Archives: Posts From November 2007

Left and Right: Time to Actually Talk
By Travis Pantin | Fri, 30 Nov 2007 at 11:41 AM | Permalink
Excerpt: Libertarian economist Tyler Cowen has a radical suggestion: the left and the right should stop generalizing about each other and actually talk for a change. He says both sides should take some time to interview their opposition before claiming to ...

Connecting People's Names and Their Behavior
By Travis Pantin | Wed, 28 Nov 2007 at 8:28 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Do birth names dictate behavior? A professor of management at the University of California, San Diego, Leif Nelson, and a management professor at Yale University, and Joseph Simmons, believe they do. In a paper titled "Moniker Maladies: When Names ...

Lots of 'Love' for the Lowly Dollar
By Travis Pantin | Wed, 28 Nov 2007 at 12:40 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: On the Stalwart (thestalwart.com), Joseph Weisenthal has an unusual suggestion: Maybe it's time to start buying back those sickly dollars. Mr. Weisenthal understands that he might be relatively alone in this view. "It's not that the Dollar has such ...

Mistaken Thinking on the Dollar and Oil
By Travis Pantin | Tue, 27 Nov 2007 at 12:34 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Many economically literate bloggers are patiently trying to explain why the falling price of the dollar isn't a direct cause of the rising cost of oil. The flawed logic, as applied by Presidents Chavez and Ahmadinejad and some reporters from important ...

Hate Modernity? Then Buy Local
By Travis Pantin | Mon, 26 Nov 2007 at 11:13 AM | Permalink
Excerpt: Economics bloggers across the Web are lashing out against "localization," a movement based on the doctrine that consuming locally grown goods is the most socially and environmentally responsible way to live. On Coyote Blog, Warren Meyer of Phoenix calls ...

When Business School Students Get Married
By Travis Pantin | Mon, 26 Nov 2007 at 11:08 AM | Permalink
Excerpt: Congratulations to Charlie Cooper, a student at the University of Chicago Business School, who got married earlier this summer. While planning his wedding, Mr. Cooper had the sort of idea that one might expect from a business school student: Why not ...

Growth Policy Vs. Social Policy
By Travis Pantin | Tue, 20 Nov 2007 at 5:54 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: A professor of international political economy at Harvard, Dani Rodrik, presents his readers with a dilemma: per-capita income in a "landlocked African country," which he declines to name, "stands at a fraction of levels it had reached in the 1970s, with ...

The NFL as American Microcosm
By Travis Pantin | Mon, 19 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: A professor at the University of Michigan, Mark Perry (mjperry.blogspot.com), compares income inequality in America and within the community of National Football League players. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the top 25% of taxpayers earned ...

The Credit Crunch as Game Theory
By TRAVIS PANTIN | Fri, 16 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: A professor at the London School of Economics, Willem Buiter, posts a lengthy treatment of the current credit crisis on his blog, Maverecon (blogs.ft.com/maverecon). His conclusion: "The single best thing that could happen would be for the true magnitude ...

An Inflation Target in All but Name
By TRAVIS PANTIN | Thu, 15 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: Greg Ip of Real Time Economics (blogs.wsj.com/economics) reflects on the Federal Reserve's announcement yesterday that it will seek to improve communications with the public by both increasing the frequency and lengthening the horizon of Federal Open ...

The Politics of Flu Shots
By TRAVIS PANTIN | Wed, 14 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution (marginalrevolution.com) stirred up a debate in the blogosphere by asking who really benefits when he gets a flu shot. "People who have the flu spread the virus so getting a flu shot not only reduces the probability ...

Pursuit of Happiness and a Rising Dollar
By TRAVIS PANTIN | Tue, 13 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: DEBATING HAPPINESS This past Saturday, the Economist magazine inaugurated a series of public debates in New York (economist.com/nydebates) that pitted well-known bloggers Tyler Cowen and Will Wilkinson against top-tier economists Betsey Stevenson and ...

Milton Friedman Answers Phil Donahue's Charges
By TRAVIS PANTIN | Mon, 12 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: MILTON FRIEDMAN SPEAKS … As the one-year anniversary of economist Milton Friedman's death approaches, Tom Armstrong at the Armchair Economist (blog.financeandeconomicscenter.com) points us toward a short video from 1979 wherein Friedman delivers a sound ...

How Banks Are Bitten By a Law They Sought
By | Fri, 9 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: TOO MUCH OF WHAT'S WISHED FOR Naked Capitalism (nakedcapitalism.com) highlights the irony of the bankruptcy law, which was changed in 2005 after banks lobbied to toughen rules against credit card borrowers. These very laws are now hurting the same banks ...

Three Levels of Assets; Radiohead's Happy Tune
By | Thu, 8 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: $100 BILLION WRITE-DOWN Nouriel Roubini writes in his blog.rgemonitor.com, that the once obscure FASB 157 regulation is now turning heads. The rule, which is set to be implemented on November 15, will require that companies — especially investment banks ...

The Multibillion-Dollar Iceberg
By | Wed, 7 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: BLOOD IN THE STREET Nouriel Roubini at RGE Monitor (rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/) has been warning that the bloodbath in the credit and financial markets will "sharply worsen." In a Monday post, he called the hope that the credit and liquidity crunch ...

The Long March to Wealthiness
By | Tue, 6 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: BLOOMING MILLIONAIRES Let 1,000 millionaires bloom in China and America, Professor Mark Perry writes at Carpe Diem (mjperry.blogspot.com). He focuses on a report issued by the Boston Consulting Group on millionaires in the land where Mao once said "Let ...

Spotting the Billionaire - And the Wealth of Sweden
By | Mon, 5 Nov 2007 | Permalink
Excerpt: CLOTHES OF THE BILLIONAIRE . . . If the billionaire David Koch were walking down the street, could you, at a glance, pick him out of a crowd by the way he was dressed? Don Boudreau, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University, ...