Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 426
November 15, 2012
New intermediate microeconomics textbook by Goolsbee, Levitt, and Syverson
It is by Austan Goolsbee, Steve Levitt, and Chad Syverson. I have only browsed it, but it looks very good. There is information about the book here (note that we share a publisher; they do great books!).
*India Grows at Night: A Liberal Case for a Strong State*
That is the new book by the excellent Gurcharan Das and it makes an excellent case for the relevance of a classical liberal approach to the problems of India. Note the subtitle! You can buy the book here.
Simon Blackburn suffers from mood affiliation
Via Ross Douthat, here is the close of Blackburn’s review of the new Thomas Nagel book:
There is charm to reading a philosopher who confesses to finding things bewildering. But I regret the appearance of this book. It will only bring comfort to creationists and fans of “intelligent design”, who will not be too bothered about the difference between their divine architect and Nagel’s natural providence. It will give ammunition to those triumphalist scientists who pronounce that philosophy is best pensioned off. If there were a philosophical Vatican, the book would be a good candidate for going on to the Index.
The Nagel book continues to go up in my eyes.
Assorted links
1. Why don’t Japanese toilets spread to the U.S.?
2. How many states will refuse the Medicaid expansion? Possibly a whole bunch.
4. Tax hikes vs. spending cuts, and citing this old Blanchard and Perotti piece (pdf).
5. Ways in which money still matters in campaigns.
Economists are everywhere China fact of the day
North Korean-trained economist Zhang Dejiang is expected to head the largely rubber-stamp parliament, while Shanghai party boss Yu Zhengsheng is likely to head parliament’s advisory body, according to the order in which their names were announced.
Tianjin party chief Zhang Gaoli and Liu Yunshan, a conservative who has kept domestic media on a tight leash, make up the rest of the group.
And who said education doesn’t matter?
The story is here, via Emily Kaiser.
November 14, 2012
Sentences to ponder (who’s next?)
…by my calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us [Galaxie 500] the profit of one– one– LP sale. (On Spotify, one LP is equivalent to 47,680 plays.)
Oh, and there’s more:
Pandora and Spotify are not earning any income from their services, either. In the first quarter of 2012, Pandora– the same company that paid Galaxie 500 a total of $1.21 for their use of “Tugboat”– reported a net loss of more than $20 million dollars. As for Spotify, their latest annual report revealed a loss in 2011 of $56 million.
The full story is here, interesting throughout, and for the pointer I thank HL.
Coase and Wang on capitalism in China
Nick Schulz does the interview. After they discuss the topic, here is one bit toward the end:
We are now working with the University of Chicago Press to launch a new journal, Man and the Economy. We chose our title carefully to signal the mission of the new journal, which is to restore economics to a study of man as he is and of the economy as it actually exists. We hope this new journal will provide a platform to encourage scholars all over the world to study how the economy works in their countries. We believe this is the only way to make progress in economics.
For the pointer I thank David Levey.
November 10, 2012
Edward Moore asks
From a reader email:
This hypothetical question just popped into my head and after mulling it over for a while it occurred to me that it’s really a great stagnation question.
“Would you trade your last five years of life to always have the best personal technology provided to you (iPhones, iPads, google glass, whatever implantable, wearable things are coming) if the consequence of not making the trade was that you were limited to basic desktop technology for the rest of your life?” The decision must be made now and is binding. Right now I think I would make the trade because I would hate to miss out on all the things that are coming. I think I would have said no in 1995. Does that make me a great stagnation skeptic?
I love your blog.
Go for the years, I say. But at “six months” it is a tougher call…and perhaps Ed is a younger man than I am. I certainly would advise an eighty-year-old to take the years, or for that matter the six months.
Bill Gates on Education Reform
I’m also impressed by the results in places like Western Governors University. Its low-cost online programs rely on competency-based progression, not class-time or credit hours. It uses external assessments to evaluate student proficiency. And because its students are a little older and possibly more focused in their goals, its graduation rates are high and the salaries its graduates earn are good.
Because of institutions like Tennessee Tech and WGU, I’m optimistic about the potential of innovation to help solve many of the problems with our post-secondary system. But we need more and better information. I’m reminded of a point made by Andrew Rosen of Kaplan, the for-profit education company, that colleges today know more about how many kids attend basketball games and which alumni give money than how many students showed up for economics class during the week, or which alumni are having a hard time meeting their career goals because of shortcomings in their education.
That needs to change.
From here.
Tyler Cowen's Blog
- Tyler Cowen's profile
- 844 followers
