The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Methodology, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways, labor markets on May 18th, 2012
We had a senior honors student do a paper on the Social Security Disability program that highlighted the trend in Disability takeup rates over the past 30 years and its impact on the federal budget and long-term budget outlook for the entire Social Security program. Today 1 in 5 social security dollars are paid out [...]
Posted in Behavior, Environment, Methodology, You Can't Have it Both Ways on May 14th, 2012
Caveat Emptor: I believe the Precautionary Principle is bunk. What is the Precautionary Principle? It’s a doctrine that turns the tables on where the burden of proof in a policy ought to fall (it’s not just an argument, it’s a policy response). I’d suggest that in “typical” discourse and policy, the burden of proof falls [...]
Posted in Health Care, Methodology on Apr 23rd, 2012
In labor economics we measure something called the poverty gap. Why do we do this? Because looking at the poverty rate as a measure of poverty tells an incomplete picture of the question we are worried about. For example if I show you two countries, call them Cowistan and Bullistan and in each of then [...]
Posted in Macroeconomics, Methodology on Apr 9th, 2012
Via Tyler Cowen, the very worthy Steve Randy Waldman discusses the Post-Keynesian argument for fiscal policy, even when we are not at the zero bound: Post-Keynesians did predict a crisis, on broadly the terms that we actually experienced. They argue that there are adverse side effects to using monetary policy to manage aggregate demand. Although [...]
Posted in Methodology on Apr 9th, 2012
“These are not quantitative matters.” This was going to be a long post. But I think enough information will be conveyed by the question, “OK, fine, I agree. But WHICH particular things, and WHY those particular things?” Enjoy your day.
Posted in Methodology on Apr 3rd, 2012
From tomorrow’s newspaper: All of which leads to the biggest problem with the State Integrity Investigation—the dearth of evidence demonstrating that many of the promoted reforms, such as public input into legislative redistricting and registration of lobbyists, actually prevent corruption. Despite years of effort by proponents of strict campaign-finance laws, there’s no strong evidence that [...]
Posted in Competition, Methodology, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 3rd, 2012
One of the towering figures (literally too!) of 20th century public intellectuals was John Kenneth Galbraith. In 1958 he made a huge splash with his book The Affluent Society which was a criticism of resource depletion, inequality and consumerism, among other ideas. It is actually quite an enjoyable read, I do recommend it. One of [...]
Posted in Environment, Methodology on Apr 2nd, 2012
I see that many folks decided to turn down their light-bulbs and instead use candles. To which I can only ask: does anyone know if candles are worse for the environment than light bulbs powered even by coal-fired nuclear plants. Hint: look at the prices. Has anyone bothered to research this, or was this the [...]
Posted in Education, Methodology on Apr 2nd, 2012
Open up any college course catalog. Check out the course titles. And ask yourself: what will I learn in this course? If you saw a course titled “Unicycle Justice” what would you think you were going to learn? Well, something about unicycles I am sure. And if you took a philosophy course on Unicycle Justice, [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Education, Environment, Methodology on Mar 30th, 2012
It is extremely common in the modern “E”nvironmental movement to see the conflation of normative opinions of what various environmental policies ought to do with actual claims regarding the actual conduct and character of real world environmental policy. Â Even though many of us believe that good species conservation policy (for example) ought to encourage the [...]
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