and tribulations that he has experienced while building the ice castle through the years, including battling warm temperatures, sawing ice that is too thick, weekend thaws, and much more. Enjoy!

Dean Baker, the current construction manager for the famous Saranac Lake Ice Palace, has been helping construct the spectacular palace for 38 years. In this North Country Climate Story, Dean walks us through the trials and tribulations that he has experienced while building the ice castle through the years, including battling warm temperatures, sawing ice that is too thick, weekend thaws, and much more. Enjoy!

from Asad Zaman Note that this is a very POSITIVIST idea — if the surface appearances match, that is all that matters.         I quote a passage from Pearl: The Book of Why, which provides a gentle introduction to the newly developed field (largely by him) of causal inference via path diagrams: In 1950, Alan Turing asked what it would mean for a computer to think like a human. He suggested a practical test, which he called “the imitation game,” but every AI researcher since then has...

Trade Wars: The economic and political theoretical implications and their impact on multilateralism A new conference from the WEA, scheduled for October. Open call for papers

WEA Commentaries Volume 10, Issue 1  –    February 2020download whole issue Simpson’s Paradox           – Asad ZamanHow International Corporations Could Be Taxed and Why the US is Working to Prevent It          – Norbert HäringThe Transnational Corporation and Economics           – Grazia Ietto- GilliesChallenges of Complexity Economics          – Joachim H. Spangenberg and Lia PolotzekWEA Commentaries Appoints New Co-EditorsWEA contact details Please click here to support the WEA...

from Dean Baker It is often said that intellectuals have a hard time dealing with new ideas. This is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated with the fixation with patent monopolies as the primary mechanism for financing the development of new drugs. Bloomberg gave us a beautiful example of this narrow mindedness with a column from Max Nisen on the possibility that China may require the compulsory licensing of a patent on a drug developed by Gilead, in order to produce a treatment for the...

from Lars Syll In econometrics one often gets the feeling that many of its practitioners think of it as a kind of automatic inferential machine: input data and out comes casual knowledge. This is like pulling a rabbit from a hat. Great — but first you have to put the rabbit in the hat. And this is where assumptions come into the picture. As social scientists — and economists — we have to confront the all-important question of how to handle uncertainty and randomness. Should we equate...