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from June Sekera In standard economics scripting, government is most often cast in the role of bumbler or villain. Whether as market fixer, intervenor, enforcer or redistributor, its actions are portrayed as resulting in “distortion,” “inefficiency,” “deadweight loss,” and worse. Three quarters of a century ago, Paul Studenski rejected such casting. He found government to be a vital figure whose role was not simply to intervene or redistribute. Government was a producer. A professor of...

from Lars Syll Professors may find themselves ill-prepared for the macro classroom. To become academics they had to answer erudite questions posed by more senior members of the discipline. To become good teachers of introductory macro, they have to give clear answers to muddled students. That requires an intuitive feel for the subject. It is not enough to crank through the equations. Indeed, Mr Rowe attributes part of his success as a teacher to his shortcomings as a mathematician. He...

My extended take on housing permits and starts at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democrat My long-form take on housing sales, updated with yesterday morning’s housing permits and starts report, is up at Seeking Alpha. Like my Weekly Indicators posts, I make a penny or two when you decide to read.  So decide to read! Also worth mentioning: my overall view of housing differs somewhat from that of Bill McBride a/k/a Calculated Risk.  Like Bill, I don’t think...

Source: http://politicsthatwork.com/graphs/share-of-wealth   Source: http://gabriel-zucman.eu/uswealth/

from Lars Syll In Easterlin’s (1974) seminal paper, he finds that within any one country, in cross sectional studies, there was a strong correlation between income and happiness. One would easily conclude that money can buy happiness. However, looking at a cross section of countries, one comes to a different conclusion … For 10 of the 14 countries surveyed, the happiness ranking is about the same, even though the income per capita changes by a factor of 30 from $140 to $2,000 … The...

from C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh Recent data from the Annual Survey of Industries, covering up to 2015-16, provide some interesting insights into the changing nature of industrial employment in India. In the decade up to 2015-16, there was a significant increase in the number of factory workers, by around 40 per cent. This expansion can be dated from around 2005-06 onwards and especially up to 2011-12. This is to be expected, given that that was the period of India’s economic...

from Lars Syll Back in 1992, New Jersey raised the minimum wage by 18 per cent while its neighbour state, Pennsylvania, left its minimum wage unchanged. Unemployment in New Jersey should — according to mainstream economics textbooks — have increased relative to Pennsylvania. However, when economists David Card and Alan Krueger gathered information on fast food restaurants in the two states, it turned out that unemployment had actually decreased in New Jersey relative to that in...

from David Ruccio Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal is no class warrior. Far from it. But after Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow spent considerable time during a recent interview celebrating the latest statistics about economic growth, jobs, and wages and minimizing the effects of the trade tariffs, Ryssdal was encouraged to challenge him:  Ryssdal: Look, sir, really with all respect that’s easy for you to say sitting here on the second floor of the West Wing of the White...