I really want to recommend Mark Thoma's commentary on the economic policy of Obama with some of his own ideas and caveats. Here's a link to the Leonhardt article in the NYT on Obama's policy (to which Thoma refers), from the NYT Magazine. Please also take a look at the article that he recommends in another recent post referring to an article by Olivier Blanchard on 'The State of Macro'. I'd also recommend this recent article from Jeffrey Sachs on the impact of the...

Ok, so staying with Mary & Greg, my wife's Aunt and Uncle, has allowed me access to a number of fine books. One theme that runs through all of these books is that they contain nothing, formally, that has anything to do with economics (though I cannot help but think economically in the face of some of the ideas, but more on that another time). E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of The World is meant to be an advanced child's or early teen's book of the history of the...

Ladies and Gents, I am currently away from home seeing family in the UK, aunts, uncles, cousins and cousins' children will be taking up much of my time. However, I will be attempting to blog when I can on papers that I manage to read (somehow), or newspaper articles that surprise me, or the extent conversations with my wife's cousin (a doctor of nuclear physics at Warwick, his wife is similarly employed at Oxford - we always have fantastic conversations on Darwin,...

My friend, graduate student in cognitive science and fellow blogger, Michael Meadon over at Ionian Enchantment is calling out to all South African Science Bloggers. So, if you are a South African Science Blogger (where science does include social sciences, I am being 'listed' as an 'economist') then please click on this link and see his post, send him an email and let him know. I am all in favour of a blog carnival by South Africans for South Africans (and anyone...

Here's a quick summary of books that I have been reading recently, both fiction and non-fiction. Non-FictionFriedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom is Hayek's major work criticising the basis of socialist 'planning' as capable of maintaining individual liberty. Specifically, as planning becomes more and more prevalent in a society, the respect of individual liberties is likely to decrease and society will probably tend towards Totalitarianism. The book has assisted...

Friedman - Flush With EnergyDubner (Freakonomics) - Today's ChinaLevitt (Freakonomics) - Coase in ActionLeib (Freakonomics) - Friendship and the LawQPQ - Gevisser & FeinsteinJB Rosser - Who are the Ossetians?NYT - Energy FictionsAnd one of the videos from Milton Friedman's 'Free To Choose' series in 1990 - I just watched the debate in the last 15 minutes - a little tangle between Milton Friedman, David Brooks and James Galbraith. <embed id="VideoPlayback" style="width:400px;height:326px"...

COSATU marches struck Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban this week, the motivation for these protests was the 'rising high food prices and electricity rates'. See articles from the Sowetan, The Times and The Guardian. Demands by the unions include:Government investment in infrastructureGovernment subsidies for essential commoditiesHigher wages for workersThe resignation of ministers if workers lose their jobsI think that the first is a valid appeal and one that would...

Dani Rodrik - Don't Cry for DohaBrad De Long (Project Syndicate Op-Ed) - On The Knife EdgeRobert Reich - Democratic Capitalism vs. Authoritarian CapitalismJoseph Stiglitz - Turn Left for GrowthJustin Wolfers - Happiness Inequality I, II and IIIIan Ayres - Obama and MeFritz Foley (Vox EU) - Welfare Payments and Crime (Really interesting and intuitive)The Age - Musical Key To Unlocking Teenage Wasteland And this fantastic campaign ad for Paris Hilton's presidential campaign...

Are economic experiments representative of underlying sentiments, or social preferences? This was the topic of a recent series of posts I did on articles by John List two of which were in collaboration with Steven Levitt (you can find them here, here and here). One of the main papers to which List referred was a paper by Nicholas Bardsley, then a working paper, and recently published in Experimental Economics. So that's what I'm reviewing today: Nicholas Bardsley's...

Justin Wolfers - Externalities in the ClassroomJustin Wolfers - Why don't hotels use Roombas?Economist - Common SenseVox EU - Why did Georgia lag behind Estonia?Bill Gates - Making Capitalism More Creative (Time Magazine)CC - Gates Foundation on Creative CapitalismCC - Stephen Landsburg - Response To Gates FoundationEd Glaeser - The folly of 'fixing' energy price hikesEd Glaeser - Is Geography Destiny?Paul Krugman - Slo-mo Meltd...

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in their essay 'What is middle class about the middle classes around the world?' continue a strand of thought that originated in their previous essay, 'The Economic Lives of the Poor'. Specifically they contrast the lives of 'the middle class' in a sample of countries worldwide, with the 'lives of the poor' that they discussed in their previous essay. In particular, they attempt to address the question: "Is there anything special...

I have just read this article from the M&G on the lead-up to the Jacob Zuma trial. In it Kgalema Motlanthe, deputy president of the ANC, said: If, as a society, we are serious about what we have enshrined in our Bill of Rights, we are bound to accept that the presumption of innocence is not partial or discretionary... Until such time as a court tells us otherwise, Jacob Zuma is an innocent person. That is why the ANC has supported him until now, and will continue...

I have been reading Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which I found in a bookshop in Florence the other day. I have been intending to read it for some time and was going to buy it in London in a few weeks until happening upon it at The Paperback Exchange.Hayek says the following, The whole system will tend towards that plebiscitarian dictatorship in which the head of government is from time to time confirmed in his position by popular vote, but where he has all...

An article in the New York Times entitled, 'Calculating Economics of an Eye for an Eye', discusses the work of Naci H. Mocan, arguing that his work on vengeance "opens up a new area for exploration." Um... No. Vengeance has become the centre of a research program in experimental economics to understand the dynamics of of cultural salienc of actions and antisocial punishment. In terms of culture, this has had more substantial investigation since the work by Henrich et...

I'm going to spend the next couple of review posts on two papers by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two development economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). The paper I review today is their 'The Economic Lives of the Poor' (2007), JEP article. The second post will be on their JEP article 'What is middle class about the middle classes around the world?' (both links are to ungated working paper...