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12/31/2002
The use of state licensing requirements to restrict competition and raise prices George Leef explains why "Why Law School Costs So Much ". I learned about this at Stuart Buck's weblog. Two interesting facts about India Judith Weiss posts about India at the "Kesher talk" (Judaism, Jewish culture and politics, Middle East affairs, etc.) blog: "India, our ally in the war against terror". 12/30/2002
Changes in the operation of the Council of Economic Advisors The Council of Economic Advisors plays an important role in coordinating administration economic policy (similar to the role played for foreign policy by the National Security Council). At a Dec 13 news conference Bill Gale, a Brookings Institution economist, made the following comments about its operations, and why it might operate in a certain way, with its new head (the following selection from the transcript has some mis-spelled names) -
"E. Andrews: ...do you have any thoughts on the role that the National Economic Council is going to play in all of this? This is kind of a new operation. Robin [Robert - Ben] Rubin was the first one to do it. Is it going to plan an important role in the way the White House is actually organizing and pushing things, or do you think the lead role will be more treasury or Glen Hopper [Council of Economic Advisors head Glenn Hubbard - Ben]… or something like that? "B. Gale: ...The NEC came to existence with Robert Rubin and it’s really changed its style with each of its directors. As we went from Rubin to Tyson to Gene Sperling in the Clinton administration the NEC became more active actually in formulating policy under Sperling’s tenure, whereas under Rubin’s tenure it was more of a clearinghouse and making sure that everyone got a chance to make their case. Under Larry Lindsey it was probably much more like it was under Sperling where the NEC director was directly advocating a set of policies in the internal debates. Now I would guess that Freedman [Stephen Friedman, Bush's replacement for Larry Lindsey as Director of the Council - Ben] would move back more towards the Rubin model and would be much more of the honest broker type whose job is to make sure the President hears all the voices and has enough information to make a decision. That’s just a guess, but it stems from the fact that Freedman [Stephen Friedman] is a newcomer and there are already strong forces in the administration that are trying to jockey for position. It seems very evident that what the administration needs is someone to channel all this and focus it and reduce the backbiting rather than increase it. I would guess he’d be much more in the Rubin mode and that he will serve to make policy flow much more smoothly." Administration estimate of the cost of war with Iraq Mitch Daniels, Director of OMB, estimates that the cost of a war with Iraq will be about $50 to $60 billion. These are lower than previous estimates by Lawrence Lindsey, and lower than estimates made by Yale economist William Nordhaus. Elisabeth Bumiller reports on Daniels' estimates in today's New York Times: "White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War With Iraq" Nordhaus' estimates can be found in this New York Review of Books essay: "Iraq: The Economic Consequences of War".
"The unfavorable case is a collage of potential unfavorable outcomes rather than a single scenario. It shows the array of costs that might be incurred if the war drags on, occupation is lengthy, nation-building is costly, the war destroys a large part of Iraq's oil infrastructure, and there are both lingering military and political resistance to US occupation, and major adverse psychological reactions to the conflict. Putting the different adverse effects together adds up to $1.6 trillion, most of which come outside of the direct military costs." Deflation - It can't happen here? Paul Krugman explains why it can in Tuesday's New York Times: "Crisis in Prices?". (free registration may be required):
"At that point the economy crosses the black hole's event horizon: the point of no return, beyond which deflation feeds on itself. Prices fall in the face of excess capacity; businesses and individuals become reluctant to borrow, because falling prices raise the real burden of repayment; with spending sluggish, the economy becomes increasingly depressed, and prices fall all the faster." What can we do about North Korea? North Korea is taking advantage of U.S. preoccupation with Iraq, and flexing its nuclear potential to blackmail the U.S. and its neighbors for increased aid. Or does it expect that it can change the balance of power in the peninsula? Will it actually attack South Korea? How can and should we react? Daniel Sensing has a good posting today on the conventional balance of forces in the peninsula: "What we have got and they have not". The conventional balance is a lot better than you'd expect - the numbers arrayed along the DMZ are misleading:
"...US and Chinese thinking on the issue are far from aligned. Beijing has misgivings over the US idea that isolating North Korea will force it to drop its nuclear programme. "North Korea has been isolated for years. Its main domestic policy is isolationism, or self reliance. If hundreds of thousands of people die of starvation, it will not bring down Kim Jong-il," said one Chinese expert. "...China is wary of any move that may escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula, or make a US-North Korean conflict more likely. In the medium and short term, Beijing is concerned at the economic impact growing tension could have on trade and investment in north-east Asia. "In the longer term, diplomats said, China's nightmare would be a US strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities, followed by war between the North and the South, leading to the collapse of the North and potentially bringing US troops to China's border for the first time since the Korean war ended in 1953..." 12/28/2002
Fernando Henrique Cardoso Cardoso is the retiring president of Brazil. Brazil owes him a lot - see Larry Rohter's article in Sunday's New York Times: "Departing President Leaves a Stable Brazil". :
"Mr. Cardoso's other historic achievement is taming inflation, which for decades had eroded the standard of living here, acting as a hidden tax whose cost was borne primarily by the poor. Since 1995, total inflation is 70 percent, or about the same as the figure recorded during one particularly bad month in the early 1990's, before Mr. Cardoso oversaw creation of a new currency and imposed fiscal discipline." Scarce resources and competing ends - Colorado River water California's allocation of Colorado River water is about to be substantially reduced. Dale Kasler has a brief background article in the Salt Lake Tribune: "California Heading for a Major Water Crisis". Policy paralysis in Germany and Japan - why? John Plender addresses this question in a Financial Times column from the day after Christmas: ''Only a disaster can save Japan and Germany" :
"No less important than this economic diagnosis is the broader political question. Why is it that these hitherto highly successful countries have found it so hard to confront their respective difficulties? For in both cases governments have signally failed to measure up to the challenges they face..." State budget deficits are widespread Linda Feldmann and Liz Marlantes describe the problems faced by the states in the Christian Science Monitor: "Deepest state deficits in 50 years". :
" "It's a long-run structural problem, and it's going to take states - [with] maybe even some help from the federal government - a number of years to work their way through it," says Raymond Sheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association. The situation is different from the last recession, in the early '90s, when the economic recovery solved the problem, he adds. "That's just not going to happen this time." " New biography of Samuel Pepys - public administrator The New York Times has a review today (by Charles McGrath) of a new biography of Samuel Pepys (SAMUEL PEPYS. The Unequalled Self. By Claire Tomalin. Illustrated. 470 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $30.) here:"'Samuel Pepys': The Man Behind the Diaries" :
"Pepys had two great accomplishments. He was the creator, in effect, of the modern British Navy, and to this day naval historians so revere him that they regard the other Pepys, the literary one, as an embarrassment and a distraction. He was also a compulsive diarist... "Pepys's father was a barely literate tailor, his mother a laundress, and it's doubtful that he would have got on at all in life were it not for the intervention of a wealthy cousin, Edward Montagu (later the Earl of Sandwich), who saw to it that he got an education and eventually a job as clerk in Cromwell's government. Montagu was an ardent Puritan and republican, one of Cromwell's right-hand advisers, but as the Rump Parliament fell apart after Cromwell's death, he secretly and expeditiously began negotiations with the exiled Prince Charles. When the moment was right, he changed his stripes and became a royalist. Most of England eagerly did the same, including Montagu's 26-year-old protege; it was a moment, Tomalin suggests, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. "Montagu was given a peerage and appointed Master of the King's Wardrobe; he got Pepys an appointment with the Navy Board. This was the single luckiest stroke of Pepys's life, and it was the making of him. The navy at that time was the biggest industry and the biggest employer in all of England, and Pepys proved to be brilliant at his job, the first naval administrator to keep accurate and useful records and to codify standards and procedures. He was, even in today's terms, a workaholic; by 17th-century standards he was a marvel of energy and efficiency. Most of his peers worked to live; Pepys lived to work, and the diary is full of accounts of early rising and long hours, of getting up in the middle of the night to rush back to the office. The job came with a house, a good salary and, just as important, an opportunity not for bribes, exactly (though he accepted those too), but for ''considerations.'' Pepys was shrewd with a pound, and soon became well off." 12/26/2002
Does the minimum wage work? Does it help the working poor? And what about "living wage" policies? The minimum wage Federal and state minimum wage laws are designed to keep the wage paid for low wage work above the market level. If compliance can be enforced, workers would receive more cash income for the hours they continue to work (although firms may "offset" the impact by reducing other attractive dimensions of the job), but if firms had to pay more for low wage labor time they would buy less of it. Theory doesn't say anything about the relative impacts of the increased payment for hours and the reduced hours purchased, and their resultant impact on changes in net income for the working poor. We have to look at what actual programs have done to make inferences about these. A National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) research summary by David Neumark reviews the evidence on this (paying particular attention to his own work): "Raising Incomes by Mandating Higher Wages" Neumark's review of the literature indicates
Since 1994 a number of cities have passed "living wage" ordinances, requiring certain companies to pay their employees a living wage. The living wages tend to be higher than minimum wages and aimed at providing a wage that brings a family up to the poverty level. Some cities impose the requirement on firms receiving assistance from the city, some on city contractors.
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) The NBER is an important sponsor of policy-relevant economic research. It's the NBER that makes the formal determination about whether or not the economy is in recession - not a government agency. David Warsh - longtime economic columnist for the Boston Globe supplies a brief and readable history of the NBER, and its place in U.S. economics over the last 50 years here: Who Will Replace Marty?" [who will replace Martin Feldstein as head of the NBER if he is appointed to replace Alan Greenspan as head of the Federal Reserve system - Ben]. Warsh had a Globe column called "Economic Principals" for about 18 years. This past March he moved it to the web, where you can access the most recent issue and the archives for free at the address above. You can also subscribe by email to the weekly column for free at the web site. The Globe column was aimed at a general audience, and the email column is as well. The purpose:
Samuel Pepys was a public administrator So the news that his diary is being blogged is appropriate to this page for UAS MPA students: See "The Diary of Samuel Pepys". The diary covers the ten years 1659-1669, during which Pepys was deeply involved in the administration of the British navy. A new entry will be posted to the blog each day, supplemented with useful notes about 17th Century persons and places. I learned about this from the weblog of Brad Delong who says that the "naughty bits" will be expurgated from this online version. It doesn't matter, this is going on my daily check list along with DeLong, Jane Galt/Mindles Dreck, Donald Sensing, and the rest of the gang. MPA students may also be interested in the blog of that other noted public administrator, Julius Caesar (Governor of Gaul): "Bloggus Caesari". 12/24/2002
Merry Christmas! No blogging tomorrow. A blog should be a personal thing, so let me offer Christmas contributions that have personal meaning for me - a description of early 20th Century (about 1905-1918) Christmases in Mexico and England by my grandmother, Beatriz de Regil Muse: "Christmas in Mexico and England" Also, a Christmas poem by G.K. Chesterton:
Out of an inn to roam In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand Than the square stones of Rome. For men are homesick in their homes, And strangers under the sun, And they lay their heads in a foreign land Whenever the day is done. Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honour and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies Where the Yule tale was begun. A Child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam, Only where He was homeless Are you and I at home We have hands that fashion and heads that know, But our hearts we lost -- how long ago In a place no chart nor ship can show Under the sky's dome. This world is wild as an old wives' tale, And strange the plain things are, The earth is enough and the air is enough For our wonder and our war; But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings And our peace is put in impossible things Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings Round an incredible star. To an open house in the evening Home shall all men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home. Is Saddam Hussein reckless - or is he a rational international actor? He isn't reckless, he is rational, and he is deterrable say political scientists John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt writing in the Carnegie Institution for International Peace's Foreign Policy - the article is online here: "An Unnecessary War". The Iraqi war with Iran and the invasion of Kuwait are often offered as evidence of the opposite. With respect to the war with Iran, the authors write:
"It is thus not surprising that Saddam welcomed the shah’s ouster in 1979. Iraq went to considerable lengths to foster good relations with Iran’s revolutionary leadership. Saddam did not exploit the turmoil in Iran to gain strategic advantage over his neighbor and made no attempt to reverse his earlier concessions, even though Iran did not fully comply with the terms of the 1975 agreement. Ruhollah Khomeini, on the other hand, was determined to extend his revolution across the Islamic world, starting with Iraq. By late 1979, Tehran was pushing the Kurdish and Shiite populations in Iraq to revolt and topple Saddam, and Iranian operatives were trying to assassinate senior Iraqi officials. Border clashes became increasingly frequent by April 1980, largely at Iran’s instigation. "Facing a grave threat to his regime, but aware that Iran’s military readiness had been temporarily disrupted by the revolution, Saddam launched a limited war against his bitter foe on September 22, 1980. His principal aim was to capture a large slice of territory along the Iraq-Iran border, not to conquer Iran or topple Khomeini. “The war began,” as military analyst Efraim Karsh writes, “because the weaker state, Iraq, attempted to resist the hegemonic aspirations of its stronger neighbor, Iran, to reshape the regional status quo according to its own image.” "Iran and Iraq fought for eight years, and the war cost the two antagonists more than 1 million casualties and at least $150 billion. Iraq received considerable outside support from other countries—including the United States, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and France—largely because these states were determined to prevent the spread of Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. Although the war cost Iraq far more than Saddam expected, it also thwarted Khomeini’s attempt to topple him and dominate the region. War with Iran was not a reckless adventure; it was an opportunistic response to a significant threat."
"Saddam reportedly decided on war sometime in July 1990, but before sending his army into Kuwait, he approached the United States to find out how it would react. In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, “[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had “no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.” The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did. "Saddam invaded Kuwait in early August 1990. This act was an obvious violation of international law, and the United States was justified in opposing the invasion and organizing a coalition against it. But Saddam’s decision to invade was hardly irrational or reckless. Deterrence did not fail in this case; it was never tried." Allocating scarce resources among competing ends The Washington Post has an article by Barton Gellman on progress so far in the war on terrorism: "In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished". The thrust of the article is that we haven't made much progress. One interesting item - a discussion of how a war of Iraq will force us to redeploy existing assets from the pursuit of al Qaeda:
"Most officials interviewed acknowledged some tradeoffs at the tactical level between the two conflicts. "The FBI, according to sources, has been obliged to shift some emphasis in its counterterrorism and counterespionage units from al Qaeda to Iraq, though senior officials said the shift was modest. And in the event of war with Iraq, formal priorities in intelligence-gathering will give that war first call on scarce resources such as photo interpretation, translation and satellite coverage. " "There's no such thing as a tie in priorities," one national security official said. "One of them is going to win, and for the duration of any war it will be Iraq." "Among the costliest tradeoffs comes in the currency of linguists and regional specialists. No authorized government spokesman acknowledged a conflict, but every affected agency has said in the past year that it had shortages in those skills. "Downing said the scarcity of foreign language speakers with top-secret security clearances had left "reams of material waiting to be exploited" in the war against al Qaeda. He was so alarmed by the gap that he suggested, before leaving the White House job, that intelligence agencies hire native speakers with abbreviated security checks." 12/23/2002
Funny Christmas-themed advertisement Over at Slate Rob Walker provides an analysis, and online view, of a funny Heineken TV ad: "Is Enron Funny Yet? Heineken's jokey corporate-scandal ad." 12/22/2002
What Alaska gets next year - a preview The December issue of Reason magazine has an interview with Nobel Prize winner (and 2003-04 University of Alaska, Anchorage faculty member) Vernon Smith in its December issue (interview by Mike Lynch and Nick Gillespie). The interview is available online here: "The Experimental Economist". Much of the interview deals with the use of experimental methods for designing public policy initiatives. Smith explains the iterative procedure:
"The next step is to bring in the people who will actually be using the system. They put design elements in, and then we run experiments with them. When they’re comfortable with it, we go out in the world with it."
"Smith: We’re doing work on creating a market for the exchange of landing and takeoff slots at airports. In normal circumstances, those rights have been fully allocated among the airlines at a given airport. But let’s say a bad weather front moves in, so there’s a ground delay. They’ve been doing maybe 60 landings and takeoffs per hour, but now they’ve got to reduce that to 30. What airports tend to do is just stretch out the existing schedule, which leads to cancellations and other problems. What you need is a market mechanism so that the flights that have higher priority get out. What would be a higher priority? Bigger planes, probably, but also full planes and planes with a lot of passengers who have connecting flights. "Suppose we’re talking about planes leaving LaGuardia in New York. If a plane’s going to Los Angeles, it’s probably the final destination for a lot of the passengers. Planes going to Chicago or Dallas probably have a lot passengers who are catching connecting flights. Maybe those flights should have a higher takeoff priority in bad weather. In any case, you need a market mechanism where the airlines can compensate one another -- and their passengers -- to cancel their flights and trade takeoff slots. "Such a system doesn’t exist now. First, the airlines have to be convinced that’s the way to go. Then the Federal Aviation Administration has to cooperate. And you really need Congress to approve this, since it gave the original allocation of slots. The danger is that Congress will say, "Wait a minute, we don’t like this because they’re buying and selling these slots. We gave them to you, and now they’re making money by reselling them." " What went wrong in Argentina Diego Aycinena points to Argentine government deficits in this Tech Central Station column: "Celebrate Bad Times, C'mon!". Argentine fiscal arrangements were partly to blame for the deficits:
Relief for the states William Gale, Brookings Institution economist, argued in Friday's Los Angeles Times that the best thing the administration can do to stimulate the economy is to provide fiscal relief for the states. The column is reproduced here at the Brookings web site: "Now Is the Time for All Good Feds to Come to the Aid of States" After reviewing and dismissing each of the stimulus proposals currently believed to be under consideration by the administration, he gets to the crux:
"Unlike the federal government, which is able to run a deficit, the states must balance their budgets. During a recession, revenue falls and spending needs rise, so states raise taxes or cut spending. This helps restore their budgets but provides a negative stimulus to the overall economy. This year it has cost in the range of $40 billion to $50 billion, with higher costs expected in 2003. And because the states are cutting spending on education, health and infrastructure, the long-term ramifications will be negative. Several states are cutting their prison budgets by releasing inmates early." 12/19/2002
Some of the economics of reparations for slavery Robert Fogel won the Nobel Prize in economics for "applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change." His most important work dealt with the economics of southern slavery. On April 11 the Economist carried an article on some of his analysis that bears on the current question of reparations for slavery. Part of it reads:
"Compound interest on this sum for 142 years has a massive effect. A risk-free interest rate of 6% a year, which is what Mr Fogel estimates is the long-term rate, brings the cost to $97 trillion, more than nine times the size of America's economy today. Awarding interest of just 3% a year would cut the total bill to $1.6 trillion, not far from damages cited in the current lawsuit. These figures are merely for lost wages. They do not take into account other pain and suffering caused by slavery, which is harder to calculate. "If the principle of reparations were ever agreed upon, what of ascertaining who were the beneficiaries of slavery? Slave-owners make the likeliest targets, yet only 5% of American households had slaves. What is more, owners received only a small fraction of the benefits from slaves' forced labour. Most of the gains, Mr Fogel reckons, were passed on to consumers in Europe (and England in particular) in the form of cheap cotton and tobacco. Mr Fogel suggests that reparations are, at least in part, "a debt for the European Union." Online commerce Hal Varian has a column on online commerce in today's New York Times: "Online Sales Offer Fresh Look at Economy" (free registration may be required). Online commerce is still small - total U.S. retail sales in the third quarter of 2002 were $827 billion, while online retail sales came to $11 billion. Despite the relatively limited scale of the online retail market, online markets generate lots of data, and economists are making use of them. I buy a lot of books at Amazon, so I found these paragraphs interesting:
"Each seller ranks titles by total sales on its Web site and reports actual book sales to publishers. Some publishers, like the computer book publisher O'Reilly & Associates, have used these reports to determine the relationship between rank and actual sales. "Professors Chevalier and Goolsbee draw on such estimates, as well as other sources, to determine actual sales for particular books at the two online booksellers. "The data on actual sales can be used to estimate how demand responds to price changes. The authors find that a 1 percent price increase at Amazon reduces sales there by about 0.5 percent, but a 1 percent price increase at Barnes & Noble means a 4 percent sales decline — eight times as large. "The difference in price responsiveness is striking. It appears that Amazon's investment in building customer loyalty has paid off. Of course, all that investment in customer loyalty is expensive, and loyalty doesn't necessarily translate directly into profit." 12/18/2002
Hudson River wrecks This is a little off topic, but there's a good story by Kirk Johnson in the New York Times about over 200 shipwrecks found in the Hudson in the course of environmental mapping: "Hudson Shipwrecks Found, but No Loose Lips" The maps are being kept secret for now by the State of New York until it can figure out how to protect the historical information in the wrecks. The river mud, which is low in oxygen, is belived to have preserved many of these wrecks very well. There's also this bit:
12/17/2002
Do we tax the poor enough? The Bush administration wonders, says this Washington Post story: "New Tax Plan May Bring Shift In Burden Poor Could Pay A Bigger Share".
Medicare Arnold Kling has a column in Tech Central Station on the need to do something about Medicare: "Phase Out Medicare". The problem:
"As large as Social Security looms when the Baby Boom retires, it will be smaller as a proportion of GDP than Medicare. An analysis for the Concord Coalition reports that starting from a current ratio of 2.2 percent of GDP and making some conservative assumptions "just the increase in Medicare spending over the next forty years - 4.5 percent of GDP - would be greater than everything we spend today on Social Security." "A column by David Wessel in the Wall Street Journal includes a dramatic chart showing projected Federal outlays over the next half century. While Social Security levels off at around 5 percent of GDP and other spending shrinks from about 10 percent of GDP to about 5 percent of GDP, by 2050 spending on Medicare and Medicaid hits 10 percent of GDP and is still climbing. "These projections for Medicare and Medicaid costs may be optimistic. Speaking as part of a broad-ranging round table discussion, economic historian Robert Fogel says that the health care sector of the economy is undergoing a secular increase, which he believes could take it from 14 percent of GDP today to 21 percent of GDP later in this century. My guess is that if he is correct, then Medicare spending alone will be more than 10 percent of GDP." Bush Economic Team The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is an important player in determining any administration's trade policy, and therefore an important part of it's economic policy team. The current USTR, Ambassador Robert Zoellick, is another part of the team (along with Council of Economic Advisors Chair R. Glenn Hubbard) not affected by the recent shakeup. This post by Daniel Drezner describes current U.S. trade strategy and activity: "THE PATH TO FREE TRADE:". The web site for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is here. 12/15/2002
Vernon Smith coming to Alaska This morning's Juneau Empire has an Associated Press story that Vernon Smith - one of this year's Nobel Prize winners, is coming to the University of Alaska, Anchorage (UAA) for the coming academic year: "Economics Nobelist accepts UAA position". The chair is supported with a $5 million endowment from the estate of Anchorage banker Elmer Rasmussen. It appears Smith will hold the position for a year, and that University officials expect that it will be easier to get other high-powered economists in subsequent years given Smith's stature as a Nobelist. Once we thought that economics was not an experimental science. Like astronomers, economists depended on theory and on observations of natural events. Vernon Smith is important for his work in developing experimental methods for economists. Volunteers are placed in a situation with carefully designed rules and payoffs, and their reactions are observed. I use informal versions of these experiments for teaching in "Economics of Public Policy" - think back to the voting and public goods experiments we ran in class. These experiments - akin to the experiments run in psychology departments - make it possible to have control and treatment groups, and to experiment with alternative rules and payoffs. These experiments have helped us advance our understanding of economics at both the theoretical and practical levels. As a practical matter, for example, they are used to test out alternative auction and market mechanisms. I posted several items on this Nobel in late October and early November. One posting with lots of links: "2003 Nobel Prize in Economics". One of the links I liked quite a bit was this piece by Lynne Kiesling: "The Market Laboratory". Here's one paragraph, emphasizing some of the very practical implications:
12/14/2002
Why Goldman, Sachs? In yesterday's New York Times Leslie Wayne notices that a lot of high level economic talent in the Clinton and Bush administrations has been drawn from the New York investment bank Goldman, Sachs. Goldman alumni serving in the Clinton administration included Robert Rubin, who rose to be Treasury Secretary, Kenneth Brody, director for the Export-Import Bank, and Gary Gensler, Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Markets. In the Bush administration they include Stephen Friedman, the incoming director of the National Economic Council, Josh Bolten, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Reuben Jeffrey, who coordinates the Federal contribution to rebuilding lower Manhattan. Wayne points out that Goldman, Sachs has contributed to administrations back to WW II. He also points out that Goldman, Sachs alumni,
"Senator Corzine [D- NJ, also from Goldman - Ben], who took the more unconventional route of running for high public office, said: "At Goldman, you work as a team. It's not about individuals as much as about a group of people being successful. That was part and parcel of the partner's culture." "He continued: "It's not about ego gratification. It was the hallmark of the Rubin era and it was the way with Whitehead [a Goldman alumnus who served as a Deputy Secretary of State in the Reagan administration - Ben] , too. They were willing to work hard to make the president look good and take on tasks that were not necessarily the most glamorous, but were important contributions." 12/13/2002
The Economics of U.S. Israeli Policy Earlier this week I posted a link to a Christian Science Monitor article by Thomas Stauffer on the costs of U.S. support for Israel since 1973: "Economic costs of our support for Israel". Howard Feinberg has a column in the "Tech Central Station" critiques Stauffer's figures and highlights benefits to the U.S. flowing from some of these expenditures: "Economists Against Israel " The new Secretary of the Treasury What does the Treasury Secretary do? Brenden Koerner explains in Slate: "What Does the Treasury Secretary Do All Day?" Who is John Snow? Daniel Gross provides some background, again in Slate: "Snow Job. President Bush appoints yet another phony businessman, this time as treasury secretary" Gross contrasts Snow with William Donaldson, selected by Bush Tuesday as new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Snow is an "access capitalist," that is, "a bureaucrat-turned-corporate lobbyist who views investors primarily as providers of lavish salaries and perks and sees public service as a means of parachuting into a top corporate post." Donaldson is "a classic businessman of the old school," an entrepreneur creating wealth in the private and the public sectors. There are a couple of ways to get rich - you can arrange to rearrange existing wealth in your own direction, or you can create new wealth. The article draws this implicit contrast between Snow and Donaldson; Snow is a lobbyist, Donaldson is an entrepreneur. The Economics of Free Stuff Ronald Bailey at Reason Online discusses the importance of using market prices to allocate water: "Water, Water Nowhere?". The Economist discusses the importance of pricing road access to address congestion: "The Politics of Congestion". 12/11/2002
Who is R. Glenn Hubbard? In the past week President Bush has replaced two of his top three economic advisors: Paul O'Neill, the Secretary of the Treasury, and Larry Lindsey, Director of the National Economic Council. R. Glenn Hubbard survived. Who is R. Glenn Hubbard? Greg Ip and Dan Machalaba wrote about him in a story in Monday's Wall Street Journal:
"The shortcomings of Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Lindsey have resulted in a steady rise in respect for Mr. Hubbard, 44-years old, who is regularly described as disciplined and organized. He starts work every day at 5 a.m. His two years at the council's helm have been nearly gaffe-free... "He is a key participant in the administration's tax-change efforts. Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said in recent weeks that Mr. Hubbard and Commerce Secretary Don Evans have been the "principal players" soliciting advice for short-term tax-stimulus measures. Mr. O'Neill "wasn't very involved." "Mr. Hubbard also has played key roles in responding to labor disruption, prodding the Japanese government to address its serious financial problems, and developing the administration's alternative to the Kyoto treaty on controlling carbon-dioxide emissions to curb global warming. "Mr. Hubbard was one of the few administration insiders to oppose steel tariffs, said several people familiar with that decision." (Greg Ip and Dan Machalaba, "Bush Moves to fill Posts After Shuffle of Advisors." Wall Street Journal Monday, 12-09-02. page A12.) Drezner on Krugman Daniel Drezner's take on Paul Krugman's recent columns in the New York Times is here on his blog: "KRUGMAN’S WORLD":
12/9/2002
The EPA tries alternative ways of valuing changes in the risk of death The EPA experiments with alternative approaches to valuing changes in the risk of dying. Cindy Skrzycki explains in her Washington Post column, "The Regulators": "The Wrong Price on a Life Lost?". Steven Landsburg on the economics of spanking Steven Landsburg explains the economics of spanking in today's Slate: "Beat on the Brat The economics of spanking". Economic costs of our support for Israel The Christian Science Monitor reports on a recent study of the economic costs of our support for Israel since 1973: "Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US". Has Hawaii really passed a gas price control law that doesn't take effect until 2004? It's provided economist Thomas Sowell an opportunity to discuss price controls here:"An Ancient Fallacy: Price Controls." Amongst other things, price controls lead to quality deterioration:
"When there are more people trying to rent apartments than there are apartments for rent, landlords no longer have to maintain the appearance of their buildings. They do not need to pay for painting, repairs or maintenance as often as they did when there was no housing shortage and they needed to attract tenants. "Sometimes quality deterioration takes the form of waiting -- not just cars waiting in line at filling stations, but also sick people remaining on waiting lists for months to get surgery or other medical treatment they need. Cheap medical care is one of the most expensive things there is." Is terrorism a result of poverty? If it is, development assistance (assuming it works) should be a component of the war on terrorism - as many suggested following September 11. Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova look into the question in this July 2002 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER): "Education, Poverty, Political Violence and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?". In general, they find little relationship between income levels (or variables correlated with income) and a propensity to engage in terrorism. Some of their results:
Why does a propensity to engage in terrorism appear to be unrelated or positively related to a person's income or education? The authors speculate. Terrorism is "...like a violent form of political engagement. More educated people from privileged backgrounds are more likely to participate in politics, probably in part because political involvement requires some minimum level of interest, expertise, commitment to issues and effort, all of which are more likely if people are educated and wealthy enough to concern themselves with more than mere economic subsistence." (p 32) Nordhaus on the economic costs of a war with Iraq William Nordhaus has a working paper available from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) website on the costs of a potential war with Iraq: "The Economic Consequences of a War in Iraq " (you will need to access the document from a site with a subscription). For references to alternative versions of Nordhaus' analysis, and to sources for other analyses of this issue, see my blog entry on November 27, "The Economics of Way with Iraq". The abstract for the NBER paper reads:
Administration choice for Treasury Secretary - John Snow Some background from the blog "Counterspin": "SNOW JOB: Who the hell is John W. Snow?". The source of the term "dismal science" Eugene Volokh at the "Volokh conspiracy" blog locates the source of the term in a 19th Century pro-slavery tract by Thomas Carlyle: "DISMAL SCIENCE: Little-known fact...". 12/8/2002
This is a great title for a paper: "Economic Experiments That You Can Perform At Home On Your Children". This paper, by Kate Krause of the Economics Deparment at the University of New Mexico,and William Harbaugh of the Economics Department at the University of Oregon, covers the following ground:
DeLong weighs in Brad DeLong posted a long item on Larry Lindsey's firing Sunday night (12-8): "In the Bush Administration, Loyalty Is a One-Way Street Only". Delong indicts the Administration for a poorly conceived economic program driven by spin and public relations, and for its treatment of O'Neill and Lindsey. Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post "Media Notes" column also points to the administration's poor treatment of O'Neill and Lindsey: "A Very Public Ousting. White House Trashing of Economic Team Was Unexpected ". The White House set out not just to replace O"Neill and Lindsey, but to do it in a very public and humiliating way in order to dramatize to the public that it was making changes to address the poor economy.
"And then, this absolute stunner: ""Bush blamed Lindsey for many of the administration's economic missteps in recent months and even complained privately about his failure to exercise physically, aides said." "Get it? Not only was he a lousy adviser, but he was too fat!""
"Lindsey accepted the news placidly and showed up for the senior staff meeting at 7:30 a.m. Friday as if nothing had happened. In an interview yesterday, he said he had no regrets and will continue cheerfully in his position until Friedman is ready to take over. "We're parting on very good terms," Lindsey said. "Bush has not met with Lindsey or O'Neill since they were ousted, but Lindsey said Bush sent him a warm typewritten letter with a handwritten addition. "He was very gracious," Lindsey said. "He thanked me, told me I did a good job, and thanked my wife for all she put up with." "Lindsey said that after Christmas, he's taking his three young children to Florida. "It's almost like the commercial," he said with a jolly laugh. "I lost the White House, but I'm going to Disney World." " ("Bush Picks CSX Corp. Chief for Treasury Railroad Executive Is In Final Review Stage "). Republican tax planning A Washington Post story on the O'Neill resignation by Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen says that planning on administration proposals for tax reductions, meant to stimulate the economy, is advanced. The turnover in the economic policy leadership will delay announcement of the program until January, but is unlikely to lead to substantive changes. What's in store?:
"Opting against dramatic measures to put money into consumers' pockets, the White House is forming a package that will lean heavily toward investment incentives, senior Republican congressional aides say. It will include some reduction of the tax on corporate dividends, an added tax write-off for corporations investing in plants and equipment, and a higher limit on annual contributions to retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts. "For consumers, the administration is expected to accelerate income tax cuts planned for 2004 to 2003, and is still considering whether to speed up the scheduled increase in the per-child tax credit. Last year's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut slowly increases the child credit from $500 to $1,000, but so far, it has been bumped up to only $600. House Republican leaders would like to see it go higher faster, possibly to $1,000 immediately." ("New Team To Sell Policy on Economy")
"Another idea — abolishing the tax on earned income and replacing it with a national sales tax — could also lead people to work harder. It would almost certainly make collections easier, because tax returns would become much simpler and most retailers already collect sales tax. "Republicans are also talking about doing away with three taxes that affect the return on investments: the tax on corporate profits, the double tax on dividends and the tax on capital gains." ("If Tax History Is a Guide, the Poor Are in Trouble" - free registration may be required) Is it only about the oil? Is the crisis with Iraq just about the oil? Daniel Yergin, oil analyst and historian, thinks not and explains why in a Washington Post column today: "A Crude View of the Crisis in Iraq". His argument is that, short term or long term, Iraq (despite its large reserves) is not going to be a decisive factor in world oil markets:
"Right now, Russia and the Caspian nations seem to have the edge in this race. All that, however, is subject to change... "...After "the day after," Iraq will be in a better position to compete for its share. But it will be only one of several strong contestants." Are the poor overeating? Do our food support programs for the poor (food stamps, the school lunch program, and the Department of Agriculture's "Women, Infants, and Children" (WIC) program) encouraging bad eating habits? Do these programs, designed in, and for, another era, need reformulation so that they do not encourage recipients to eat too much of the wrong things? We should think about it, says Douglas Besharov in today's Washington Post, "We're Feeding The Poor as If They're Starving":
"About 65 percent of all Americans are overweight, and nearly half of those are obese. The best estimates place the rates for the poor at 5 to 10 percentage points higher. Adolescents from needy families are twice as likely to be overweight. Yet today, low-income families have access to more free or low-cost food than ever before, and many can be enrolled in all three federal feeding programs at the same time, plus Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a welfare program that pays out $12 billion a year." How much wilderness is there in the world? According to a recent study:
Click here for a: map of world wilderness areas. 12/7/2002
Why was O'Neill replaced? On Wednesday the President decided to ask for the resignations of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and of National Economic Council Director Lawrence Lindsey. They were informed on Thursday and the announcements were made on Friday. Why did O'Neill have to go? What does a Secretary of the Treasury have to do? Friday Brad DeLong described the essential features of the job:
The economy isn't doing well - the recession that began late in the last administration is lingering on - the Labor Department said Friday (in an apparently unrelated development) that the unemployment rate reached 6%. There may have been little he could have done. The recession began in the preceding administration, the link between federal action and the economic cycle isn't all that strong, and involves important lags. On the other hand, the Administration is held responsible, no matter what. To protect the President, a cabinet secretary should take the blame and "take the fall." It's to the administration's credit that it was able to make a hard personnel decision. The L.A. Times points out that we're now entering the two year runup to the 2004 Presidential election and that the weak economy seen as Bush's main weakness. There is a certain urgency here. Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen report in the Washington Post that:
""The most important thing in '04 is to have a year of economic growth under your belt," the lobbyist said. "People have to hear things are getting better for a long time before they really believe it."" ("New Team To Sell Policy on Economy") O'Neill said a lot of imprudent things. The Washington Post supplies a selection of these here. His sayings were entertaining but costly. The lost him the confidence of the domestic and international financial communities. This August Post editorial explains the implications for IMF efforts to help Brazil's economy:
"After that remark, the Treasury issued a regretful statement expressing confidence in Brazil's economic management. But the episode did not prevent Mr. O'Neill from jumping into more hot water last weekend. Referring to Argentina and Uruguay as well as Brazil, the secretary said the challenge for these governments is to make sure that financial assistance "doesn't just go out of the country to Swiss bank accounts." In Mr. O'Neill's defense, it's true that capital flight is a danger. But invoking that danger on television is not a smart way to bolster confidence in the region, and the subsequent fall in Brazil's currency was hardly surprising." (See "Mr. O'Neill's Gaffes"). These extracts from a Post article by Paul Bluestein make it clear that he wasn't interested in the politics of the job:
"He derided traders of stocks, bonds and currencies as "people who sit in front of flickering green screens" whose jobs he could learn "in about a couple of weeks." He riled congressional Republicans by dismissing as "show business" a bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee..." ("Often Outspoken, Now Out of the Picture") Paul Bluestein again:
"He made it clear he didn't think a large, broad-based stimulus package was necessary, and it's kind of tough to go rah-rah-rah about a new economic package if your leading spokesman at the Treasury isn't for it," said David Solin, a partner at Foreign Exchange Analytics in Essex, Conn." He was willing to tell the truth as he saw it. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily a good thing. This Washington Post story points out that he drew attention to the problems of poor nations with the ways aid is distributed to poor nations:
"Although many aid experts felt O'Neill went overboard when he asserted that "there is precious little to show" for the billions of dollars showered on poor countries over the past 50 years, his insistence on demanding better, more measurable results has become widely accepted and has forced changes both at the World Bank and in U.S. aid programs. "Reflecting O'Neill's success at focusing attention on the plight of the world's poor, the aid agency Oxfam America struck a sorrowful note in a statement on O'Neill's departure, saying that his "presence on the Bush economic team brought these issues into the debate in a way they otherwise would not have been included." "Often, when O'Neill blurted out a statement that later had to be clarified or smoothed over, "he was saying things that people knew were true but wouldn't dare say," said Kristin Forbes, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who recently left Treasury. "For example, few disputed the validity of his concern about aid to Latin countries going to waste." Why did things go wrong? At the time O'Neill was chosen, Paul Krugman (as quoted by Brad DeLong yesterday) wrote:
12/5/2002
John Rawls The Economist has an obituary for John Rawls: "John Rawls". I've posted other collections of obituaries and memorials here and here. Is the FCC facilitating monopolization of the Internet? Paul Krugman sounds the alarm in Friday's New York Times: "Digital Robber Barons?". Free registration may be required. The states are having a hard time balancing their budgets - who's to blame? Jonathan Weisman in the Washington Post reports that, while the states bear responsibility:
"This year's stimulus bill, which granted an additional tax break to businesses that invest in plant and equipment, also hit the states, because almost all of them have tied their own corporate income tax systems to the federal government's. Thirty states scrambled to "decouple" their corporate tax rates from Washington's to save as much as $15 billion over the next three years, but 15 other states have absorbed the revenue blow..." |
