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Propublica has a story on waste in the medical industry: Experts estimate the U.S. health care system wastes $765 billion annually — about a quarter of all the money that’s spent. Of that, an estimated $210 billion goes to unnecessary or needlessly expensive care, according to a 2012 report by the National Academy of Medicine Having visited doctors in the past decade or two a few times, I can believe the 25% figure.  The billing structure alone creates...

from Maria Alejandra Madi  Olivier Blanchard and Lawrence Summers have recently called for a reflection about the macroeconomic tools required to manage the outcomes of the 2008 global crisis  in their paper Rethinking Stabilization Policy. Back to the Future. The relevant question they address is: Should the crisis lead to a rethinking of both macroeconomics and macroeconomic policy similar to what we saw in the 1930s or in the 1970s? In other words, should the crisis lead to a Keynesian...

I read with great hope that the junior senator from Kansas has learned from the Kansan tax cut disaster and will, maybe, possibly, have enough courage to vote against the horrible Republican tax cut for our Donors bill. I have a message for Republicans who know better, but are afraid of breaking with the president and majority leader.

from Lars Syll High and rising household indebtedness poses the greatest risk to the Swedish economy. Household indebtedness has been increasing in Sweden since the mid- 1990s. Home ownership financed by high levels of mortgage debt with variable interest rates makes households vulnerable to falling house prices and increasing interest rates … In the present Economic Commentary, we extend the earlier analysis by using updated data covering the period up to September 2017 … Our main...

A better than expected, but somewhat peculiar details, and note the approximate average over the last 4 months. And maybe some tax related buying? Last month, new single-family homes sales soared 30.2 percent in the Northeast to their highest level since October 2007. Sales in the South increased 1.3 percent also to a 10-year high. There were also strong gains in sales in the West and Midwest last month. More than two-thirds of the new homes sold last month were either...

from David Ruccio The United States, as I have shown over the past week (e.g., here, here, and here), has an obscenely unequal distribution of wealth. How do we put that grotesque level of inequality into perspective? One way is by taking a historical perspective; the other is by looking across the world today. As it turns out, Nature (unfortunately behind a paywall) has just published a study in which the authors attempt to estimate the degree of wealth inequality in ancient societies...

I am so thankful that I am an economic blogger A few days late for Thanksgiving, but … like a lot of people, I woke up to a real nightmare one year ago.  One decision I made for mental health purposes was to focus like a laser beam on the economy rather than have my blood boil over each day by each new atrocity. In the last few months it has occurred to me over and over to be extremely thankful that I am writing about the one aspect of America that...

from Asad Zaman Lecture 5 of Advanced Microeconomics at PIDE. The base for this lecture Hill & Myatt Anti-Textbook Chapter 4 on Consumer Theory. Hill and Myatt cover three criticisms of conventional microeconomic consumer theory. Economic theory considers preference formation as exogenous. If the production process also creates preferences via advertising, this is not legitimate. Consumers are supposed to make informed choices leading to increase welfare. However, deceptive...

from Lars Syll When giving courses in the philosophy of science yours truly has often had David Papineau’s book Philosophical Devices (OUP 2012) on the reading list. Overall it is a good introduction to many of the instruments used when performing methodological and science theoretical analyses of economic and other social sciences issues. Unfortunately, the book has also fallen prey to the randomization hype that scourges sciences nowadays. The hard way to show that alcohol really is a...