tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268627222011-07-28T16:56:53.020-04:00sam-i-amhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048236713688627243noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-33436107852760168332009-01-27T14:19:00.004-05:002010-06-22T15:22:20.419-04:00

From Mark Zandi's report on economy.com.

sam-i-amhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048236713688627243noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-39181787815460701892008-11-07T16:37:00.004-05:002008-11-07T18:33:53.700-05:00

Thank goodness for a voice of reason regarding Lawrence Summers.  Sheryl Sandburg, COO of Facebook, lays out his record on working for women's equality in education and the sciences while at Harvard and the World Bank, as well as family-friendly government policies while at the Treasury Department. I agree, his gaffe was bad, and completely inappropriate from the President of Harvard.  But put in

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-28016095373165813892008-08-20T22:11:00.004-04:002008-08-20T22:25:54.846-04:00

Justin Wolfers asks if there is anything to add to Stigler's 1977 list of workshop criticisms. Questioning the quality of the instrument is the biggest one not already on the list.  After that, there is the "Why is this important?" or the even less subtle, "That's true, but not very interesting."  [Both noted in the comments.]

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-7544663154676432112008-05-10T08:56:00.003-04:002010-06-22T14:20:02.158-04:00

Business Pundit has an entertaining slide show explaining the origins of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-39018000022101451022008-05-08T10:04:00.002-04:002008-05-08T10:17:42.447-04:00

Dr. Violet Socks over at The Reclusive Leftist has an interesting rant about Obama. I can't agree with her conclusion to not ever vote for Obama, because McCain has promised more supreme court justices like Roberts and Alito (would that be Catholic men?). But the bit which rewrites the media's sexist treatment of Clinton in reverse, so that Obama receives the racist media treatment, highlights

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-53333613885940543322008-05-06T12:08:00.004-04:002008-05-07T17:25:07.353-04:00

I always was late handing in assignments, so of course I'm late with this meme. Here's the first five sentences from page 123 of the nearest book with more than 123 pages. (Taken from Red Queen and Chanson.) No tags, cause everybody's already done it, but feel free to leave a comment with yours, especially if you don't have a blog! "You can actually calculate the average bubble factor for

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-41053494947878805202008-05-03T21:24:00.003-04:002008-05-03T21:51:03.605-04:00

It's very annoying. Justin Wolfers replied to Freakonomics readers about the "likely economic consequences" of this year's tax rebates, but the papers he cites only discuss whether people spend the money, and if so, on what. There's a microeconomist for you. I suspect when most people ask about the economic consequences they really mean, "Tell me, really, is this actually going to cut short the

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-87044791264619999672008-04-29T18:01:00.004-04:002008-04-29T18:33:11.106-04:00

These links are for JSM, who has been too busy working to pay attention to political matters that matter to only half the population (i.e. the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act), and then made the mistake of trying to act like a on centrist on John McCain, (and I quote!) saying "He's not bad for a Republican. He doesn't toe the party line -- he's a maverick."Dahlia Lithwick provides an excellent

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-32888907850954089882008-04-28T10:25:00.005-04:002010-06-22T15:28:55.787-04:00

Shankar Vedantam has an excellent Department of Human Behavior column in the Washington Post today, comparing the Democratic primary to a tragedy of the commons. A quote from political scientist Edella Schlager summarizes: "Rational individuals are trapped. To act rationally, to pursue one's self-interest, leads to collective ruin. To act irrationally, to place the collective interest above

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-4571203966823138862008-04-26T12:17:00.002-04:002008-04-26T12:20:39.428-04:00

by the Stand-up EconomistThis is too funny not to post.

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-63444291214372039462007-07-29T21:27:00.000-04:002007-07-30T01:07:37.642-04:00

There is an absolutely fascinating article in tomorrow's Washington Post, "Salary, Gender, and the Social Cost of Haggling." Linda Babcock, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, became interested in how men and women negotiate differently when female graduate students came to her and pointed out that the male students were teaching their own courses while the female students were acting as

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-24925813937923593012007-04-26T22:29:00.000-04:002007-04-26T22:58:01.587-04:00

In 2003 U.S. Congress passed the so-called "Partial Birth Abortion Act," which banned a specific medical procedure used to end a late-term pregnancy in tragic situations, frequently when the fetus has a deformity that will result in its death before or at birth. This law did not include an exception for the health of the woman, only an exception if her life was at risk.The Supreme Court, packed

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1153945333062467372006-07-26T15:59:00.000-04:002006-07-26T16:22:16.520-04:00

In case it wasn't already clear, I'm taking a little hiatus from this so-called blog. I will be back, tanned and I hope refreshed, sometime in the second half of August. Probably closer to the end of August.My vacation reading list:Nancy Folbre's "The Invisible Heart"Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel"Katha Pollitt's "Virginity or Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time"No,

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1152670673141232792006-07-11T22:16:00.000-04:002006-07-11T23:12:23.946-04:00

This week’s New York Times Magazine attempts to introduce real economic analysis into the immigration debate (available free until Sunday, email me after that). The article is a lovely introduction to the basic theory, however the main focus is the split between George Borjas of the Kennedy School and David Card of Berkeley, which is threatening to turn ugly.* It’s a reminder that personal

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1152150764592832372006-07-05T21:48:00.000-04:002006-07-05T21:52:44.603-04:00

The three of us--JSM, me, and the littlest one--took a road trip this last weekend. As Bob Marley was singing on the ipod, “Get up, stand up; stand up for your rights,” I took a phone call. As I finished, JSM said, “Play it again, he’s singing.” So I played it again, and from the back we heard, “Get up, stand up. Stand up for your wife.”Apparently he doesn’t know his rights. (He just turned 3,

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1152124094930781312006-07-05T14:20:00.000-04:002006-07-05T16:24:47.386-04:00

The cover of this week’s Economist features Bill Gates holding what appears to be a very healthy third-world child, with the headline, “Billanthropy.” The two articles inside discuss Warren Buffett’s decision to donate over $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which roughly doubles the Gates Foundation endowment.Mr. Buffett followed his own investment advice in choosing to donate

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1151672445533861882006-06-30T08:42:00.000-04:002006-06-30T09:00:45.566-04:00

"Go-kart sittin' in the shade: you don't need a ticket to ride, it's summertime, summertime, slip down a water slide. Little kid dancin' in the grass, legs like a rubber band. It's summertime, summertime. There's a line at the candy stand."Paul Simon, Beautiful

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1150993767730094672006-06-22T12:14:00.000-04:002006-06-22T12:46:27.123-04:00

I met a free-lance writer last weekend, the wife of one of our friends from graduate school. I started talking about public policy issues, as I do obsessively these days, and she asked my political leanings. I replied that it’s a two-party system, so I’m a Democrat by default these days, as the Republicans have all the power and are completely unchecked in abusing it.Then I came home and looked

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1150942100967564492006-06-21T22:01:00.000-04:002006-06-22T12:41:32.853-04:00

I know I said I don’t listen to country music anymore, not since I heard the Gretchen Wilson song, “Politically Uncorrect.” Check out the lyrics to the song, which I hope is the high-water mark of right-wing musical propaganda. The song reinforces the Republican self-image as the hard-working underdog and by extension the view of the Democrats as freeloading welfare hags and overeducated

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1149824268303536602006-06-08T23:30:00.000-04:002006-06-08T23:37:48.313-04:00

Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institute has an interesting comment on the use of tax cuts to “starve the beast,” in the June 2006 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. He visits William Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, for some numbers. Niskanen does a statistical regression of spending on taxes from 1981 to 2005, controlling for unemployment, and shows that tax cuts

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1149451521455490162006-06-04T15:55:00.000-04:002006-06-22T12:36:53.510-04:00

The New York Times finally took notice of the three states in which Bush still has an approval rating at or above 50%: Utah (62% Mormon), Idaho (25% Mormon), and Wyoming (10% Mormon). [See Radical Russ’s Net Approval Map. Open it up in a new window, because we are going to look at it in more detail.]The Times author, Timothy Egan, goes to Provo, Utah, (85% Mormon) to ask the locals why they are

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1149354764277653232006-06-03T12:56:00.000-04:002006-06-03T14:27:30.283-04:00

I’ve heard a lot of Wal-Mart bashing from the left, and it generally comes couched in so much knee-jerk French-style* anti-globalization talk that I had taken to dismissing Wal-Mart bashers as, well, not quite getting the big picture. They know something’s wrong, but can’t quite put their finger on it.Meet my new hero: Wal-Mart antagonist Andy Stern, the motivating force behind Maryland’s new law

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1149106898896576452006-05-31T16:11:00.000-04:002006-05-31T16:43:16.053-04:00

Earlier this month, in response to myopic pandering to the public on gas prices by both political parties, Thomas Friedman wrote an editorial column wishfully hoping for a third party and an idealized candidate who would tell the truth about energy policy. As if the public wanted to hear it. (Al Gore, anyone?)But seriously, is a third party candidate possible? Is a viable third party possible?

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1148832899656916602006-05-28T11:41:00.000-04:002006-06-02T02:41:05.616-04:00

Movies and MusicJSM and I watched "Proof" Friday night. We agreed that it was the most accurate movie we have ever seen in getting the dialogue right between academics, with only the occasional gratuitous math explanation. We enjoyed the multiple, interweaving themes of proof, although it didn't provoke nearly as much discussion as "Adaptation," where the structure of the movie mirrors the

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1148783512077141292006-05-27T22:30:00.000-04:002006-05-27T22:49:09.733-04:00

The Dixie Chicks, Part TwoYou must get this album [Taking the Long Way] if you are still singing to babies. It’s no accident that both of their last albums have contained a lullaby – the Chicks have seven young children between them. And while the Time Magazine article said a childless person might mistake “Lullaby” for a love song, this mama is here to tell you, it’s a lullaby. And it belongs in

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1148664711985021852006-05-26T13:23:00.000-04:002006-06-02T02:02:46.850-04:00

The Dixie ChicksAm I the only feminist who has ever listened to country music? Why am I not reading more about the Dixie Chicks in the feminist blogosphere? Call me crazy, call me stupid, call me a femi-nazi who sees discrimination everywhere she looks, but I think this has a gender angle to it. At the very least the Dixie Chicks are a part of a cultural feminist phenomenon. I’d like to address

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1148053060321955452006-05-19T10:48:00.000-04:002006-05-19T11:49:52.700-04:00

Emergency Contraception vs. BreastfeedingFeministe has a funny deconstruction of a bizarre editorial ranting against the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists campaign to encourage gynecologists to offer prescriptions for Plan B (emergency contraception) to women during checkups, to hold on to or to fill and keep in their medicine cabinets, just in case it might be needed. Here's

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1147705450664054252006-05-15T10:38:00.000-04:002006-06-02T02:08:36.556-04:00

A Libertarian's DreamAtlas Hugged has written a post about President Bartlett of The West Wing, which I have never watched...but I was intrigued by the name of the blog so I read it. I am working on my article this morning, arguing that libertarianism, as the utopian ideological opposite of communism, has caused a lot of bad economic policy by people who don't understand economics. But Atlas and

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1146703274696314262006-05-03T20:27:00.000-04:002006-05-05T18:19:48.946-04:00

Speaking Truth to Power...So the Washington Press Corps invited Stephen Colbert, a satirist (as opposed to comedian), to speak at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, to President Bush, the White House administration and the press. Now the press says he wasn't funny. America disagrees. Yes, the first time watching makes your jaw drop. The second time through is hysterical.A sampling of

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1146496103025306332006-05-01T10:54:00.000-04:002006-05-03T03:19:42.380-04:00

My plug for Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives, by Anna Fels.I realize I project a lot from my own experiences, but even recognizing this tendency, I still think Necessary Dreams deserves a place in the pantheon of important feminist literature. This book is essential for understanding the persistent wage gap between men and women, the “Mommy Wars,” and the supposed "opt-out

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1146256993059116842006-04-28T16:37:00.000-04:002006-04-29T13:11:51.446-04:00

Paul Krugman has a column today in the New York Times about FEMA and the suggested new National Preparedness and Response Agency. It’s subscriber only, so I'll summarize so I can make my comment. Krugman points out that the new N.P.R.A. would have the same responsibilities as FEMA, except according to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “senior N.P.R.A. officials

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1145976875155256842006-04-25T10:54:00.000-04:002006-04-25T11:00:28.330-04:00

Speaking of bumper stickers, I sent this envelope out with our annual letter a few weeks ago. (Click on it for a better view.) This was my own small cry for solidarity in a bizarre, through-the-looking-glass world.I credited everyone on the back, although I didn't know the attribution for the bumper sticker quote.Last week I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said, "You may say I'm a dreamer,

AnnMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26862722.post-1145909989057419022006-04-24T16:04:00.000-04:002006-04-28T16:57:32.023-04:00

So here it begins.I've been reading Garrison Keillor's "Homegrown Democrat," a book about the values underlying his participation in the Democratic Party, in lieu of writing my article about the way the Republicans' misunderstanding of economics distorts their values. It's a delightful book (Keillor's), although, like all political writing these days, only of interest to the already converted.

AnnMnoreply@blogger.com0