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  • Some brew

    It's not beating a dead horse to expand on yesterday's post re Prof. Frank's huge "if". The horse is not dead and the consequences are not pretty. New Urban News includes this item re $1.5 billion in stimulus money to promote "liveable communities" (H/T Alan Pisarski).The spenders have no clue [...]
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    Posted: December 07, 2009, 9:09am EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • If pigs could fly

    In today's NY Times, Economist Robert Frank writes "How to Run Up A Deficit, Without Fear ...Taking on debt can be a good thing, if government spends wisely."That's a very big "if". Prof. Frank is clearly a smart man and many smart men and women speak this way. But at [...]
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    Posted: December 06, 2009, 5:17pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • They can't beat our weather

    Cities compete on many margins, but who would have thought of tours of the city's ganglands? Today's LA Times reports "The 'hood as a tourist attraction ... Activists hope to use money from bus tours for community good." Most cities have cheerleaders who openly sanitize. What is interesting about the' [...]
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    Posted: December 05, 2009, 9:34am EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Oppossite ends of the spectrum

    Reason's Martin Bailey occasionally writes about "Markets, Not Mandates". In the January 2010 issue (not the one linked; the new one not yet online), he notes that if the tax credit now available only via employer purchased health insurance plans were universally available, many people would shop for cheap high-deductible [...]
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    Posted: December 04, 2009, 9:23am EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Inconvenient poll

    We are often told that Oregonians are more enlightened than the rest of us. So the report that "Poll finds Tigard residents prefer widening Oregon 99W to adding light rail" cannot be true (H/T The American Dream Communicator).It's really a very old story. Public transit is best for other people. [...]
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    Posted: December 02, 2009, 4:24pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Perspective

    I often cite Cox and Alm's Myths of the Rich and Poor when getting students to think about the poverty stats and the general hand-wringing over how bad things are. Most people take little time to reflect on the stunning differences between their own material wealth and that of their [...]
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    Posted: November 29, 2009, 4:57pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • The first ever?

    Cap and trade = carbon tax plus corporate welfare. That's apparently a Greg Mankiw theorem. The corollary is that carbon taxes are the way to go. This morning's WSJ piece on AC Pigou cites the "bipartisan appeal" of Pigouvian taxes. And these will not be politicized? Why is the U.S. [...]
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    Posted: November 28, 2009, 11:19am EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Researchers' bias

    Dan Klein points me to this essay by Michael Marlow. Bias among researchers is what we prefer not to think about, but it is probably inescapable. Marlow notes "good intentions bias" in his discussion of research on smoking bans.I tell students that reading widely is the only antidote. Waiting for [...]
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    Posted: November 26, 2009, 7:57am EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Embarrassing

    Religion gets a bad rap whenever true believer zealots are prompted to use it to violate any or all of the 10 commandments. This is a very old story.And some have claimed that Green has become the religion of those who cannot abide the old-time religions any longer. To be [...]
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    Posted: November 23, 2009, 4:48pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Planning for the future?

    Alan Pisarski testified to a House sub-committee hearing on the reauthorization of the omnibus transportation bill. Among other things, he said this:Design the transportation system of the future that will serve the needs of a population with a value of time double of that of today’s average traveler (say $50 [...]
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    Posted: November 21, 2009, 12:50pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Shedding light

    Speaking of cool data, everyone has seen the famous satellite shot of lights for North v South Korea. Vernon Henderson and his colleagues have exploited accumulated lights data from outer space and are using them to test stories about development contrasts around the world. And in many places where the [...]
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    Posted: November 20, 2009, 1:07pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • A Federal Govt Program You Have to Like

    The Census Bureau abandoned its long-form questionnaire from the decennial census, but switched to annual (American Community Survey) surveys that cover the same ground (and more). There will soon be the beginnings of a time series of very rich data. I just heard a presentation by Bureau staff and got [...]
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    Posted: November 20, 2009, 1:00pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • LA story

    Friday's LA Times reported "Gold Line links downtown to East LA ... The 6-mile light rail extension, which cost $898 million, will open Sunday with free rides and entertainment." The report also mentioned that MTA expects 13,000 daily riders.The original 13.7-mile Gold Line link from downtown LA to Pasadena opened [...]
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    Posted: November 14, 2009, 2:40pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Who's counting?

    Ken Orski reports the following:In a revealing article that should be required reading for smart growth advocates everywhere, Gerrit-Jan Knaap, executive director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, offers a sobering appraisal of Maryland's smart growth policy. Writing in the current [...]
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    Posted: November 12, 2009, 10:30am EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Still dull and boring

    Richard Florida has had some success helping urban economics and urban geography (and related fields) shed their dull and boring images. Researchers now try to identify the places that the young, cool, hip, creative types prefer. But every so often, Joel Kotkin comes along to show us that it's not [...]
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    Posted: November 08, 2009, 10:46am EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Many densities, many foods

    My favorite LA novel is The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle. Another great guide to today's LA is "The Scavenger: Pig's ear, octopus, and fish-kidney curry with LA's most adventurous eater" in the Nov 9 New Yorker. The report follows the adventures of Jonathan Gold, "the high-low priest of the" [...]
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    Posted: November 05, 2009, 10:14am EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Was Ayn Rand boorish?

    The November (2009) Reason includes "Are Property Rights Enough? Should libertarians care about cultural values? A reason debate". It seems to me that libertarian (or any serious) discussions cannot avoid touching on cultural questions. But libertarian individuals and positions are another matter. All are products of a culture and all [...]
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    Posted: November 03, 2009, 3:29pm EST
    by Peter Gordon

  • Never easy being green

    Everyone knows that social engineering is hard work. But look at this: "French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality". The thieves and opportunists are not moved by the plight of the polar bears or the shrinking ice caps. But the good guys are not giving up. They are ready with their [...]
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    Posted: October 31, 2009, 4:23pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • More from the "You can't make this stuff up" dept.

    From today's WSJ: "Politicians Butt In at Bailed-Out GM" Read more below. Setting the salaries of a few senior execs on Wall Street is nothing. Running one of the country's largest companies from Washington, now that's getting somewhere. Yes, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste if you are [...]
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    Posted: October 29, 2009, 2:25pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • I wonder

    Were there serious policy errors that led to the current economic crisis? Or did people on Wall Street suddenly (ca 2004) become extraordinarily greedy? Listen to this. [...]
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    Posted: October 26, 2009, 9:15pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Fun to read

    The idea that "institutions matter" has been embraced by many economists and has garnered a bunch of Nobel prizes, including the most recent ones. Does culture matter? Dumb question? Comparisons of the two Koreas, the two Germanies (until 1989), the various Chinas as well as Finland vs Estonia have been [...]
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    Posted: October 26, 2009, 10:54am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Clunkers and reformers

    Last night's 60-minutes included a segment on Medicare fraud. The President's claim that Medicare has very low administrative costs had already been challenged, but last night's TV segment might get some "public option" fans to re-think this clunker.One of the best analyses of where we are headed on health care [...]
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    Posted: October 26, 2009, 10:30am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • No joke

    I always thought that Fox News' use of the "fair and balanced" moniker was a cute in-joke.Yet, the current round of salary-setting by the administration is routinely explained with the same rhetoric.Hubristic actions on Wall Street and in Washington DC combined in ways that ended up being a witches brew' [...]
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    Posted: October 23, 2009, 8:03am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Lists

    It's nice to be on this list. It's even nicer to stay on. So, remaining for a while is the project. [...]
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    Posted: October 23, 2009, 7:53am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Multipliers

    Here is one discussion of multipliers and what we know as the current experiment reveals itself.There are two principles that are often skipped in these discussions. First, there are hypothetical multipliers that come out of macro-models and that require a ceteris paribus assumption. But the ex post evaluations of multiplier [...]
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    Posted: October 21, 2009, 12:05pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Greenery

    This morning's WSJ includes "5 Technologies That Could Change Everything." Yesterday;s LA Times included "He's light-years away from EU's bright idea ... Taking a dim view of the incandescent ban, a German scrambles to snag a lifetime bulb supply. He's not alone."It's quite plausible that we will soon look back [...]
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    Posted: October 19, 2009, 1:02pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Sin in the suburbs

    Ken Orski nicely summarizes the debate over the Obama Administration's efforts to make the federal government a player in local "livability" land use-transportation planning. It is worth reading (below).Sin taxes are supposed to raise revenues and reduce sin. Trouble is that it's very hard to get both results. Mostly, we [...]
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    Posted: October 16, 2009, 2:57pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Theorems

    Some weeks ago, the WSJ's wine critics wrote about all the bad stuff being shipped from Australia to the U.S.These past days, we have been in Australia and tasted wines that are (here goes) divine. And I find that many of my favorites are not available at the web sites [...]
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    Posted: October 13, 2009, 4:35pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Contracts hung out to dry

    Statists feast on the "market failure" idea. Trouble is that too few bother to be critical. "Externalities" are everywhere and allegations are sufficient to extend the police (or other) power of local (or other) government. "The environment" and "climate change" are special because they can be used to add sanctimony [...]
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    Posted: October 11, 2009, 3:25pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Another 800-pounder

    All governments grow. But the details are always fascinating. In this piece, Fred Siegel and Dan Di Salvo write about the rise of public sector unions and their contribution to the problem. In all of the hand-wringing over state and local government budget problems, this part of the story has [...]
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    Posted: October 07, 2009, 3:38pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • 800-lb Fact

    Becker-Posner blog about the Swiss health care system, its advantages and disadvantages as well as why it may not be a good fit in the U.S. They actually mention that the U.S. has a large underclass while Switzerland does not. Well, yes. But you're not supposed to mention that. The' [...]
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    Posted: October 06, 2009, 5:34pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Olympic interludes

    The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson ("Gangland: Who controls the streets of Rio de Janeiro?") reports that Rio is "the top-ranked in the world for 'violent intentional deaths.'"How will that work for the 2016 Olympics? Beijing got mixed results with efforts to dampen air quality problems. Los Angeles got better' [...]
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    Posted: October 02, 2009, 12:49pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Sex in the suburbs

    Today's WSJ includes "The Next Youth-Magnet Cities". The piece reports the views of six experts who agree that Washington DC, Seattle, New York, Portland, Austin are the now the "hot" places where "cool" young people go (not the reporter's cliche). Interestingly, in 2000-2008, all but New York had suburbs that [...]
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    Posted: September 30, 2009, 10:55am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Highest and best use

    This LA Times story indicates that a strip club near LAX is being torn down to be replaced by an airport parking lot. And in the WSJ piece re transit in LA in my earlier blog today, the report mentioned that Michael Dukakis takes the bus to LAX. If only [...]
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    Posted: September 26, 2009, 7:18pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Tax all foreigners living abroad

    Monty Python once suggested "we tax all foreigners living abroad." Bob Nelson notes that this is exactly what Delaware's Robber Barons are doing. The Turnpike has few alternatives and most of its customers are from other states.Those of us who advocate peak-load tolling should put on our public choice hats [...]
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    Posted: September 26, 2009, 10:48am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Old story

    Los Angeles will never be a transit town. Obvious to some, but others want to find out for themselves. First-hand experience is a pretty good teacher. Trouble is that planners and politicians continue to waste resources (read other people's money) in the vain pursuit. [...]
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    Posted: September 26, 2009, 10:40am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Not exactly

    In the Sep 28 New Yorker, James Surowiecki writes: "When Barack Obama went to Wall Street last week,to make the case for meaningful financial regulation, he took well deserved shots at some of the villains of the financial crisis ... But to that list he could have added the credit" [...]
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    Posted: September 24, 2009, 7:31pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Good reading and good news

    I thoroughly enjoyed reading Guy Sorman's Economics Does Not Lie. It is very readable and very smart. The author brings us up to date on the state of development economics as well as the status of various developing economies. The book can be enjoyed by any intelligent layman. You can' [...]
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    Posted: September 23, 2009, 8:00pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Laugh or cry?

    And they say that you can't make this stuff up. From Cafe Hayek.Nor this. From today's WSJ.Nor this. From Aid Watch.You're not in Guatamala City, Dorothy. From the LA Times.Will annual federal borrowing in 2019 equal annual interest owed by the Treasury? From Forbes.' [...]
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    Posted: September 22, 2009, 2:42pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Success indeed

    Taking a cue from Tom Sowell, I try to disuade students from talking about "solutions". There are only trade-offs. Second on the list of offenders is the easy use of "success". Today's NY Times includes "In Phoenix, Weekend Users Make Light Rail a Success".Well, no. Just use the data in [...]
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    Posted: September 20, 2009, 11:09am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Curve-benders and footprinters

    We depend on market prices to inform us. But market prices are not omniscient and there has been a lively discussion on how to get the prices right when they are not. This is where it gets messy. Carbon taxes, if we ever get them, will be politicized. Domestic politics [...]
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    Posted: September 18, 2009, 12:55pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • More on September 2008

    Here is a close-up of the financial meltdown of 2008: the New Yorker's "Eight Days: The battle to save the American financial system." (subscription required) Well written and dramatic. Alfred Hitchcock supposedly said that drama is life with the boring parts removed. No boring parts here. But the same old [...]
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    Posted: September 17, 2009, 7:21pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • More on tracking the smarties

    In my Sep 4 post, I said something about using PUMS data to address the question of whether the "creative" people gravitate to "high density" locations. This is a favorite theme of urban economists and many others.The PUMS data are attractive because they report the education level of the migrants [...]
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    Posted: September 12, 2009, 11:05am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Profit is overhead?

    There has been a bit of comment and reaction to the President's health care speech to the joint session of Congress. This morning's WSJ editorialized re some of the gaffes.But I have seen no reaction to this:Despite all this, the insurance companies and their allies don't like this idea. They' [...]
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    Posted: September 11, 2009, 10:50am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Disconnect

    Driving the Built Environment: Going Compact has just been issued by the Transportation Research Board. You don't have to be a weatherman to figure out which way the wind is blowing. Although the committee-written report is laced with hedged language, the authors expect that more compact development is the way' [...]
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    Posted: September 07, 2009, 4:42pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Spare the "vision"

    "Map of the city" translates as Stadtplan in German. But can one have maps even when there are no plans? While there are many grand designs for cities (Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago shows up in many textbooks), there is also much of the "urban fabric" which comes about [...]
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    Posted: September 06, 2009, 12:45pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Tracking the smarties

    Enter "urban economics" density, creativity, innovation in Google Scholar and you get quite a few papers, many of which report a statistical link between local population density and some measure of creativity or success. Many of the authors admit that their measure of population (or employment) density (at the metropolitan [...]
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    Posted: September 04, 2009, 3:44pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Model mood swings?

    In yesterday's NY Times, Robert Shiller writes about mood swings ("An Echo Chamber of Boom and Bust"). In particular, "... the business cycle is tied to feedback loops involving speculative price movements and other economic activity -- and the talk that these movements incite." Yes, there are mood swings among [...]
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    Posted: August 31, 2009, 4:22pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • More Big Mac news

    When introducing students to international currency exchange rates and purchasing power parity, The Economist's Big Mac Index is usually a nice discussion starter.As useful (to me, at least), when teaching about the problems of making welfare comparisons, is Cox and Alm's Myths of Rich and Poor, where they reveal how [...]
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    Posted: August 30, 2009, 12:05pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • How to make a lot of money

    Paul Krugman finds reasons to be optimistic about the prospects of inter-city high-speed rail -- in some U.S. corridors: "we’ve got a bigger potential market for fast rail than any European country."Call me crazy, but most comparisons with Europe and Japan are misleading. Most Americans are so used to driving [...]
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    Posted: August 27, 2009, 1:15pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • As creepy as it gets

    Blood libel against Jews was once a European staple and contributed to the ugly fact that Nazi exterminators found eager accomplices in most of the countries they occupied. But we now see that the blood libel made a round-trip to the middle east and back to Europe -- as a [...]
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    Posted: August 25, 2009, 2:51pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Look around

    The Economist has this on spatial "clustering."Agglomeration economies and growth economics are slowly coming together in the literature -- as they must in a non-agricultural economy.Chris Webster and Lawrence Lai have written about the "spatial order" -- as one of five spontaneous orders. This makes great sense as we are [...]
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    Posted: August 24, 2009, 2:35pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Pay them!

    Many who travel to third world destinations find themselves in a shake-down where some street cop wants cash to let the gringo/gringita on his/her merry way. The standard explanation is that salaries are so low that this is the only plausible remedy.Now this from Germany. Large numbers of university professors [...]
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    Posted: August 22, 2009, 2:30pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Call it stimulus

    Ed Glaeser has published some posts that describe a sensible cost-benefit analysis of a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston. He finds that it is likely to be hugely cost-ineffective. I am not surprised, but I am also convinced that findings like this do not matter. There is a [...]
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    Posted: August 21, 2009, 7:43pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Fear or fantasy?

    Christopher Buckley's Boomsday was a fun read. Before anyone had heard of ObamaCare, the idea that the Federal government was on the hook for the care and feeding of a growing cohort of oldsters was well known. Buckley's spoof that end-of-life would become a political issue was perhaps slightly ahead [...]
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    Posted: August 19, 2009, 4:57pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • The economist and the grocer

    In today's NY Times, Richard Thaler writes that the "public option" of the health care "reform" platform is OK ... if. Count the number of times he uses "if".In my view, it takes a grocer to come up with a more sensible plan. Here is John Mackey's plan. And this [...]
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    Posted: August 16, 2009, 11:03pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Colleges and race

    The WSJ's Naomi Schaefer Riley recently wrote about "The Real Path to Racial Harmony". It is about the odd practices of U.S. colleges and universities when it comes to race and ethnicity. I have long been baffled by selective color blindness as practiced at my institution. Separate graduation ceremonies for [...]
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    Posted: August 15, 2009, 8:18pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • The most interesting thing I have read in a while

    The Economist of August 8 includes "A link between wealth and breeding ... The best of all possible worlds? ... It was once a rule of demography that people have fewer children as their countries get richer. That rule no longer holds true."This is one of the most interesting things [...]
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    Posted: August 09, 2009, 11:28am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • The ears have walls

    William Easterly has this hilarious and poignant response to Queen Elizabeth's question about why economists did not predict the current economic problems. Your majesty, think about efficient markets. But can he explain it to Prince Charles?Jason Zweig writes that "Data Mining Isn't a Good Bet For Stock Market Predictions" in' [...]
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    Posted: August 08, 2009, 11:30am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Listen to the cavemen

    I first visited China in the early 1980s and got caught up in the population debates. The American as well as the Chinese I encountered agreed that there were "too many mouths to feed". I thought that it was eerie that no one mentioned that there was not enough food [...]
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    Posted: August 04, 2009, 10:45am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Getting along in Washington DC

    We have been taught that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and we have seen large-scale special interest-pet-project-funding in the name of a all sorts of greater good.Alan Pisarki now reports on the Urban Land Institute's just released "Moving Cooler" report. He wonders about the report's objectivity and [...]
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    Posted: July 29, 2009, 12:41pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Another modest health care proposal

    Congress' approval ratings are low but incumbents keep being re-elected. School voucher plans are often defeated because voters may find fault with how public schools are run, but they happen to like their local neighborhood school.Now John Lott reports that most Americans like their own health care but have concerns' [...]
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    Posted: July 28, 2009, 10:25am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Let land markets function

    This is not unintended self-parody, but it looks that way. There is now a fight over whether to "save" the 1960s era Century Plaza hotel in Century City in West LA. Why? Because Ronald Reagan was a regular? I have been there a few times and the place has very [...]
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    Posted: July 27, 2009, 7:05pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • The biggest black swan of them all

    It's a truism that once we overcome one threat, we are simply lined up for the next one. Cure cancer and more will live to experience coronary problems -- and vice versa. Most humans have moved beyond subsistence living, but (we hear all the time) they are not happy. There [...]
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    Posted: July 24, 2009, 8:24pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Details

    In a better world, I would get $1 every time some well meaning people lecture us on the benefits of bike commuting. This (however) is never mentioned. [...]
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    Posted: July 21, 2009, 1:52pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Pedagogical change in Econ 101

    I have no idea whether there is a sub-genre within the history of economic thought that looks at the evolution of Readings supplements over the years. Teachers of economics (especially intro) get these in the mail all the time, but find ways to part with them as they clean office [...]
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    Posted: July 21, 2009, 12:07pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • The mandates we have

    In today's NY Times Magazine, Peter Singer argues "Why We Must Ration Health Care." Part of the article knocks down a straw man because "rationing" has been misunderstood and misapplied by some in the health care debates. In light of scarcity, ration we must. The only question is how. Singer [...]
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    Posted: July 19, 2009, 12:43pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Over there

    The way we do things in the U.S. gets a lot of attention (some grudging, some not) abroad and many Americans wonder why we can't be more like Europe. I suppose that a certain amount of cosmopolitanism is not bad.Many Americans return from stays in Europe and wonder why our' [...]
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    Posted: July 16, 2009, 10:51am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Leviathan

    The print version of this NY Times piece has a more descriptive headline. It is "8,000 Federal Forms, 10 Billion Hours, In Spite of Paperwork Reduction Efforts ... The federal bureaucracy is booming, especially in electronic form." Read it and go to the link to the OMB report.We can be [...]
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    Posted: July 13, 2009, 6:15pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • California dreams and IOUs

    The LA Times' Patt Morrison recently interviewed Kevin Starr about his new book, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963, which I have not yet read. I have read (and greatly enjoyed) Starr's other books.In the interview, there is this exchange:From a historian's viewpoint, is California manageable now?In' [...]
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    Posted: July 12, 2009, 1:16pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Beyond these borders

    Today's WSJ contains this interesting piece about a hut glut in Guinea. There are business cycles everywhere and we cannot imagine a world without them. Not all plans are fulfilled in this world. This is nothing new. What is new is the question over whether the cycles that result can [...]
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    Posted: July 09, 2009, 12:33pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Lofty and wrong

    Today's NY Times includes "Pope Urges New World Economic Order" (hat tip to Michael T.). A lot of it is the standard fare that one gets from pulpits and other lofty platforms.In the choice between profit-seeking with arms-length rules-of-the-game enforcement vs. profit-seeking with bear-hug-close regulation and supervision, anyone ought to [...]
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    Posted: July 07, 2009, 5:22pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Increasing returns revolution requires land markets

    The June, 2009, American Economic Review includes Paul Krugman's "The Increasing Returns Revolution in Trade and Geography". He recalls the jibe that (without the explicit modeling of increasing returns) "economists believed that agglomeration takes place because of agglomeration economies."Once increasing returns can be modeled, all pecuniary externalities can be included. [...]
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    Posted: July 06, 2009, 7:21pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Uh-oh, bad news for stimulus optimists

    Yestreday's WSJ included "Only the Employed Need Apply ... With unemployment at 9.4% and rising, it's a buyer's market for employers that are hiring. But many employers are bypassing the jobless to target those who are still working, reasoning that these survivors are the top performers."Near the top of the [...]
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    Posted: July 01, 2009, 11:44am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Bulletins from the gender wars

    "Parents Won't Say if Tot is a Boy or a Girl ... because they believe gender is a social construction. ... A Swedish couple's decision to keep their toddler's gender a secret is stirring debate, especially now that the parents are expecting a second child...'Pop' is 2 ½ years old,'" [...]
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    Posted: June 30, 2009, 6:16pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Perfect storm means many weatherfronts

    I have now seen a few timelines that recap the history of current economic downturn. These are always useful, but all miss the important role that local conditions play. Local supply and demand differ drastically from place to place. In the U.S., coastal and sunbelt places are where the demand [...]
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    Posted: June 28, 2009, 10:54am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Strange competition

    The President has promoted the idea of a new "Public Company" health insurance provider option as "a little competition" that all those market crazies should embrace.All I recall is that the audience did not laugh. Medicare is a public company with an unfunded liability that runs into the trillions of [...]
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    Posted: June 26, 2009, 6:41pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Give me land, lots of land

    Wendell Cox reports that recent census data show continued population exurbanization -- for the period 2000-2007. That's where the land is, where permitting is (mostly) simpler, and where most people want to be. It's an old story. Our research (with colleagues Harry Richarsdon and Soojung Kim) considered employment decentralization for [...]
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    Posted: June 24, 2009, 3:33pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Foxes watching over chicken coops

    In today's WSJ, Abraham Verghese writes about "The Myth of Prevention". With respect to Medicare (and the President's chiding of his AMA audience last week), the writer notes that:Cut, poke, sew, burn, insert, inject, dilate, stent, remove and you get very well paid; if you learn how to do this [...]
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    Posted: June 20, 2009, 2:00pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Curses

    There really is a "curse of oil." And I am a great admirer of William Easterly's writings. Combine oil with aid and you get the likes of Omar Bongo. "Mr. Bongo made no distinction between Gabon and his private property. He had ruled for so long, 42 years, that they" [...]
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    Posted: June 19, 2009, 5:12pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Must read

    We have an emotional and a rational side (they are not left-right) and this has been understood and written about for centuries. But now we have neuroscience and many clever people who dream up and conduct very clever experiments. And we have writers like Jonah Lehrer who put it all [...]
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    Posted: June 17, 2009, 7:21pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • It's been a long time coming

    I used to react to LA Times editorial and op-eds on land use and transportation issues. But the almost-Pavlovian response has waned. So I managed put aside Tim Rutten's "Congestion pricing: A slippery slope to toll roads." But just when I thought I had kicked the habit, an editor asked [...]
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    Posted: June 15, 2009, 10:23am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Not connecting dots

    In 2002, the NY Times Magazine included John Tierney's "Amtrak Must Die". The writer had actually stepped on-board for a first-hand look. Today's NY Mag includes Jon Gernter's "Getting up to speed .. Last fall, Californians voted to approve the most expensive infrastructure project in the country's history. But how" [...]
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    Posted: June 14, 2009, 8:21pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Call it turtle soup

    So they wheeled out Larry Summers to assure the world that his boss is a "Defender of Free Markets". In the speech, Summers detailed the President's economic goals, including "energy independence." Huh?Bill Clinton famously parsed the meaning of "is", but he was a registered of serial politician. I thought that [...]
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    Posted: June 13, 2009, 8:42pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Seasteading

    I first learned about Patri Friedman's Seasteading ideas and the work he has been doing on this via the Russ Roberts econtalk interview. There is now an article with more in the July 2009 Reason.Seasteading will happen, but we do not know when. We do know three things. Liberty is [...]
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    Posted: June 10, 2009, 3:15pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • White is the new green

    Wendell Cox compares Secretary Chu's idea to "Paint the world white" with the other less worthy proposals to keep us cool.And compare this to another doomsday report from a group that Kofi Annan is affiliated with (described in today's WSJ). [...]
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    Posted: June 06, 2009, 10:23am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • "In the blood"

    The Economist ("In the blood") points us to "Culture, Context and the Taste for Redistribution" by Erzo Luttmer and Monica Singhal. They look at the preferences of recent immigrants and find that national background explains a significant amount of varying tastes for redistribution policies. The authors conclude:By studying immigrants, we [...]
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    Posted: June 05, 2009, 5:51pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Truth-telling?

    Almost to the day that the President came out strongly for "truth-telling", his Secretary of Transportation launched this, which falls far short of the goal. (HT John Niles).Take this howler:In fact, each 1% of regional travel shifted from automobile to public transit increases regional income about $2.9 million, resulting in [...]
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    Posted: June 04, 2009, 4:15pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Way beyond

    This NBER study shows that CAFE standards have been a disaster. HT to Ed Stevens.Holman Jenkins notes that this is all pretty obvious, but that the apostle of "change" has gone along with the same old political nonsense. Trouble is that it is now way beyond nonsense as taxpayers own [...]
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    Posted: June 03, 2009, 11:06am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Horses, nationalizations and czars

    I have just finished reading The Horse in the City (by Clay McShane and Joel Tarr), which does a fine job documenting what went on (in American cities) between the years of the "pedestrian city" and the "automotive city". The book is a fascinating bit of research on modern urban [...]
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    Posted: June 02, 2009, 6:11pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Voluntary collective action

    Voluntary collective action is a wonderful thing. We find it in various places and some of this has been documented in The Voluntary City, a project that I co-edited.In yesterday's NY Times, Robert Frank wrote about "Carbon Offsets: A Small Price to Pay for Effciiency". This morning's LA Times has [...]
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    Posted: June 01, 2009, 10:36am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Is it the best of times or the worst of times?

    In the Spring 2009 Journal of Economic Literature, Christian Broda, Ephraim Leibtag and David E. Weinstein report on "The Role of Prices in Measuring the Poor's Living Standards". They find that the poor pay less, not more. And once this is properly accounted for, poverty rates in America are much' [...]
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    Posted: May 30, 2009, 5:51pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Multiplier sprung a leak

    Today's WSJ reports "Europe Listens for U.S. Train Whistle ... Europe's engineering and rail companies are lining up fo some potentially lucrative U.S. contracts for high-speed rail."I have been told numerous times that its the multiplier effect that matters. Forget about negative NPVs.But what if we get neither? Multipliers do [...]
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    Posted: May 29, 2009, 12:17pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • The special world of politics

    PERC has just published 7 Myths About Green Jobs. Read it. I thought that there was just one: There are no trade-offs.Nevertheless, wherever I go, I see smart people (from the President on down) espouse the no-trade-offs religion. And they do this with impunity. To be sure, they are careful [...]
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    Posted: May 28, 2009, 11:08am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Empathy

    "Empathy" is much in the news these days. Trouble is that it only embellishes the sanctimony of politicians bearing gifts.The June 8 Forbes includes "Wal-Mart's Weight Effect. Surprisingly, discount retailers make people healthier." The piece cites research that highlights how the income effect of low prices can trump the substitition [...]
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    Posted: May 27, 2009, 11:56am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Where are those Greens?

    The June, 2009, Reason features "It's Alive! Alternative energy subsidies make their biggest comeback since Jimmy Carter". Science has advanced, but politics has not. Not included in the online version is Lynne Kiesling's excellent companion piece "Electric Intelligence ... Establishing smart grid requires regulatory reform not subsidies ... President Barack" [...]
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    Posted: May 25, 2009, 11:49am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Renewed emphasis

    Greg Mankiw has a sensible piece in today's NY Times ("The Freshman Course Won't Be Quite the Same ... The financial crisis will require subtle changes in teaching"). Keep the basics, but elaborate re the financial sector, leverage and monteray policy.Behavioral economics gets a lot of press because everyone gets' [...]
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    Posted: May 24, 2009, 11:54am EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • Cap and Trade = Baptists and Bootleggers

    How could it not?Bjorn Lomborg calls if "The Climate-Industrial Complex" in yesterday's WSJ.David Theroux comments further. [...]
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    Posted: May 22, 2009, 9:53pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • History and art

    The carnage in eastern Europe unleashed by the Nazis has been described many times. Richard J. Evans' The Third Reich at War is nevertheless especially haunting because he cites the everyday diaries and letters sent home by German soldiers. These were not just the SS. Most of them eagerly engaged' [...]
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    Posted: May 22, 2009, 7:27pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon

  • New world symphony

    Megan McArdle asks whether California is to big to let fail and what sort of moral hazard would be involved in this sort of bail out. And is this the end of federalism? The U.S. Treasury's (actually the Fed's) printing presses may soon be available to state legislators as well' [...]
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    Posted: May 20, 2009, 1:37pm EDT
    by Peter Gordon
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