See also a nice NYTimes article on the former CEO of the Princeton Econ Dep & current CEO of the Fed :-). Reading that you’ll also get a concise overview of the history and function of the Fed, with emphasis on the current situation in the US and the big test Bernanke is facing.
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Econlinks for 16-01-’08
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Alessina, Ichino and Karabarbounis arguing for gender based taxation, on VoxEU. This recent CEPR working paper has the details. Their modelling is very basic (one obvious extension to make this more realistic– probably requiring a lot of effort– should be to allow for frictions in the search & matching of agents on the marriage market), but still makes for super interesting research with (potential) serious policy implications.
Please keep Economics out of that argument…
This time Andrew Gelman–one of my favourite bloggers, otherwise– is too pessimistic, exaggerates a lot, not to mention that he misinterprets the essence of Robert Hanson’s post , which he takes as starting point of his entry… In my opinion, the gist of Hanson’s is something completely different, aka ‘negative’ public incentives social scientists might often face (think, eg: Truman searching for one-armed economists that could never give him the ‘on the one hand…but on the other hand’)– that other scientists do not typically have to deal with– which could alter the true ‘scientific’ message etc.
→ Read more Best phrase I’ve read today
[…] motorcycle riders should be exempt from helmet laws as long as they agree to be organ donors.
Read the whole summary of Charles Wheelan’s favourite session, “Economics of Traffic Safety: Children, Teenagers and the Elderly”, from the AEA meeting this year. → Read more
Beware the Euronomics. Plus some further thoughts on the economics curricula in Romania and The Netherlands
Retain at least the conclusion of this excellent article (applying, unfortunately, well beyond just France and Germany, within EU or Europe in general), which draws attention to the enormous, though often neglected*, importance of (high) school economics education, with emphasis on the (very real) risks of learning absolute nonsense from state-sponsored economics courses.
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