I thought I's just recount two happy first world efficiency tales. The first: my HP laptop had been playing up. I thought that the hard drive was wonky. At first I interacted with my guy in South Africa from whom I purchased it, thinking that I'd have weird issues with my international warranty from SA. He said I'd have to speak to an HP outlet or something. Then I spoke to the departmental computer guy who told me to phone to 'numero verde' on the HP website....

John Hawks - Organizing the "Idea Marketplace"Alan S. Blinder - Cash for Clunkers or Eco-Friendly StimulusSusan Neiman - Change Germans Can't Believe InIMF - IMF Data Map (HT Economist's View)ASLL - Markets vs. CapitalismNYT - David Brooks - The Biggest Issue (includes James Heckman on whom I've blogged previously) Chris Blattman - Cheap Advice, twiceVox EU - WTO's DifficultiesThe Fox Bust - Oh the woes of the Propaganda machine (HT: Mike) And because I think it's...

Today I comment on the final piece (of the three part series) involving John List. This final piece, Levitt and List (2008) 'Homo Economicus Evolves', is basically a summing up of the research that Levitt and List did for their 2007 JEP piece (part 1 of the series), with some additional points and research emerging from List's JPE piece (part 2 of the series). I will simply comment on those additional pieces as the basic ideas have already been summarized in my two...

Today's post is the second in the series of three on articles by John List, specifically List (2007) 'On The Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games' from the Journal of Political Economy. Results from the Dictator Game - a typical experiment used in behavioural economics - are thought to justify the existence of (pro)social preferences. John List's contribution in this paper is to propose (in line with Bardsley, 2005) that the dictator game should...

John List (on whose recent comment in Science I commented on here) wrote a brilliant piece for the Journal of Political Economy late last year, along with another article co-authored by Steve Levitt (of Freakonomics acclaim) and finally another (again co-authored with Levitt) in the Perspectives section of Science (Feb, 2008). I am going to do a sequence of reports on each of the articles, starting with the List & Levitt (2007) JEL piece, then on to List (2007)...

Eurekalert - No Gender Differences in math performance (though they use averages, whereas others have argued that there should be no average difference, but the variation is lower for girls than for boys)The Economist - Do Economists Need Brains? (Neuroeconomics)Tim Harford (CC) - Does recognition actually work?Esther Dulfo (CC) - What makes creative capitalism hard?John Roemer (CC) - Tax the RichRaphael Auer (Vox EU) - How can we end poverty? The Determinants of DevelopmentHertz...

David Colander has been a critic of economic education and the core of (Walrasian) economics for some time. In his (2005) article, 'The Making of an Economist: Redux' he looks at the state of economics education: the experiences and beliefs of graduate students and the thoughts of economics professors and professionals. The article has recently been expanded into a book, it is this book which is the subject of Daniel Hamermesh's review in the recent Journal of Economic...

Shermer - How anecdotes trump evidenceJohn Hawks - How to blog, get tenure and prosperNeuroanthropology - Neurotosh, Neurodosh and NeurodashNeuroanthropology - Psychiatry affects human psychologyBruce Levine - The Science of Happiness: Is it All Bullshit?Brad DeLong - Top Economics BlogsEamonn Butler - Adam Smith: Economics can set you freeJoseph Stiglitz - Fannie's and Freddie's Free LunchOn South Africa:BD - A Distressing Record of Siding With The Bad GuysM&G...

Shermer - Toward a Type 1 CivilisationSachs on Project Syndicate - Where are the Global Leaders?Chronicle of Higher Education - Dispute over Economics of File SharingDani Rodrik - The Death of the Globalization ConsensusBarack Obama - Yad Vashem En...

Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, considered how an individual's moral sentiments affect their acts in the world in ways that are contrary to self-interest. Smith's first sentence sets up his thinking, How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. ...

Diversity facilitates cooperation according to research published in the latest Nature. The paper fits well into the literature in evolutionary game theory on the prisoner's dilemma and public goods games. I'll give a very brief look at some of the points I found pertinent in the paper.Santos, Santos and Pacheco's main assertion is that diversity promotes cooperation, specifically:[C]ooperation is promoted by the diversity associated with the number and size of the...

See this article by Esther Duflo at Vox EU - Food Prices: The Need for Insurance It's a bit of an old article (in the blogging world) being from April (shock, horror). However, I wanted to refer to it because one thing I don't get is why she refers to it being paradoxical that it takes more grain to produce a calorie of meat than it does to produce the equivalent calorie with grain alone. To me it follows logically because our bodies (and the bodies of animals generally)...

Mike Moffatt - Economics of FitnessNYT - No Tuition University EducationM&G - Judiciary JudgedKennedy - Nanny-Minded GovernmentsVox EU - Performance Gender Gap: Does competition matter?Mind Hacks - Values, taste perception and psychological blind spotsFreakonomics - Financial Liter...

I wish to refer you to this post from Vox EU on a new paper from Bruno S. Frey and Susanne Neckermann. If Frey's name is familiar, it might be because of his recent book, part of the happiness economics frenzy, called Happiness: A Revolution in Economics. Anyway, I am not here to comment on that today. Instead I will comment on the article. First, a pedantic note. The first couple of sentences: If an alien were to look at the social life of people on earth, itwould...

Vox EU - Child Health ad Intergenerational Transmission of HC (particularly good)Balloon Juice - Our Continuing Disgrace Frank Rich - It's the Economic Stupidity, StupidWillem Buiter - There is never a right time to tackle moral hazardPsychopharmaparenting - The Word - From the Colbert Report...

Adam Smith did not intend the 'invisible hand' as the mythic mechanism that it is now thought to be. This is the main thesis of a recent conference paper for the History of Economic Thought 40th Conference provided by Professor Gavin Kennedy, titled 'Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand: from metaphor to myth'. You can see Prof Kennedy referring to the paper here on his blog Adam Smith's Lost Legacy. Kennedy discusses the fact that Smith referred to the idea of the invisible...

Poor research performance is being rewarded, argue researchers at South Africa's top universities according to a recent M&G article. The problem with this article is that the journalist, Primashni Gower, does not pick up on the nuances of the situation at all. Yes, research grants do drive individual university research. Yes, it is in the interests of each individual researcher to gain access to as much research money as possible in order to do decent research....