One of the topics I’ve railed about many times during the decade and change in which I’ve been blogging is that society would be much better off if we forced people to pay the cost of negative externalities they impose on other people through their behavior. An obvious example would be making polluters pay for the cost that the pollution they emit inflicts on everyone else. But it turns out there are a lot of these behavioral externalities in healthcare. For...
Read More »Terrorism and Immigration Policy
From a story in The Globe and Mail The 22-year-old Mr. Abedi was identified Tuesday by Manchester police as the suspected bomber. British media reported that he was born in Manchester to parents who fled the violent repression of Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya. Little else is known about Mr. Abedi – British authorities have been tight-lipped about the investigation and only released Mr. Abedi’s name after it was leaked by U.S. officials – but his profile as the...
Read More »Why we support Macron in the second round – op-ed in Le Monde (English original) and DiEM25 France in Mediapart
In today’s Le Monde I call upon French progressives to vote for Macron in the second round of France’s Presidential election. The article explains my recommendation to French voters and finishes off with the following promise to Emmanuel: “I shall mobilise fully to help you beat Le Pen with the same strength that I shall be joining the next Nuit Debout to oppose your government when, and if, you, as President,...
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Chris Blattman & Stefan Dercon have an op-ed in the New York Times, reporting on their study with IPA and the Ethiopian Development Research Institute. They randomly offered poor workers in Ethiopia who were applying for factory jobs the jobs they wanted or an alternative entrepreneurship opportunity. Turns out the jobs were pretty bad – most quit and those that stayed weren’t any better off than those who never god a job...
Read More »Europe’s Illiberal Establishment – Project Syndicate op-ed
ATHENS – On March 25, Europe’s leaders convened in the birthplace of the “European project” to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. But what exactly was there to celebrate? Were they reveling in Europe’s disintegration, which they now call “multi-speed” or “variable geometry” Europe? Or were they there to applaud their business-as-usual approach to every crisis – an approach that has fanned the...
Read More »PM Theresa May has miscalculated – Op-ed in THE MIRROR
Theresa May has miscalculated her Brexit strategy, says the former Greek finance minister who handled his country’s EU negotiations. Yanis Varoufakis, writing exclusively for the Mirror, says the PM’s threat of a “ hard Brexit ” will not make Britain’s departure any easier. Mr Varoufakis said: “By making a hard Brexit the default of the negotiating process, Mrs May has secured its credibility. “However, a...
Read More »How does the triggering of article 50 look from Europe? Op-ed, The Guardian
How do I feel now that article 50 has been triggered? I feel sad that so many good people in Britain will feel so disappointed when they realise that Brexit has not helped them “take back their country”. I feel alarmed that, driven by Brexit, EU leaders chose its 60th anniversary, last Saturday, to embrace a “multispeed” Europe amounting to nothing more than a formalisation of the EU’s disintegration – which, in...
Read More »CNN op-ed following Article 50: The EU cannot survive if it sticks to business as usual
March for a Different Europe in Rome, March 25, 2017. From DiEm25 facebook page. Allowing EU member states to move in different directions and at different speeds is precisely the wrong way to address the differing concerns of Europeans living in different countries – and it seems an odd way to unite them behind a single way forward for the continent. As British Prime Minister Theresa May triggers Article 50,...
Read More »Socialising androids – Two Project Syndicate op-eds & one Guardian commentary
Click here for my Project Syndicate op-ed in which I reply to Bill Gates’ proposal for a tax on robots, counter-proposing the idea first canvassed here of a universal basic dividend from a public share trust fund. See also this commentary in The Guardian.
Read More »Economism and Economics
By James Kwak One point I try to be clear about in my new book is that economism—the assumption that simple Economics 101 models accurately describe the real world—is not the same as economics. There are people who think that all of economics, or at least all of modern, mathematically inclined, “neoclassical” economics, is at fault for the growth of neoliberal capitalism and the increase in inequality in rich countries. I am not one of them. In my mind, the problem is knowing just a...
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