Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

by Peter Dorman   (originally published at Econospeak) Climate of Complete Incomprehension I finally got around to reading the NY Times new “responsible conservative”, Bret Stephens’, call for skepticism and moderation on climate change.  He adopts an attitude that exudes reasonableness and rejection of hubris.  Complicated modeling is an uncertain business and often fails; just look at Hilary Clinton’s Big Data campaign gurus.  Climate change is such a...

This isn’t actually news, but it’s news to me, and it’s something you need to know. Greg LeRoy sent me an article by James Meek in London Review of Books (20 April 2017) that he’d been sent by a friend, documenting more EU-permitted job piracy by Poland that preceded the case I discuss at length in my book, Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital. There, I criticized the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition for...

by  Barkley Rosser Is Authoritarian Nationalism Mostly A Rural Phenomenon? Offhand it looks like maybe it is.  In the US Trump won overwhelmingly in rural areas while losing all of the largest cities.  Yes, he took some mid-size declining industrial ones like Youngstown, OH and Erie, Pa, while losing some rural areas in places like Vermont as well as areas with minority groups the majority of the population.  But in general it holds, he won the countryside...

by New Deal democrat Two hits and a miss on GDP and wages We got two pieces of good news from the GDP report this morning, and one piece of bad news for workers. First, from the important long leading housing sector, real private fixed residential investment rose again to a new post-recession high: This adds to the generally positive data coming out of that sector. Second, proprietors income increased: This is a good proxy for corporate profits, which won’t...

I use an ad blocker in general, and add exceptions if ads are not onerous and I want to subscribe to help fund sources. The impact on AB is not large but helps keep AB on a non-profit level instead of using personal funds. Contributors are volunteers. But I would like to hear from readers on notions on their own experience…AB is glad to share links to content almost anywhere. Via VOX: The impact of ad blockers on the Internet In the short run – before sites...

Via Vox: One size does not fit all: On the heterogeneous impact of free trade agreements Can empirical research on past FTAs shed light on this uncertainty? To date, most studies that quantify the effects of trade agreements have either focused on obtaining a common average effect across all agreements (e.g. Baier and Bergstrand 2007, Anderson and Yotov 2016) or have assumed that the effects are common across similar types of agreements (e.g. Baier et al....

by Barkley Rosser Financial Times Messes Up On Italy I have for a long time thought the Financial Times to be the best newspaper in the world, but now I am going to play Dean Baker beating the press on it.  I think they are slipping, and the sign is a story that appeared in today’s issue about Matteo Renzi in Italy, about whom I have posted here previously. The story reported that he is likely to finally nail down the leadership of the Democratic Party in...

by Kenneth Thomas European Union ends relocation subsidies This isn’t actually news, but it’s news to me, and it’s something you need to know. Greg LeRoy sent me an article by James Meek in London Review of Books (20 April 2017) that he’d been sent by a friend, documenting more EU-permitted job piracy by Poland that preceded the case I discuss at length in my book, Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital. There, I criticized the European...

by Barkley Rosser Poland: “What Are These People Complaining About?” Thus spake Jeffrey Sachs in January 1994 at the ASSA/AEA meetings shortly after the Solidarity government of Lech Walesa was defeated in an election over plans to cut old age pensions, which Sachs thought were too high. He has since recanted some of his views from that time, but indeed Poland had been the poster boy for the Washington Consensus on transition, with its “shock therapy”...

by Sandwichman Gibberish Repeat after me: The world is not a zero-sum game. Technology often creates more jobs than it destroys. The number of jobs in the economy depends on how much people are spending and investing. High-skilled tech workers grow the economic pie by boosting productivity, encouraging more investment and increasing entrepreneurship. Economists call this “the lump of labor” fallacy. Jennifer Rubin, WaPo Trump and right-wingers who have never...