Archives: Posts From December 2007

Global Economy Growing, Despite U.S. Slowdown
By Travis Pantin | Fri, 28 Dec 2007 at 12:25 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: While America's economy suffers, the global economy is growing at its fastest rate since the 1980s, according to the calculations of an economics professor at the University of Michigan, Mark Perry. "Over the last four years, the world economy has grown ...

An Argument for Buying Lottery Tickets
By Travis Pantin | Thu, 27 Dec 2007 at 12:21 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Buying a lottery ticket can be an economically rational thing to do, finance blogger Felix Salmon writes on Market Movers. He presents two arguments for why we should feel free to "go out and buy a lottery ticket without feeling guilty." First, Mr. ...

Commerce Department's Positive Spin on Retail Figures
By Travis Pantin | Wed, 26 Dec 2007 at 12:13 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: The Commerce Department has been putting an overly positive spin on holiday sales data lately, the chief market strategist for Ritholtz Research, Barry Ritholtz, writes on the Big Picture blog. Personal consumption expenditures last month increased $110 ...

Jobless Numbers as Economic Beacons
By Travis Pantin | Fri, 21 Dec 2007 at 12:09 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: "If there's any one still wondering if the economy's slowing, this morning's update on weekly jobless claims may help blow some of the clouds of doubt away," the editor of the Capital Spectator, James Picerno, wrote yesterday. Jobless claims grew to ...

The Economics of Shrinking Populations
By Travis Pantin | Thu, 20 Dec 2007 at 12:02 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Most of Middle and Eastern Europe is projected to suffer from rapidly shrinking population over the next decade, according to data released by the United Nations. On the VoxEU blog, three German economists explain how they think these changes will likely ...

Why Singapore's Guest Worker Scheme Works
By Travis Pantin | Wed, 19 Dec 2007 at 11:46 AM | Permalink
Excerpt: At Marginal Revolution, an economics professor at George Mason University, Tyler Cowen, comments on Singapore's "guest worker" immigration policy, which has raised to 42.6% the percentage of the country's foreign-born population. The policy has been an ...

Why a Liberal Arts Education Makes Economic Sense
By Travis Pantin | Tue, 18 Dec 2007 at 8:58 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: On Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen makes an economic argument in favor of a liberal arts education, saying those who are able to overcome linguistic, national, and cultural biases are in the best position to win economic gains. Mr. Cowen recommends ...

Making Bets Dollar's Fall Has Ended
By Travis Pantin | Tue, 18 Dec 2007 at 8:51 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: On Carpe Diem, a University of Michigan professor, Mark Perry, looks at market signals to predict the fate of the dollar. The greenback "is now selling at a one-year forward premium vs. at least a dozen currencies," he writes. This indicates that many ...

'Silly'? A Case for Heightening Taxes on the Tall
By Travis Pantin | Thu, 13 Dec 2007 at 9:12 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Tall people earn higher wages on average than short people do, according to a 2004 study by economists Timothy Judge and Daniel Cable. On his blog, Greg Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard, points his readers to a research paper where he takes ...

Fed's New Plan Amounts to a Bailout
By Travis Pantin | Thu, 13 Dec 2007 at 7:49 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: "The Blair/Paulson Plan, whatever it is, is not a bailout. But this, this is a bailout," economics blogger Steve Waldman writes about the Fed's announcement yesterday that it will establish a Term Auction Facility designed to help banks by alleviating ...

A Tax on Large Campaign Contributions?
By Travis Pantin | Tue, 11 Dec 2007 at 7:37 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: The anonymous economics blogger at Blue Matter presents a novel answer to the question of how best to regulate campaign finance: "why not tax 'unwanted' or 'undesirable' contributions and spending proportionately to the degree of their undesirability ...

Solving the Holiday Cash Conundrum
By Travis Pantin | Tue, 11 Dec 2007 at 1:15 AM | Permalink
Excerpt: "The deadweight loss of Christmas" is an example commonly used by economics professors to illustrate a certain kind of market inefficiency. The example goes like this: Suppose Tim spends $50 on a present for Sally, but Sally would only have been willing ...

Economic Inequality Through the Ages
By Travis Pantin | Wed, 5 Dec 2007 at 9:48 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: A professor of economics at University of California, Davis, Peter Lindert, asks in a paper published on VoxEU (voxeu.org) how modern economic inequality compares with that of the Roman Empire and other ancient societies. His research, conducted with ...

Talented Flee Universal Health Care
By Travis Pantin | Wed, 5 Dec 2007 at 12:42 AM | Permalink
Excerpt: Universal health insurance causes the most skilled doctors to gravitate toward fields such as elective plastic surgery, a professor at the Harvard Law School, J. Mark Ramseyer, writes in a recent paper. In his paper, "Talent and Expertise under ...

How Creativity Affects Real Estate Prices
By Travis Pantin | Wed, 5 Dec 2007 at 12:38 AM | Permalink
Excerpt: How closely are fluctuations in housing prices correlated with the creativity of the people who live in the neighborhood? Quite, it seems. Richard Florida (creativeclass.typepad.com), who developed a measure called the "creativity index," gives us reason ...

What's Off About Carbon Offsetting
By Travis Pantin | Sun, 2 Dec 2007 at 8:42 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: The carbon offsetting movement, whereby individual businesses voluntarily opt to pay fines for their carbon emissions, is fundamentally flawed, a University of Chicago law professor, Richard Posner, writes on his blog. "The most serious drawback of the ...