Setentia

economists calling for more stimulus

2009-07-08T11:27:00.001-04:00

As seen as CEPR:

Congress will be more likely to move on a third stimulus when economists recognize and speak out about the inadequacy of the second stimulus. In an effort to promote forward thinking by economists, and challenge those who have not yet faced up to the severity of the current recession to examine economic developments more closely, CEPR is keeping an honor roll of economists calling for a third stimulus.

Go to the list of economists making this call.

um, yeah. this is capital C Cornell.

2009-07-07T23:17:00.003-04:00

TLR and I went to the campus today, to the library, 'cause he wanted to fetch some articles. I'm not overwhelmed by libraries, but...this campus kinda puts me in "My Place."

Cornell is serious shit, yo. And I'm going to f-in teach here. What is up wi' dat, yo?

Cornell is serious. There's a vibe that permeates the campus. Ppl here ain't fuckin' around.

So my inferiority complexes come out to play in a place like this.

I'm going to teach...HERE?!?!? Okay, breathe.

I am worthy. I am worthy. I am worthy.

I have been in the academy long enough to know who is super smart and who isn't, and I'm not worried about 'smarter than me" people, but I don't have the energy or the inclination to deal with people who BELIEVE they are THE SHIT and smarter than me and everyone else on the planet and all that bs.

But in a place like this...I know the stakes, I know the jockeying for position...the valuing of people and their intellects. One part of me knows where I stand... and another part of me just doesn't feel like playing this game. Any more.

Ah, academics. The. Ivory Tower.

You're Rich, Your Speeding Ticket is Higher

2009-06-17T11:09:00.002-04:00

What a fascinating concept, assigning speeding fines by how much income a person has. And of course, it would be one of those Scandinavian countries doing it.

5 Really, Really Expensive Speeding Tickets from mentalfloss

Does this help the forecasters?

2009-04-18T10:41:00.003-04:00

This is a fabulous snapshot.

another Mankiw plea to get us to pity the rich

2009-02-27T13:15:00.002-05:00

Today Greg Mankiw once again makes the case that our society is already too rough on the rich. We tax them too much.

That is, even before the Obama tax hikes, the rich face average tax rates more than twice those of the middle class, and about seven times those of the lowest quintile.

OK, sure Dr. Mankiw, I'll give you that. The 32% 'effective federal tax rate' paid by the top 1% is indeed a higher percentage than the 4% paid by the bottom 20%.

But seriously, you're overstating the case. Again.

Federal taxes are the most progressive taxes we have. Every American also pays state and local taxes. The most regressive of our taxes is the sales tax. And you know that the sales tax is not a federal tax.

If the CBO report you site included ALL taxes, not just federal taxes, we would see less progressive effective tax rates.

Furthermore, it appears to me that the report delineates tax rates on the books, not actual taxes paid. I'd like to see a report that accounts for deductions and tax breaks and such.

Nota Bene, friends: No economist is as objective as s/he claims to be. There's always more to the story.

what passes for good scholarship

2009-02-25T16:59:00.002-05:00

You have summers off, right, isn't that great?

Yeah, it would be great if it were true. But it isn't. But whatever, we academics live in a bizarre pseudo-reality where most other folks have no idea what we mean by: "I have to publish in scholarly journals."

Heretofore, I thought I understood what it meant to 'have to publish' in reputable places. But I'm learning that the bar is very different in different disciplines.

For me, a single paper generally takes a few years (at least) from concept to acceptance for publication. Then another 2-3 years later, it'll appear in print.

Flash to a meeting of an interdisciplinary committee, determining what is sufficient research for our group. The professor in question had 1 pub that was regarded very highly by others on the committee. I hadn't heard of the journal, but they assured me it was 'the top journal in ________ field." Oh? OK, I guess that's really good then.

I returned to my office and found the article. It was a mere 5 pages of story-telling with a few BLS statistics sprinkled it. And this is the piece that so impressed my colleagues?

Well, that's interesting.

this stinkin' economy

2008-12-17T23:03:00.000-05:00

Oh yes, we all know that it's rough out there. I teach my students about unemployment: causes, types, and policy measures...how incidence correlations with job description and demographics. And of course we academics are not immune.

I am not on the market this year, and I am damn glad I'm not. I'm also not the token woman on my department's hiring committee (for the first time in what seems like a gazillion years), and I'm also damn glad I'm not. This is what we'd call a buyer's market, supposedly a boon for universities hiring professors because jobs are scarce and they/we can have our pick of the best of the best. But what does a buyer's market really mean?

It's good for the 'top' departments, as determined by whichever rankings the literati believe. For the rest of us (who are not among the top 30 PhD-granting) it means a grand ole crapshoot. In any given year, the ABDs and recent PhDs from all programs will apply to nearly every job that fits their field. If we all know this, it's no big deal. Wisconsin-Milwaukee is not likely to score the top grad from Princeton anyway, so that top grad probably won't be interviewed for the position. In a typical year.

But now there are second-rate and third-rate, fourth- and seventh- rate programs vying for the 'best of the best.' And they believe they can get them. Oh silly sillies. Even if such a program hired such a person, they would not stay. Maybe that 1 or 2 years of research output is worth the additional cost of going to the market again, and starting over, but it likely is not.

So I shake my head at the silly departments, but I feel truly sorry for the sellers in this market. I feel sorry for the academics who are worthy of good TT jobs, and who would likely obtain them in a market not distorted in this way. Would that all involved had better information and better foresight.

more yammering about gas prices

2008-04-30T01:25:00.000-04:00

I’d like to share some basic economics...just ‘cause.

We assume that when prices go up, people demand (i.e. want to buy) less of a thing.
We assume that when prices go up, firms supply (i.e. want to sell) more of a thing.

These assumptions lead to demand and supply relationships that are negative and positive, respectively. We put these together on a graph, and whammo, they’re going to intersect somewhere, and that intersection reveals the quantity sold/bought and the price.

Consider gasoline. Let’s go back in time, when you could buy a gallon of gas for $2.50. That was the equilibrium price. People found gasoline relatively cheap, and Detroit rolled out all sorts of gas-guzzling SUVs and such.

At the same time, environmental conditions were worsening because we were polluting the air. This is what we call a negative externality. The true costs associated with the sale and consumption of gasoline are not reflected in market prices.

The Supply function is supposed to reflect the costs of production and sales. If pollution costs were included the Supply curve would actually be higher, and the price of gasoline would go up, say to $3.50.

But pollution costs are not reflected in supply functions, for the most part. One reason for this is that no one owns the air; no one has the property rights to force others to keep the air clean.

Some countries use taxes to adjust supply functions for these pollution costs. England is a perfect example of this; approximately 75% of the price of petrol is tax. But we don’t have taxes nearly that high in the U.S.

There are two main opposing Economic camps on this issue:

Camp One: The government should use taxes to reflect pollution costs and limit the consumption of gasoline.

Camp Two: If gasoline/oil is such a scarce resource, market forces will adjust so that prices rise and consumption will fall as a result.

Camp Two is the most powerful camp in the U.S. So, let’s reconsider our current situation.

Two main factors must be considered. One is global instability, particularly in the Middle East that has impacted the supply. I’m not sure about the exact extent of this supply change, but many economists argue that the Iraq War and other things have effectively limited the supply coming to us (or at least raised the price sellers ask of us, thus shifting supply left).

The other factor is our consumption of gasoline. We all know that vehicles with lower gas mileage yield higher gas consumption. But there’s a lot more going on. The outward expansion of most cities (“urban sprawl”) yields longer commutes. Larger vehicles slow down average travel times because 1) they take up more space on the road, and 2) they’re harder to see around so other drivers need to leave more following distance. Both imply longer commutes. Most cities have horribly bad public transit, and no good incentives for carpooling. Again, we get longer commutes. Longer commutes mean average gas consumption goes up and up and up, i.e., demand increases.

But we also need to consider the rest of the world. The demand for gasoline in India and China is skyrocketing. Global demand is super high and it’s only increasing. The days of $2 a gallon gas are behind us. Forever.

So with lower supply and higher demand, we end up with prices where they are now.

And then, the yammering about how to deal with this. McCain has this brilliant idea of a Tax Holiday to lower (effective) per gallon prices by 18 lousy cents.

And people are excited about this? There is no reasonable Economic justification, or cause to be jubilant about this proposal. Either 1) gas demand is too inelastic, or 2) we should let market forces do what they do.

1) Gas demand is too inelastic (unresponsive to price changes). Um, this is obvious. Particularly in the short run, people don’t drive significantly more or less as a result of changes in gas prices. I truly have difficulty believing that enough people would add enough summer trips across the country to make any difference to our overall economic health. We respond far more slowly to gas prices. A friend of mine suffered through high commuting costs for years before deciding to move closer to her job to cut down on her gas consumption. That’s just how it goes.

2) Market forces have led gas prices to rise. Anyone who Believes In The Market (read: conservatives et al.) should let the market do what it does. We have known about high gas prices for a really damn long time. This is not a surprise anymore. The market is telling us to adapt. A Tax Holiday from gas prices is just Big Brother Government trying to stave off the inevitable. And that this BS is coming from Republicans is just horribly ironic.

ok, so no congrats are in order

2008-04-28T14:53:00.001-04:00

I have recently learned that my department is giving me 2 awards with a total value close to $2k. Pretty cool, right?

So I share this with a colleague in another department, b/c it means I need less money from our grant for my upcoming travel. I expected him to say something like cool, that's great, blahblahblah.

Instead he goes, "Must be nice to be in a department with money. Your chair has done a great job bringing it in."

{blink} Um, yeah. OK.

It's dangerous to be friendly

2008-04-25T16:44:00.000-04:00

If you had asked me about my current senior class 10 days ago I would have told you they are the best bunch of students I've had in 10 years of teaching. Unfortunately, the bottom has fallen out, and I've noticed a disturbing trend.

We became friendly in this class--not friends--but definitely friendly. We had an excellent rapport, and I could tell they respected me, the class, and their peers, and did what was necessary to submit high quality work. But this past week has been awful, with students swearing at me, and arguing that their shoddy work should receive higher grades. It's really disturbing. I had to be my econ self and draw a graph, so here it is.

Religious participation: it's not just about switching

2008-03-02T14:20:00.000-05:00

Lots of folks have posted about the recent Pew survey on the U.S. Religious Landscape. Apparently the biggest news is that, among the 35000 people who participated in the survey, over one quarter switched away from the religion they were born into. OK, I guess that's interesting, except that most of the people I know have made that switch. Yes of course, the kinds of people I know tend to be highly-educated and geographically mobile...but still.

I find other results more note-worthy. I had to grab some of Pew's data and play around with it. The relationship between education level and religion is interesting. Here's a graph of religion for college grads and those with post-graduate degrees. Having Hindus, Jews, and Unitarians on the right isn't surprising, but I am somewhat surprised by the fact that Evangelical Protestants and New Agers are so similar. And I didn't expect this sizable difference between Mainline and Evangelical Protestants. I feel a desire to opine on these findings, but I'm going to restrain myself.

What I found really fascinating was the gender composition of different faith groups. Farther right coincides with more women. Religions that are less likely to have female clergy, and that have more stringently-defined gender roles, have more female practitioners. Women form the majority in Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, and Conservative Jewish religions. But they are the minority among Unitarians, Hindus, Buddists, and New Agers (I assume New Age includes Wicca and Goddess religions). And there's a stark difference among Jews, with 47% female in Reformed, and 54% in Conservative.

For me, this is truly a stumper. Why are women more likely to be in religions that are more restrictive about their role both within the faith community and in society in general? Perhaps we can see the Simpsons as Any-Family-USA, where Marge keeps the family going to church, and when asked what religion the family follows, Homer replies, "You know, the one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work in real life -- uh, Christianity." Why do women so regularly follow in Marge's footsteps and keep the family going to church?

I want to know more, I want to get my hands on the raw survey data. I want to see the breakdown among the people who switched religions. Who were they? What did they switch to? Were they mostly male or female? Hmmm if I ask Pew really nicely do you think they'll just hand over the data to me? If I say pretty please? Yeah, I don't think so either.

where are the women?

2008-02-04T09:47:00.000-05:00

Mankiw just posted a link to the latest ranking of most influential economists from IDEAS. There are no women in the top 130. Then I see Asli Demirguc-Kunt at 134, Carmen Reinhart at 142, and Ellen McGrattan at 148. Their research is in macro/monetary topics. Though there are quite a few male labor economists listed, the first female I see is Janet Currie at 214.

I don't believe CSWEP (comm. on the status of women in the economics profession) discusses this issue of field segregation, but it sure should. If equal influence is a goal, we either need more women to pursue money/macro, or we need other fields to have more overall influence on the discipline.

You're soooooo conservative.

2008-01-26T12:59:00.000-05:00

I subscribe to the feeds for a few popular Economist's blogs. For the most part, they're well-written and have interesting things to say (like this post by Greg Mankiw). But I end up disappointed by the knee-jerk conservatism that gets flung around in our field. Ugh.

If Paul Krugman is the only loud leftist economic voice, well...that's just sad.

Lifelong study of economics will not necessarily yield to conservative politics. Instead, it seems to me that people with conservative political views are drawn to the field, drawn to what they see as a camaraderie in their world view. Yes, I said 'they.' It's as Professor Mankiw states in the post linked above (if you haven't read it, go--read it now): the same tools and theories and models can (and should) be used to better understand economic phenomena, regardless of one's political/moral bent.

I've often heard my students claim that economists are, by nature, politically conservative. {sigh} Where do they get that message? From my colleagues? From the nightly news? We do not all fit in the same mold, we do not all agree on policy. We do not all want to adopt a flat income tax, abolish social security, shut down the EPA, ... et cetera ... et cetera.