When no formal theory is available, as is often the case, then the analyst needs to justify statistical specifications by showing that they fit the data. That means more than just “running things.” It means careful graphical and crosstabular analysis … When I present this argument … one or more scholars say, “But shouldn’t I control for every-thing I can? If not, aren’t my regression coefficients biased due to excluded variables?” But this argument is not as persuasive...

Publications Strong public services for a prosperous Europe Building on Enrico Letta’s vision for a stronger single market By Sebastian Mang 24 September 2024 Download the report This...

You have to look at both sides to come have cogent analysis. 

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like Loading...

 – by New Deal democrat Today, New Deal democrat offers a Big Picture hypothesis. This is Housing Week, but there is no significant data today, and I’m going to wait for new home sales to be reported on Wednesday before commenting on how existing home sales fit in. In the meantime, let me unpack a Big Picture look. Since the Fed began actively managing interest rates over 60 years ago, expansions and recessions have followed a typical...

1.0 Introduction Where do prices come from in mainstream economics? As far as I know, some hard questions were raised half a century ago. They still have not been answered, I gather. 2.0 No Agent Makes Prices Consider competitive markets, as defined in marginalist economics for most of the twentieth century. This implies that agents in the market take prices as given. From Steve Keen, I know that if only a countable infinity of consumers and firms exist, the agents are systematically...

Big Pharma has become a familiar whipping boy in the debate over healthcare costs. CAR-T therapies to treat certain cancers, for example, can cost between half a million and a million dollars for a single treatment course. What’s the prospect of a cancer cure worth to you?GLP-1 receptor agonists like semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound) are transforming the lives of obese patients. For most people, these drugs will have...

Trumps Court Cases an Update by Joyce Vance Civil Discourse Just so you know, I am not kidding. This reads as a soap opera. Poor Trump so many issue . . . Full time subscriber to Civil Discourse. Hope ou enjoy his reading of he issues, ~~~~~~~ This week, two very important Legal World developments will take place. The first is a Mississippi case that could end up having a national impact. On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of...

by Steve Hutkins Save the Post Office In 2020, when the United States Postal Service began an ambitious plan to modernize and consolidate services in the middle of the pandemic. Its slow service wound up disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters whose ballots never made it to their elections offices in time. Four years later – by some measures – USPS performance is now actually worse, with another nail-biter of an election...

Commenter Jane on the News Media Lying to the Public Commentary I know that things cost more now.  Much of that has nothing to do with what the federal government does or does not do.  The government did not force suppliers to raise their profit percentages when their costs went up, that was just greed seizing an opportunity.  Much of the supply chain problem started overseas, with Covid.  Not even Trump’s fault.   It certainly wasn’t the fault...