Economics
@article{beam2024pricing,
Author={Beam, Christopher},
url={https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/surge-pricing-fees-economy/678078/},
Title={Welcome to Pricing Hell},
journal={The Atlantic},
date={2024-04-16},
comment={First, a really nice clear explanation of how normal people value fairness and economists – to the contrary of everyone else – value efficiency. So if demand can be met by either price or time (you pay more, or you wait in line), then most economists say “price” because it doesn’t waste people’s time. Even in a disaster situation (say, the need for snowshovels after a snowstorm), most economists argue that the price of snow shovels should rise. “Most economists, but not all.” The article says. Deaton from Princeton says that the focus on efficieny increases poverty (duh – if the price of snow shovels sky rockets, only the poor don’t have snow shovels, particularly with growing inequality, where an expensive snow shovel might cost a poor person everything and a very wealthy person nearly nothing – see 30% of income spent on housing arguments.) Second, this article explains that as companies gather more data about individuals (this is why they want you to download their app), they can start to offer pricing tailored to individuals. Even if people, as a whole, hate that, companies may not be able to stay away from it because competitors who engage in it could becomes more profitable. This is the “pricing hell” future that may be coming for us all.},
category={Economics, Criticality}
}
@article{marchese2022dalygrowth,
Author={Marchese, David},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/18/magazine/herman-daly-interview.html},
Title={This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession With Growth Must End},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2022-07-17},
comment={Interview with Herman Daly, an economist who has argued for 50 years that our economy’s obsession with growth is unsustainable.},
category={Economics, Criticality, growth}
}
% There had to be a serious economist tackling this issue, and there he be.
@article{lohr2022automation,
Author={Lohr, Steve},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/technology/income-inequality-technology.html},
Title={Economists Pin More Blame on Tech for Rising Inequality},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2022-01-11},
comment={Daron Acemoglu is an economist at MIT whose research suggests that at least half of increasing gap in wages for American workers over the last 40 years is attributable to automation of taks formerly done by human workers, especially men without college degrees. He makes a distinction between technologies that help people do their jobs better (spreadsheets, search engines) and so-so technologies that don’t increase overall productivity but replace a human worker (grocery store self-checkout kiosks, automated phone customer service). As a society we are choosing technologies that replace people, and we don’t have to. He points out that the tax on labor, including payroll and income tax, is 25 percent. The tax on the costs of equipment, which includes a bunch of tax breaks, is effectively zero.},
category={Economics, Criticality, automation}
}
@article{tompkins2021globalpoverty,
Author={Tompkins, Lucy},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/world/global-poverty-united-nations.html},
Title={Extreme Poverty Has Been Sharply Cut. What Has Changed?},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2021-11-02},
comment={“In 1990, about 36 percent of the global population — and nearly half of people in developing countries — lived on less than $1.25 a day, the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty at the time. (It’s now $1.90 a day.) In 2000, United Nations member states pledged to cut extreme poverty worldwide — specifically to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, from 1990 levels, by 2015. Bottom line: The U.N. goal was met. By 2015, the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell to 12 percent from 36 percent in 1990, a steep decline in just two and a half decades. During a single generation, more than a billion people around the world climbed out of extreme poverty, surpassing the goal.” Why? Some from debt forgiveness for impoverished countries, some from safety net programs, but most from China and Inda’s fast-growing economies.},
category={Economics, Criticality, global poverty, china}
}
% It’s amazing to me that this article is so short and the topic so underreported. (Probably because the two big heroes of the subject are China and the UN.) The wins are dramatic, but far too complicated for such a short article.
% In China, it seems that a rising economic tide did indeed lift all boats. That’s hardly a sustainable or repeatable model. (Except for once again reinforcing that manufacturing is the basis for wealth in a country, despite what any expert macro economist says.)
% And The World Bank estimates that social safety net programs are responsible for 36 percent of the global reduction in extreme poverty accounting for much of the reduction in poverty outside of China.
@article{shaxson2021londonmoney,
Author={Shaxson, Nicholas},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/opinion/pandora-papers-britain-london.html},
Title={The City of London Is Hiding the World’s Stolen Money},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2021-10-11},
comment={Most of the world’s stolen and hidden money is processed, lawyered, passed through, and stashed in the city of London and connected “offshore” elements. The newly released Pandora Papers show that there is between 6 and 36 trillion dollars hidden in tax havens, and London is the biggest of them all. Tax havens are used to avoid paying something like 245 to 600 billion dollars per year.},
category={Economics, dark money, pandora papers, london, tax haves, offshore finance}
}
@article{krugman2021renewables,
Author={Krugman, Paul},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2021/18/17/opinion/us-obama-renewable-energy.html},
Title={Who Created the Renewable-Energy Miracle?},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2021-08-17},
comment={Outlines how the extreme decline in cost of solar and wind power renewable energy was driven by policy and subsidy, rather than a great leap forward in techology.},
category={Economics, renewable engergy}
}
% This article comes closer to the notion I’ve had that we old the crazy old hippies in the 1970s arguing for solar power a huge apology. They were right all along – it wasn’t too expensive at all, it just needed economics of scale.
@article{graeber2019economics,
Author={Graeber, David},
url={https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/12/05/against-economics/},
Title={Against Economics},
journal={The New York Review of Books},
date={2019-11-dd},
comment={A review of Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics by Robert Skidelsky. A critical takedown of the entire field of economics, including QTM, rational choice theory, the infection of basics of economics other areas of academia, and how complex systems are emergent in macroeconomics that are not present in microeconomics.},
category={Economics, Criticality, qtm, rational choice theory, keynesian economics}
}
% “As a result, heterodox economists continue to be treated as just a step or two
% away from crackpots, despite the fact that they often have a much better record
% of predicting real-world economic events. What’s more, the basic psychological
% assumptions on which mainstream (neoclassical) economics is based—though they
% have long since been disproved by actual psychologists—have colonized the rest
% of the academy, and have had a profound impact on popular understandings of the
% world.”
% “To this day, economics continues to be taught not as a story of arguments—not,
% like any other social science, as a welter of often warring theoretical
% perspectives—but rather as something more like physics, the gradual
% realization of universal, unimpeachable mathematical truths.”
% “Only a minority—mostly heterodox economists, post-Keynesians, and modern money
% theorists—uphold what is called the “credit creation theory of banking”: that
% bankers simply wave a magic wand and make the money appear, secure in the
% confidence that even if they hand a client a credit for $1 million, ultimately
% the recipient will put it back in the bank again, so that, across the system as
% a whole, credits and debts will cancel out. Rather than loans being based in
% deposits, in this view, deposits themselves were the result of loans. The one
% thing it never seemed to occur to anyone to do was to get a job at a bank, and
% find out what actually happens when someone asks to borrow money. In 2014 a
% German economist named Richard Werner did exactly that, and discovered that, in
% fact, loan officers do not check their existing funds, reserves, or anything
% else. They simply create money out of thin air, or, as he preferred to put it,
% “fairy dust.””
% The idea that money is based on something tangible – like gold or silver – is
% called the Quantitative Theory of Money (QTM) and is based on simplistic ideas
% of supply and demand (hard money). It arose from the European empires
% extracting so much in precious metals from their colonies. Before those
% empires, money in Europe was mostly done on credit. In fact even AFTER the
% colonies gave everyone the idea that money was based on gold, most of that gold
% actually resided elsewhere in the world, and back in Europe money was still
% credit. The QTM theory is fundamentally wrong, but proponents of it continually
% won debates about how money works – for centuries.
@article{duflo2019incentives,
Author={Duflo, Esther and Banerjee, Abhijit},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/opinion/sunday/duflo-banerjee-economic-incentives.html},
Title={Economic Incentives Don’t Always Do What We Want Them To},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2019-10-26},
comment={These recent winners of “The Nobel Prize in economics” point out that almost all economic policy is based on the idea that financial incentives are the primary driver of human behavior, but in fact people are far more driven by status, dignity, and social connections.},
category={Economics, Criticality, financial incentives}
}
@article{leonhardt2019taxes,
Author={Leonhardt, David},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html},
Title={The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2019-10-06},
comment={For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower tax rate (fed, state, and local taxes) than any other income group. The tax rate for the top earners went from above 90 percent mid-century to 23 percent last year. The authors of the study reported on here recommend increasing this rate back up to 60 percent, and instituting a global minimum corporate tax of 25 percent. History shows that despite skepticism about the rich always avoiding taxes, if you seriously try to collect taxes, it will probably succeed.},
category={Economics, Politics, taxes}
}
@article{Appelbaum2019economists,
Author={Appelbaum, Binyamin},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/24/opinion/sunday/economics-milton-friedman.html},
Title={Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2019-08-24},
comment={Discusses the rise of economists in government in the 1970s, and how they made a lot of mistakes. ``Accounts of the rise of inequality often take a fatalistic view. The problem is described as a natural consequence of capitalism, or it is blamed on forces, like globalization or technological change, that are beyond the direct control of policymakers. But much of the fault lies in ourselves, in our collective decision to embrace policies that prioritized efficiency and encouraged the concentration of wealth, and to neglect policies that equalized opportunity and distributed rewards. The rise of economics is a primary reason for the rise of inequality.’’},
category={Economics, Criticality}
}
% See this review of Appelbaum’s book about this topic too, “The Economists’ Hour” (which might be worth reading):
% \url{https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/books/review/the-economists-hour-binyamin-appelbaum.html}
% “Appelbaum’s account is also full of economists who considered themselves
% liberal Democrats but found themselves coming down on the same side as
% Friedman. The analytical tools employed by mainstream economists steered them
% toward prioritizing efficiency over equality, market mechanisms over
% nonmarket ones and consumers over producers. Their methodology was itself a
% sort of ideology.”
@article{wilson2019jobs,
Author={Wilson, Tom},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/opinion/business-roundtable.html},
Title={Paying People More},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2019-08-20},
comment={A CEO argues that companies should take it on themselves to pay people more for their work — for the old reason that people who get paid well buy more things. Gives a nice straightforward argument for it. Makes the old Ford argument that workers need incomes to buy products to make capitalism go. Also the only time I’ve seen anyone in the mainstream press talk about how many jobs just don’t create enough value to cover the cost of paying the worker to do the job — but those people need good incomes too.},
category={Economics, Criticality, capitalism}
}
@article{sharma2019globalecon,
Author={Sharma, Ruchir},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/opinion/sunday/global-recession.html},
Title={Our Irrational Anxiety About ‘Slow’ Growth},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2019-08-17},
comment={A nice easy-to-follow breakdown of why economic growth doesn’t have to equal population growth — per capita incomes can continue to grow as long as the economy is shrinking less rapidly that the population. This by definition means accepting lower levels of growth as normal and healthy, sometimes even levels that would have traditionally been considered a recession.},
category={Economics, Criticality}
}
% This is the first time I’ve ever seen an argument for why we DON’T need never-ending population growth.
% It totally makes sense, is simple, and is really about accepting the fact that we just can’t HAVE
% the crazy growth and consumption we have in the last 100 years.
% It seems like people don’t even want it, really.
@article{kreuger2019superstars,
Author={Krueger, Alan B.},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/health/gender-stereotypes-research.html},
Title={The Economics of Rihanna’s Superstardom},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2019-06-01},
comment={Plain-language explanation of the basics of how our economy is now a winner-take-all economy, set up so that the very top most talented people take home most of the income. Describes how even though the internet makes virtually all music widely accessible, the way people choose what to listen to is based almost entirely on network effects from social interactions. Thus a person who is popular will become more popular, those who are obscure remain obscure.},
category={Economics, Music, network effects, winner-take-all}
}
@article{huber2019nycorganics,
Author={Huber, Daniel},
url={https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/cgi-park2/2019/02/how-much-potential-revenue-are-new-yorkers-wasting-by-trashing-organics/},
Title={How Much Potential Revenue Are New Yorkers Wasting by Trashing Organics?},
journal={IBO},
date={2019-02-25},
comment={The IBO finds that there is a lot of real value in the organic (compost) waste that NYC throws away. However, the value of the organic waste will likely never offset the cost of processing or collecting the organics.},
category={Economics, compost, garbage, organic waste, sanitation, nyc}
}
% So, if we want to commit to this, the costs would be offset somewhat - but we should be clear that we are NOT committing to it for financial reasons - so what is the reason we might commit? This is left unsaid in this brief.
@article{leonhardt2019class,
Author={Leonhardt, David},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/24/opinion/income-inequality-upper-middle-class.html},
Title={How the Upper Middle Class Is Really Doing},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2019-02-24},
comment={Argues (very convincingly) that dividing people into upper class and the rest of us is a false dichotomy. The history of income chart shows that while the very very rich (upper 1 percent to upper .01 percent) have done phenomenally better than everyone else, the upper middle class (90th to 99th percentile) is doing just fine, while everyone else is losing ground in the economy. He suggests that we should be talking about these three categories of people: the upper upper class, the upper middle class, and everyone else. Policy implications fall out like: increase taxes on the top end, hold them steady on the upper middle, and decrease them on the lower.},
category={Economics, taxes, class}
}
% See also this piece by Richard V. Reeves arguing that in the US people in the upper class live with the delusion that they got there through merit. At least in Britain, the wealthy feel guilty about it.
% \url{https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/opinion/sunday/stop-pretending-youre-not-rich.html}
% He points out that no rich progressive thinks twice about shelling out for private school for their kids, and the US universities are easier to get into if you are legacy unlike anywhere else.
@article{calvano2018artificial,
title={Artificial intelligence, algorithmic pricing and collusion},
author={Calvano, Emilio and Calzolari, Giacomo and Denicol{`o}, Vincenzo and Pastorello, Sergio},
year={2018},
publisher={CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP13405},
comment={Antitrust agencies are concerned that the autonomous pricing algorithms increasingly used by online vendors may learn to collude. This column uses experiments with pricing algorithms powered by AI in a controlled environment to demonstrate that even relatively simple algorithms systematically learn to play sophisticated collusive strategies. Most worrying is that they learn to collude by trial and error, with no prior knowledge of the environment in which they operate, without communicating with one another, and without being specifically designed or instructed to collude.},
category={Economics, amazon, pricing, collusion, algorithms, artificial intelligence}
}
@techreport{NBERw25538,
title = “Universal Basic Income in the US and Advanced Countries”,
author = “Hoynes, Hilary W and Rothstein, Jesse”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “25538”,
year = “2019”,
month = “February”,
doi = {10.3386/w25538},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w25538”,
abstract = {We discuss the potential role of Universal Basic Incomes (UBIs) in advanced countries. A feature of advanced economies that distinguishes them from developing countries is the existence of well developed, if often incomplete, safety nets. We develop a framework for describing transfer programs, flexible enough to encompass most existing programs as well as UBIs, and use this framework to compare various UBIs to the existing constellation of programs in the United States. A UBI would direct much larger shares of transfers to childless, non-elderly, non-disabled households than existing programs, and much more to middle-income rather than poor households. A UBI large enough to increase transfers to low-income families would be enormously expensive. We review the labor supply literature for evidence on the likely impacts of a UBI. We argue that the ongoing UBI pilot studies will do little to resolve the major outstanding questions.},
comment = {Smart people doing an in-depth analysis to reach the same conculsion I have about UBI: too expensive, or redistributing to the wrong people. Total non-starter.},
category = {Economics, ubi, universal basic income}
}
% See here for pdf:
% \url{https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/Hoynes-Rothstein-UBI-081518.pdf}
% See this article from the archives of Welfare history, Ms. Magazine in
% 1972: \url{http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2002/tillmon.asp}
@article{krugman2018trumptaxcut,
Author={Krugman, Paul},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/opinion/tax-cut-fail-trump.html},
Title={Why Was Trump’s Tax Cut a Fizzle?},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2018-11-15},
comment={Krugman argues that Trump’s tax cut basically had no impact on the economy because business decisions are a lot less sensitive to financial incentive (tax rates among others) than conservatives claim. He also points out that interest rate changes affect the economy almost entirely through their effect on the housing market and the international value of the dollar. Interest rate changes have almost no effect directly on business investment. Krugman points out that the truth of this business insensitivity to these marginal incentives undermines not just the Trump tax cut, but the whole conservative financial agenda. Bush’s tax cuts didn’t produce a business boom, and Obama’s tax hikes didn’t cause a depression.},
category={Economics, taxes, conservative politics}
}
@article{mckeough2018antiques,
Author={McKeough, Tim},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/style/how-low-will-market-for-antiques-actually-go.html},
Title={How Low Will Market for Antiques Actually Go?},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2018-11-03},
comment={The value of antique furniture has fallen about 80 percent in the last 20 years. It is not often cheaper to buy a 100 year old piece than its flat-pack equivalent.},
category={Economics, antiques, furniture}
}
@article{posner2016institutionalinvestors,
Author={Posner, Eric and Morton, Fiona Scott and Weyl, Glen},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/opinion/a-monopoly-donald-trump-can-pop.html},
Title={A Monopoly Donald Trump Can Pop},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-12-07},
comment={The new gilded age of wealth for the wealthy rests on the rise of institutional investors. These are companies like mutual funds that slowly buy up shares until they own a controlling amount of a company — and then until they own a controlling amount of a whole industry. When that happens, their economic incentive is to push the companies they own to drive up costs and drive wages down. Institutional investors own 70 percent of the stock market today; while they owned 7 percent in 1950. ``If you count them as a single investor, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street are the largest owner of 88 percent of the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500.’’ This is actually illegal, there is a law that says it is illegal for a single company to buy shares in an industry such that it effectively forms a monopoly. But no legal action has been taken. This op-ed suggests that the law should be adapted so that institutional investors cannot take a controlling share in more than one company in an industry. This op-ed also contains link to scholarly papers on the topic.},
category={Economics, institutional investors, monopolies, mutual funds, black rock, vanguard, state street}
}
@article{frazier2018maraschino,
Author={Frazier, Ian},
url={https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/the-maraschino-moguls-secret-life},
Title={The Maraschino Mogul’s Secret Life},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2018-04-23},
comment={On the history of the red honey caused by bees foraging maraschino cherry syrup in Red Hook. A profile of the dude who ran the factory, and how he was also growing marijuana in the basement. He ended up shooting himself when the factory was raided.},
category={Economics, food, maraschino cherries, bees, red hook, nyc}
}
@article{starn2017handm,
Author={Starn, Jesper},
url={https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-24/burning-h-m-rags-is-new-black-as-swedish-plant-ditches-coal},
Title={A Power Plant Is Burning H&M Clothes Instead of Coal},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2018-11-23},
comment={The clothing retailer H&M is so huge that the leftover clothing from manufacturing runs that it can’t use because it doesn’t meet their standards is burned in a Swedish power plant to generate power.},
category={Economics, fashion, power plants, clothing, h&m, fast fashion, sweden}
}
@techreport{NBERw24379,
title = “Dangers of a Double-Bottom Line: A Poverty Targeting Experiment Misses Both Targets”,
author = “Dean Karlan and Adam Osman and Jonathan Zinman”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “24379”,
year = “2018”,
month = “March”,
doi = {10.3386/w24379},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w24379”,
abstract = {Two for-profit Philippine social enterprises, aiming to demonstrate corporate social responsibility by increasing microlending to the poor, incorporated a widely-used poverty measurement tool into their loan applications and tested the tool using randomized training content. Treated loan officers were instructed why and how to use the tool for targeting; control group training merely labelled the tool “additional household information”. The targeting training backfired, leading to no additional poor applicants and lower-performing loans. Descriptive evidence suggests the targeting training exacerbated loan officer misperceptions and multitasking problems. Our results help explain why corporate social responsibility efforts are often siloed from core operations.},
category = {Economics, double bottom line, businesss, microlending, multitasking},
comment = {This paper is about a small and far from conclusive study finding that emphasizing double bottom lines for front-line employees creates inefficiency problems that make it hard to achieve both bottom lines. Probably because of multi-tasking requirements. It includes a brief literature review that is building evidence of the critical nature of this work.},
}
% It’s not there yet, but this suggests interesting possibilities for NOT persuing double bottom lines
% (What was the triple bottom line again?)
% Download paper here: \url{https://www.dartmouth.edu/~jzinman/Papers/DangersDoubleBottomLinewithShortAbstract.pdf}
@techreport{NBERw24331,
title = “The Importance of Psychology in Economic Activity: Evidence from Terrorist Attacks”,
author = “Kenneth R. Ahern”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “24331”,
year = “2018”,
month = “February”,
doi = {10.3386/w24331},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w24331”,
abstract = {Terrorist attacks influence economic growth and individual psychology. However, identifying the direct effect of terrorism on economics and psychology is difficult because institutions also change in response to terrorist attacks. This paper controls for institutional responses to terrorist attacks by studying people who live beyond the institutions’ borders, but are exposed to the attacks. I find that terrorism leads to declines in trust, subjective well-being, and the importance of creativity and freedom. However, at the macro-level, terrorism leads to increases in economic output and household income. These results are consistent with a growing literature that finds counterintuitive responses to trauma.},
category = {Economics, terrorism, Politics}
}
@article{deaton2018poverty,
Author={Deaton, Angus},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/poverty-united-states.html},
Title={The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2018-01-24},
comment={Argues that the US has an extremely high number of people living in deep poverty, comparable to some of the poorest countries on the planet. This is hidden by the statistics however. If deep poverty is living on less than 2 dollars a day in India, where it is warm and people can live outside, an dpeople don’t need housing, child care, clothing or transportation to live, then in the US the number compared should be more like 4 dollars a day. Using this metric, there are 5.3 million Americans who live in absolute poverty by global standards. This is more than countries like Sierra Leone, Nepal, Senegal, and Angola. (Though is is an absolutel comparison, not a poverty rate.) This is not an argument that the US is the worst just that it is a bad problem. Nor it it an argument against trying to help those overseas. Just that it has to be considered a problem here as well.},
category={Economics, poverty, Criticality, international development}
}
@techreport{NBERw23782,
title = “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?”,
author = “Nicholas Bloom and Charles I. Jones and John Van Reenen and Michael Webb”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “23782”,
year = “2017”,
month = “September”,
doi = {10.3386/w23782},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w23782”,
abstract = {In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms showing that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply. A good example is Moore’s Law. The number of researchers required today to achieve the famous doubling every two years of the density of computer chips is more than 18 times larger than the number required in the early 1970s. Across a broad range of case studies at various levels of (dis)aggregation, we find that ideas — and in particular the exponential growth they imply — are getting harder and harder to find. Exponential growth results from the large increases in research effort that offset its declining productivity.},
comment = {A paper that suggests that it requires more and more money invested in research and development to get fewer and fewer new ideas off the ground.},
category = {Economics, research, research and develoment, moore’s law, technology}
}
See pdf here:\url{https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/IdeaPF.pdf}
@article{stross2009trafficpumping,
Author={Stross, Randall},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/business/01digi.html},
Title={Why Google Doesn’t Like Its Phone Bill},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2009-10-31},
comment={In rural areas local telecoms get paid connection fees from big long distance networks for long distance calls. The idea of the rule is that very few people call those areas so higher fees don’t matter. But “free teleconferencing”, sex chat, and other services partner with the local telecoms to have their numbers in those areas so the local telecoms get paid from the big long distance companies, and then split the profits with the services. This is called “traffic pumping.” The cost is entirely born by the long distance carriers, since these days they generally charge a flat fee for unlimited long distance. When Google got into phone service with Google Voice in 2009, they balked against these fees and tried to raise awareness about them. But AT&T, seeing Google as a competitor, would not get on their side.},
category={Economics, free conference calls, traffic pumping, google voice}
}
@article{leonhardt2017incomeinequality,
Author={Leonhardt, David},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html},
Title={Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-08-07},
comment={It really is a simple chart that shows the radical increase in income for the very richest part of the income scale in recent years, as oppposed to the gradually increasing income of the very lowest part of the income scale in years past.},
category={Economics, income inequality}
}
@article{strebeigh2017zapovednik,
Author={Strebeigh, Fred},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/opinion/lenin-environment-siberia.html},
Title={Lenin’s Eco-Warriors},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-08-07},
comment={Because Lenin was a fan of camping and hiking, he worked to set aside the largest natural protected areas of any country in the world — Zapovedniks. Crucially, they were set aside as baseline unspoiled areas, not as human play areas, like they are in the US.},
category={Economics, national parks, nature preserves, russia, siberia, zapovednik}
}
@article{miller2017genderpaygap,
Author={Miller, Claire Cain},
url={https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html},
Title={The Gender Pay Gap Is Largely Because of Motherhood},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-05-13},
comment={When men and women finish school and start working, they’re paid pretty much equally. The pay gap between genders widens as people age, spreading most sharply in their late 20s to mid 30s — when many women have children. Unmarried women without children continue to earn closer to what men do. Even married women without children earn less, research shows, because women are more likely to give up job opportunities to either move or stay put for their husband’s job. Married women might also take less intensive jobs in preparation for children, or employers might not give them more responsibility because they assume they’ll have babies and take time off. Couples typically decide that the person who earns less should stay home and take care of the house. But that often ends up being the woman because she earns less because it is assumed she will end up staying home to take care of a household. Interestingly there is much less of a gap (about half as much) for people without college degrees. This is because earnings are higher and men dominate the highest-paying jobs. Also there is a strong emphasis on long inflexible hours.},
category={Economics, women, children, income, gender pay gap, motherhood}
}
@article{whillans2017richpeople,
Author={Whillans, Ashley V and Dunn, Elizabeth W. and Caruso, Eugene M.},
url={https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/opinion/sunday/how-to-get-the-wealthy-to-donate.html},
Title={How to Get the Wealthy to Donate},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-05-12},
comment={Wealthy people tend to share less of what they have with others. Possibly because money allows people to achieve their goals without depending on others, so it cultivates a mind-set of self-sufficiency that is at odds with charity. Poorer people are quicker to turn to their friends and family for help (with anything: moving, money, cleaning, whatever) while rich people will just hire someone. For this reason wealthy people teach their children to prioritize individuality, while poorer people focus on the needs of the group. Research suggests that taking this into account, it is easier to get rich people to donate to charity by catering to their sense of themselves. Meaning: ask wealthy people to “take individual action” rather than “contribute to the goals of the group.” The researchers point out that we often want to change people to do things for the right reason, but really we just need them to do the right thing.},
category={Economics, donating, charity, rich people, Humanity}
}
@article{carey2017pricediscrimination,
Author={Carey, Kevin},
url={https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/upshot/how-colleges-know-what-you-can-afford-and-the-limits-of-that-tactic.html},
Title={How Colleges Know What You Can Afford (and the Limits of That Tactic)},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-05-17},
comment={A real nice explanation of the economic concept of price discrimination — where a seller tries to sell at the highest price any individual buyer is willing to pay: the way airline tickets are sold. Uses as an example the cost of college tuition. Points out that this tactic was a good way for universities to put off dealing with bad financial situations — they eeked out a little more money through price discrimination in the form of financial aid. But the limits of that are rapidly being reached, and avoided financial disasters may yet come to pass. },
category={Economics, price discrimination, universities, tuition, financial aid}
}
@article{boustan2017whiteflight,
Author={Boustan, Leah},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/white-flight.html},
Title={The Culprits Behind White Flight},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-05-15},
comment={A Princeton economics professor finds that while racism played a part in white flight from the cities to the suburbs in the 20th Century, economics played an equal or greater part. She points out that many city neighborhoods were so segregated that white people living them would never have encountered black migrants, and yet they moved to the suburbs anyway. Because while houses were more expensive in the suburbs, they offered better schools and city services which the exact same kind of neighborhood in the city core couldn’t afford because of incoming lower-income people, both black and white.},
category={Economics, Housing, white flight, racism}
}
@article{blattman2017sweatshops,
Author={Blattman, Christopher and Dercon, Stefan},
url={https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/opinion/do-sweatshops-lift-workers-out-of-poverty.html},
Title={Everything We Knew About Sweatshops Was Wrong},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-04-27},
comment={Economists look at the widely-accepted economic theory that factory work eventually leads to increased wages and better lifestyles. And finds that, instead, people find factory work miserably and leave to go back to their rural lifestyles if given the option. Yet, these economists still can’t imagine any other means of developing countries: ``For poor countries to develop, we simply do not know of any alternative to industrialization. The sooner that happens, the sooner the world will end extreme poverty. As we look at our results, we are conflicted: We do not want to see workers exposed to hazardous risks, but we also worry that regulating or improving the jobs too much too quickly will keep that industrial boom from happening.’’ They do not mention unions, but instead “adopting modern management strategies and worker protections” to encourage industrial development.},
category={Economics, factories, sweatshops, development}
}
% This reminds me of that other article that talked about how unions were easier to form earlier in the industrial revolution because people could still remember life being better when they worked on farms.
% The fact that these guys can’t even talk about TRYING to find a non-factory solution to development tells me that the field of economics is still in a crisis of it’s own obtuse thinking.
@article{bullough2017offshore,
Author={Bullough, Oliver},
url={https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/offshore-money-bane-of-democracy.html},
Title={Offshore Money, Bane of Democracy},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-04-07},
comment={1/3 of high-end property purchases are suspected of being tied to questionable offshore financial sources. There is a flood of dirty capital pouring into United States real estate, and it isn’t clear who owns it.'' Offshore is usually thought of as a place, somewhere palm-fringed and tropical, but that’s a misconception. Offshore is an idea: a parallel legal system for corporations, kleptocrats, celebrities or anyone else who can afford it. Offshore gives the wealthy a way to avoid taxes and regulations and to obscure their identities, thus undermining the ability of governments to keep them in check.’’ After World War II the international financial system specifically protected against this kind of thing. But bankers in London in 1963 created the Eurobond'' which was not tied to any country, inventing offshoring’’. ``Offshore often happens right at home. The laws in Delaware and Nevada offer companies similar benefits as the laws in the British Virgin Islands. In fact, according to one in-depth study of companies that create companies, it is far easier to set up a corporate structure without being asked to confirm one’s identity in the United States than it is in notorious tax havens, like the Cayman Islands, Jersey or the Isle of Man.’’},
category={Economics, real estate, offshore, offshoring, international financial system}
}
@techreport{NBERw23285,
title = “Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets”,
author = “Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “23285”,
year = “2017”,
month = “March”,
doi = {10.3386/w23285},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w23285”,
abstract = {As robots and other computer-assisted technologies take over tasks previously performed by labor, there is increasing concern about the future of jobs and wages. We analyze the effect of the increase in industrial robot usage between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets. Using a model in which robots compete against human labor in the production of different tasks, we show that robots may reduce employment and wages, and that the local labor market effects of robots can be estimated by regressing the change in employment and wages on the exposure to robots in each local labor market—defined from the national penetration of robots into each industry and the local distribution of employment across industries. Using this approach, we estimate large and robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages across commuting zones. We bolster this evidence by showing that the commuting zones most exposed to robots in the post-1990 era do not exhibit any differential trends before 1990. The impact of robots is distinct from the impact of imports from China and Mexico, the decline of routine jobs, offshoring, other types of IT capital, and the total capital stock (in fact, exposure to robots is only weakly correlated with these other variables). According to our estimates, one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18-0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25-0.5 percent. },
comment = {Robots displace jobs, particularly among men, even after accounting for job loss overseas.},
category = {Economics, robots, jobs}
}
% See NY Times coverage of this report: \url{https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/upshot/evidence-that-robots-are-winning-the-race-for-american-jobs.html}
@article{misra2017mobility,
Author={Misra, Tanvi},
url={https://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/03/the-us-counties-where-economic-mobility-is-a-distant-dream/520404/},
Title={Where the American Dream Lives and Dies},
journal={CityLab},
date={2017-03-23},
comment={A new study breaks down the ability to become upwardly mobile into four categories and maps them to counties across the country. They find that ``A poor kid growing up in a languishing area in the countryside faces tougher odds of prospering than one in the cities. Growing up in a rich rural area, however, gives kids more of a leg up than living in the rich city.’’},
category={Economics, upward mobility, opportunity, rural vs urban, Urbanism}
}
@techreport{NBERw22566,
title = “Predicting Experimental Results: Who Knows What?”,
author = “Stefano DellaVigna and Devin Pope”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “22566”,
year = “2016”,
month = “August”,
doi = {10.3386/w22566},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w22566”,
abstract = {Academic experts frequently recommend policies and treatments. But how well do they anticipate the impact of different treatments? And how do their predictions compare to the predictions of non-experts? We analyze how 208 experts forecast the results of 15 treatments involving monetary and non-monetary motivators in a real-effort task. We compare these forecasts to those made by PhD students and non-experts: undergraduates, MBAs, and an online sample. We document seven main results. First, the average forecast of experts predicts quite well the experimental results. Second, there is a strong wisdom-of-crowds effect: the average forecast outperforms 96 percent of individual forecasts. Third, correlates of expertise—citations, academic rank, field, and contextual experience–do not improve forecasting accuracy. Fourth, experts as a group do better than non-experts, but not if accuracy is defined as rank ordering treatments. Fifth, measures of effort, confidence, and revealed ability are predictive of forecast accuracy to some extent, especially for non-experts. Sixth, using these measures we identify `superforecasters’ among the non-experts who outperform the experts out of sample. Seventh, we document that these results on forecasting accuracy surprise the forecasters themselves. We present a simple model that organizes several of these results and we stress the implications for the collection of forecasts of future experimental results.},
category = {Economics, expert prediction, wisdom-of-crowds effect, expertise}
}
% I haven’t read this.
@techreport{NBERw22571,
title = “A Time to Make Laws and a Time to Fundraise? On the Relation between Salaries and Time Use for State Politicians”,
author = “Mitchell Hoffman and Elizabeth Lyons”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “22571”,
year = “2016”,
month = “August”,
doi = {10.3386/w22571},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w22571”,
abstract = {Paying higher salaries is often believed to enhance worker effort, leading workers to work harder to avoid getting fired. However, workers may also respond to higher salaries by focusing on tasks that most directly affect getting fired (as opposed to those that contribute most to productivity). We explore these issues by analyzing the relationship between the level of compensation and time use for US state legislators. Using data on time use and legislator salaries, we show that higher salary is associated with legislators spending more time on fundraising. In contrast, higher salary is also associated with less time spent on legislative activities and has no clear relation to time spent on constituent services. Subgroup analysis broadly supports our interpretation of the data.},
category = {Economics, politics, time use, salary, fundraising, productivity}
}
% I haven’t read this.
@article{bryant-hiring,
Author={Bryant, Adam},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/guides/business/how-to-hire-the-right-person},
Title={How To Hire The Right Person},
journal={The New York Times},
year = {2017},
comment={An excellent guide to hiring well. Full of good tips.},
category={Economics, human resources, hiring}
}
% 2017? Maybe? fuck if I know, there’s no fucking date on this NY Times!
@article{lanchester2017macroecon,
Author={Lanchester, John},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/magazine/the-major-blind-spots-in-macroeconomics.html},
Title={The Major Blind Spots in Macroeconomics},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-02-07},
comment={Macroeconomics has been in a professional crisis since the 2007 financial crisis because they completely failed to predict the crisis. Preventing financial crises IS the job of macroeconomics, and they have proven time and again more or less incapable of doing that. Uniquely in the social sciences and humanities, macroeconomics was developed with a specific, real-world purpose, and a negative purpose to boot: to stop anything like the Great Depression from ever happening again. Given this goal — to avert systemic crises and downturns — the credit crunch and the Great Recession were, for macroeconomics, an intellectual disaster.'' While microeconomics has made great strides in recent years by adapoting science about behavorial economics, macroeconomics is still basing everything on rational actor’’ models. It is a matter of provable fact that our decision-making is not entirely rational. Economic models built on the premise of our rationality will always have a creaky underpinning.'' Macroeconomics also is an insular self-referential field:He finds compelling evidence in a survey of American professors of social science, who were asked whether “interdisciplinary” knowledge was better than knowledge “obtained by a single discipline.” Most social scientists sensibly thought that the answer was yes, by overwhelming margins. But 57 percent of economists disagreed or strongly disagreed. Economists literally think they have nothing to learn from anyone else.’’ Proposals for fixing this include agent based modeling'' which assumes individual behaviors and predicts, among other things, why Brazil nuts move to the top of a mixed-nut package. Also covers how macroeconomics doesn't actually includes allowances for how money works. Paul Romer is a highly regarded macroeconomist who recently became chief economist at the World Bank. (It was Romer who is credited with having coined, in 2004, the famous slogan that ``a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.’’) Last winter he, too, issued a lacerating critique of his field, titled The Trouble With Macroeconomics. His argument focuses on the question of `identification,’ which is shorthand in the field for how economists identify the cause of an event. Identification is a huge deal for economics, because if you can’t tell if x, y or z caused something, you don’t know which of those variables to study or measure or change. The omission of finance and the role of money from economic models is the biggest weakness in the field, Romer believes. It is hard for noneconomists to get our heads around the fact that the dominant macroeconomic models (including the ones used by central banks) made no allowance for how money works — especially not for fluctuations in how much of it is around. Such an oversight seems weird, and entirely counterintuitive. But that’s what happened, and it played a big role in macroeconomists’ ability to, as Romer puts it, “dismiss mere facts.”’’},
category={brexit, Economics, macroeconomics, behavioral economics, brazil nuts, }
}
it, “dismiss mere facts.”
@article{cohen2017gdp,
Author={Cohen, Patricia},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/business/economy/what-is-gdp-economy-alternative-measure.html},
Title={The Economic Growth That Experts Can’t Count},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-02-06},
comment={Gross Domestic Product has never accounted for lots of things for which is it hard or impossible to put a price on. Like increasing skills, higher quality of products, or less pollition. It ONLY measures production. And often even that is a hard thing to calculate: like whether to include child rearing, or how Britain started including recreational drugs and sex workers and it’s GDP increased by 0.7%. This has always been true, and you could assume that if the same mismeasurement has always been applied, then GDP is some kind of accurate measure of growth. But now some people are suggesting that there are so many free services, and higher quality information that there is a ``digital dark matter’’ problem with GDP - that there is more and more that is not being measured because of the internet (and service economy things) and hence GDP is more and more innaccurate.},
category={Economics, GPD, gross domestic product}
}
@techreport{NBERw23041,
title = “Political Determinants of Competition in the Mobile Telecommunication Industry”,
author = “Mara Faccio and Luigi Zingales”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “23041”,
year = “2017”,
month = “January”,
doi = {10.3386/w23041},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w23041”,
abstract = {We study how political factors shape competition in the mobile telecommunication sector. We show that the way a government designs the rules of the game has an impact on concentration, competition, and prices. Pro-competition regulation reduces prices, but does not hurt quality of services or investments. More democratic governments tend to design more competitive rules, while more politically connected operators are able to distort the rules in their favor, restricting competition. Government intervention has large redistributive effects: U.S. consumers would gain 65bn a year if U.S. mobile service prices were in line with German ones and 44bn if they were in line with Danish ones.},
}
% Download pdf here: \url{https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2897671_code179428.pdf?abstractid=2893869&mirid=1}
@article{lanchester2017cash,
Author={Lanchester, John},
url={https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/magazine/should-we-trash-cash.html},
Title={Should We Trash Cash?},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-01-10},
comment={Looks at India’s decision to eliminate common cash notes. This was done to undermine the cash economy in a place where the vast majority of people don’t pay any income tax. Refers to a book called The Curse of Cash by Kenneth Rogodd which raises one argument for eliminating large denomination bills in the US: There’s 4200 dollars in cash circulating for every person in the country, 80% of that is in 100 bills. Where is all that money? Nobody knows, presumably in some kind of illicit scenario. The author has a different perspective raised at the end of the article though: ``I wonder, though, about the wisdom of the anti-cash crusade. The problem with the argument is that it concedes too much power to the modern triple-headed monster of the economy — the state, the central bank and the banking system. If there is no cash, there is nowhere for the private citizen to hide any assets at all, not just for criminal reasons but simply for financial security. The year 2008 was a reminder of how fragile our banking system is and how all-encompassing financial crisis can be. Merryn Somerset Webb, editor of the financial-advice magazine MoneyWeek, has argued that one of the best things an individual can do, with banks fragile and interest rates low, is buy a good safe and fill it with cash. I have no desire to do that myself, but it is reassuring to know that if I wanted to, I could. The rich have many ways of hiding assets and making them safe from states and from the taxman. As we’ve recently been reminded, some very rich people don’t pay any income tax at all. Cash is one of the few ways in which ordinary citizens can enjoy a tiny taste of the freedom, privacy and security that the rich take as their due. That, for me, is what’s missing in the critique of cash. If there were to be a big, convincing, systemwide drive to tax the hidden assets of the rich, to drag them inside the same norms that constrain the rest of us, to make it clear that we are all playing by the same rules — well, then maybe we can start to talk about abolishing cash. Until then, we would do well to bear in mind a favorite line of the pro-cash lobby, Dostoyevsky’s observation from a czarist prison: “Money,” he wrote, “is coined liberty.”’’},
category={Economics, cash, money, taxes, india, hundred dollar bills, $100 bills}
}
% Though I certainly see plenty of cab drivers stripping off $100 bills at Punjab Party Hall.
% And certainly lots of strippers are holding $100 bills totally legally too.
@article{miller2017jobs,
Author={Miller, Claire Cain},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/upshot/why-men-dont-want-the-jobs-done-mostly-by-women.html},
Title={Why Men Don’t Want the Jobs Done Mostly by Women},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-01-04},
comment={Service sector jobs traditionally done by women, like nursing, are growing in number, while traditionally male-dominated jobs, like welding, are shriking. But men don’t want to take service sector jobs (even though they usually get promoted faster than women — the glas escalator) only because they don’t see it as something a man should do. Points out that men often want to build things, while women might want to take care of people.},
category={Economics, pink-collar jobs, men, women}
}
% This article hints at the thing which always comes up with economic shifts that push people out of jobs: many many people get left behind. Mostly of an older generation, who aren’t willing to retrain. NET jobs might actually go up, but that means nothing for the individual who was a welder for a lifetime and put out of work.
@article{lieber2016money,
Author={Lieber, Ron},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/your-money/how-should-you-manage-your-money-and-keep-it-short.html},
Title={How Should You Manage Your Money? And Keep It Short},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-01-08},
comment={Yet another article about how money management should be kept to a few simple things: index-fund stocks, a small house, and life insurance for kids.},
category={Economics, index funds, investing, money, finance, financial planning, insurance}
}
% I posted this comment on the Times:
% It seems to me that the whole advice to invest in index funds actually depends on most people NOT doing it.
% What if everyone DID stop buying consumer goods and giant houses, and instead invested in stocks? Aren’t all those stocks basically just funding businesses that create consumer goods and giant houses? If there were suddenly a huge flood of money buying stocks of companies that are trying to produce consumer goods and giant houses for people who are no longer buying them, wouldn’t that money become insanely cheap to borrow thus killing any returns on your stock?
% What else does our economy actually DO besides sell consumer goods and giant houses?
% You financial writer folks really need to stop telling people they should invest in index funds, so the rest of us who do can continue to get rich off the poor suckers forced to live beyond their means by a system of low-pay and cheap goods.
@techreport{NBERw22982,
title = “Asset Managers: Institutional Performance and Smart Betas”,
author = “Joseph Gerakos and Juhani T. Linnainmaa and Adair Morse”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “22982”,
year = “2016”,
month = “December”,
doi = {10.3386/w22982},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w22982”,
abstract = {Using a dataset of 17 trillion of assets under management, we document that actively-managed institutional accounts outperformed strategy benchmarks by 86 (42) basis points gross (net) during 2000–2012. In return, asset managers collected 162 billion in fees per year for managing 29% of worldwide capital. Estimates from a Sharpe (1992) model imply that their outperformance comes from factor exposures (“smart beta”). If institutions had instead implemented mean-variance portfolios of institutional mutual funds, they would not have earned higher Sharpe ratios. Recent growth of the ETF market implies that asset managers are losing advantages held during our sample period.},
category = {money, finance, index funds, investing, Economics}
}
% See also: \url{https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/business/college-endowment-investment-returns.html} “Endowment Sweepstakes: How Tiny Houghton College Beat Harvard”
% See also: doubts about index funds, and suggestion to use Vanguard’s Total Market Index which tracks the whole market instead of one specific index: \url{https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/business/mutfund/the-ease-of-index-funds-comes-with-risk.html}
@article{piketty2016distributional,
title={Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States},
author={Piketty, Thomas and Saez, Emmanuel and Zucman, Gabriel},
journal={NBER Working Paper},
year={2016}
url={http://cdn.equitablegrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/05095108/120716-WP-distributional-national-accounts.pdf},
comment={Research to show all the the major trends in income inequality in the last 50 years. Includes recommendations not for more redistribution, but more progressive taxing combined with strengthening on wages.}
}
% See NY Times covereage: \url{http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/16/business/economy/nine-new-findings-about-income-inequality-piketty.html} and findings:
% 1 - The bottom half of the country has been shut out from income growth for 40 years.
% 2 - Government spending has helped lift lower incomes, but only a little.
% 3 - Increased health care spending on the elderly consumes most of the gains.
% 4 - The top 1% and the bottom 50% have swapped their relative shares of the national income.
% 5 - Taxes in the United States are much less progressive than they used to be.
% 6 - More women in the work force also helped mitigate rising inequality.
% 7 - But there’s still a spectacular glass ceiling.
% 8 - Since 1999, any upper-middle-class income growth has been after-tax.
% 9 - Taxes and spending helped blunt the effects of inequality and income stagnation.
% Despite this, the study argues that more redistribution won’t fix the problem.
@article{irwin2016eitcexpansion,
Author={Irwin},
url={},
Title={},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-12-dd},
comment={Proposes expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (E.I.T.C) for low-income families to increase their salaries to where they would be if they have shared equally in income gains overall since 1979. Points out that this would cost over 1 trillion dollars over a decade. But it would spur the economy with the spending those families would do. (Lower income families are more likely to spend extra money than rich families.) This at least rationalizes Trumps proposals fr big tax cuts.},
category={Economics, eitc, tax credits, tax cuts, trump, income}
}
@article{ips2016racialwealthgap,
Author={Collins, Chuck and Asante-Muhammed, Dedrick and Hoxie, Josh and Nieves, Emanuel},
url={http://cfed.org/policy/federal/The_Ever_Growing_Gap-CFED_IPS-Final.pdf},
Title={The Ever-Growing Gap},
journal={Institute for Policy Studies},
date={2016-08-08},
comment={Over the past 30 years the average wealth of white families has grown by 84%—1.2 times the rate of growth for the Latino population and three times the rate of growth for the black population. If that continues, the next three decades would see the average wealth of white households increase by over 18,000 per year, while Latino and Black households would see their respective wealth increase by only 2,250 and 750 per year.'' If average black family wealth continues to grow at the same pace it has over the past three decades, it would take black families 228 years to amass the same amount of wealth white families have today. That’s just 17 years shorter than the 245-year span of slavery in this country. For the average Latino family, it would take 84 years to amass the same amount of wealth White families have today—that’s the year 2097.’’},
category={Economics, Criticality, racial wealth gap}
}
% See report on this paper in Next City: \url{https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/racial-wealth-gap-report-minority-majority-cities}
@article{leonhardt2016behavioralecon,
Author={Leonhardt, David},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/books/review/michael-lewis-undoing-project.html},
Title={From Michael Lewis, the Story of Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About the Way We Think},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-12-06},
comment={Review of \textit{A Friendship That Changed Our Minds} by Michael Lewis, the guy who wrote Moneyball. Tells the story of how two researchers Kahneman and Tversky put forward a theory that humans use shorthand heuristics to undermine rationality. This research helped to reorder economics by exposing the folly of economists’ belief in an unconsciously rational human mind.'' Many people attracted to Kahneman and Tversky’s ideas have a little bit of Amos Tversky’s brashness in them. They (in fairness, I should say “we”) get some enjoyment from puncturing shibboleths with data and observation. As a result, they are often seen as arrogant and sometimes are indeed arrogant.’’ ``The human species is fantastically complex and often doesn’t know what it is doing. The search for a better understanding of our behavior is vital. It’s also difficult, never-ending and still very much worth the struggle.’’},
category={Economics, behaviorial economics, Criticality}
}
% Kahneman and Tversky wrote a famous book called Thinking, Fast and Slow that you should probably check out.
@article{leonhardt2016corporatetaxes,
Author={Leonhardt, David},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/the-big-companies-that-avoid-taxes.html},
Title={The Big Companies That Avoid Taxes},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-10-18},
comment={A number of big companies use tax loopholes to pay far less than the stated corporate tax rate. Amazon, Coca-Cola, Apple, IBM, General Electric, and AT&T all pay around 15-18% in corporate taxes. Meanwhile more brick-and-mortar operations, like Wallmart, CVS, Home Depot, and Target all pay around 30% in taxes. ``Brick-and-mortar retailers, for example, aren’t as politically popular as manufacturers or technology companies and haven’t persuaded Congress to create a lot of special tax breaks. Retailers also can’t easily pretend their business is based overseas.’’},
category={Economics, corporate taxes}
}
@article{irwin2017corporatetaxoverhaul,
Author={Irwin, Neil},
url={https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/upshot/a-tax-overhaul-would-be-great-in-theory-heres-why-its-so-hard-in-practice.html},
Title={A Tax Overhaul Would Be Great in Theory. Here’s Why It’s So Hard in Practice.},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2017-02-10},
comment={Talks about how it is very hard to change the corporate tax structure because of “public policy path dependency” — that choices made long ago by policy makers make the risk of major changes to policy too much for people with vested interest in keeping things as they are. In this case, because of the dollar’s use as an international currency, there are worldwide economic impacts to changing the coporate tax structure.},
category={Economics, coporate tax reform, policy path dependency}
}
% This is a good example of Adam Curtis’ theory that people in power don’t understand the systems they are trying to control, and so simply try to keep disasters from occuring.
% Also a good example of something we aren’t willing to tackle fixing while we have some control over it, and instead will be forced to try to fix when some disaster strikes. Like climate change.
@article{appelbaum2016globaltrade,
Author={Appelbaum, Binyamin},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/upshot/a-little-noticed-fact-about-trade-its-no-longer-rising.html},
Title={A Little-Noticed Fact About Trade: It’s No Longer Rising},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-10-30},
comment={Global trade is actually stagnating as nation states pull back from globalization and start manufacturing more stuff at home and trading only between developed countries. There are some signs that this state of affairs is becoming structural.},
category={Economics, globalization, free trade}
}
@article{stabiner2016restaurants,
Author={Stabiner, Karen},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/dining/restaurant-economics-new-york.html},
Title={Is New York Too Expensive for Restaurateurs? We Do the Math},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-10-25},
comment={A nice breakdown of the cost of running a restaurant (occupancy costs: 10%, labor: 30-40%, and food: 30%) and whether it’s feasible in NYC where the occupancy costs are much higher than other places. (Though while this article says that almost everyone spends about 1400 a year on eating out, it doesn’t address the fact that restaurants in NYC seem to get away with charging higher prices than everywhere else.)},
category={Economics, food, restaurants, nyc}
}
% See also this commentary on “The Bear” which talks about the restaurant industry’s need for reform on wages and dignityurl{https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/07/opinion/hulu-the-bear-restaurant-work.html}
@techreport{NBERw22731,
title = “Will the Paris Accord Accelerate Climate Change?”,
author = “Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Andrey Polbin and Andrey Zubarev”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “22731”,
year = “2016”,
month = “October”,
doi = {10.3386/w22731},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w22731”,
abstract = {The 2015 Paris Accord is meant to control our planet’s rising temperature. But it may be doing the opposite in gradually, rather than immediately reducing CO2 emissions. The Accord effectively tells dirty-energy producers to “use it or lose it.” This may be accelerating their extraction and burning of fossil fuels and, thereby, be permanently raising temperatures.
Our paper uses a simple OLG model to illustrate this long-noted Green Paradox. Its framework treats climate damage as a negative externality imposed by today’s generations on tomorrow’s – an externality that is, in part, irreversible and can tip the climate to permanently higher temperatures. In our model, delaying abatement can lead to larger changes in climate than doing nothing, reducing welfare for all generations. In contrast, immediate policy action can raise welfare for all generations.
Finally we question the standard use of infinitely-lived, single-agent models, which assume, unrealistically, intergenerational altruism in determining optimal abatement policy. Their prescriptions can differ, potentially dramatically, from those needed to correct the negative climate externality today’s generations are imposing on tomorrow’s.},
comment={The Paris Accord might actually be INCREASING greenhouse gas emissions because by telling producers that they only have a limited time to extract fossil fuels from the earth, they ramp up production. This is known as the Green Paradox as laid out by Sinn.},
category={Economics, Science, green paradox, paris accord, climate change, greenhouse gasses}
}
% Download pdf here:\url{http://www.kotlikoff.net/sites/default/files/paris-accord-accelerate%20%287%29.pdf}
@Article{Sinn2008,
author=“Sinn, Hans-Werner”,
title=“Public policies against global warming: a supply side approach”,
journal=“International Tax and Public Finance”,
year=“2008”,
volume=“15”,
number=“4”,
pages=“360–394”,
abstract=“The countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol have pledged to limit global warming by reducing the demand for fossil fuels. But what about supply? If suppliers do not react, demand reductions by a subset of countries are ineffective. They simply depress the world price of carbon and induce the environmental sinners to consume what the Kyoto countries have economized on. Even worse, if suppliers feel threatened by a gradual greening of economic policies in the Kyoto countries that would damage their future prices; they will extract their stocks more rapidly, thus accelerating global warming. The paper discusses the remaining policy options against global warming from an intertemporal supply-side perspective.”,
issn=“1573-6970”,
doi=“10.1007/s10797-008-9082-z”,
url=“http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10797-008-9082-z”
comment={Telling producers that they only have a limited time to extract fossil fuels from the earth might INCREASE greenhouse gas production since they ramp up production. This is named as the Green Paradox in this paper.},
category={Economics, Science, green paradox, climate change, greenhouse gasses}
}
@article{walters2016supernotes,
Author={Walter, Greg},
url={https://news.vice.com/article/north-koreas-counterfeit-benjamins-have-vanished},
Title={North Korea’s Counterfeit Benjamins Have Vanished},
journal={Vice News},
date={2016-03-16},
comment={North Korea had for decades made ``supernotes’’ — counterfeit US currency so good that only experts could tell they were fake. But now they aren’t around anymore, leaving only two possibilities: 1 — North Korea is no longer making them or 2. North Korea is now so good at making them that no one can detect them anymore.},
category={Economics, supernotes, counterfeiting, money, north korea}
}
% See also this article in Global Research: \url{http://www.globalresearch.ca/north-korea-and-the-supernote-enigma/8919}
% And this article in which I first read about these supernotes, and explains a little about how they are made: \url{http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/magazine/23counterfeit.html}
@article{post2016hudsonvalley,
Author={Post, Paul},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/nyregion/real-estate-boom-pinches-a-produce-supply-in-the-hudson-valley.html},
Title={Real Estate Boom Pinches a Produce Supply in the Hudson Valley},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-06-01},
comment={Booming real estate prices in the Hudson Valley (right around dad’s house in Stone Ridge) are threatening farms and NYC’s local food supply. Garodnick is proposing legislation to try to protect farms.},
category={Economics, real estate, hudson valley, stone ridge, food}
}
@article{casselman2016unions,
Author={Casselman, Ben},
url={https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-dont-miss-manufacturing-they-miss-unions/},
Title={Americans Don’t Miss Manufacturing — They Miss Unions},
journal={FiveThirtyEight},
date={2016-05-13},
comment={``For all of the glow that surrounds manufacturing jobs in political rhetoric, there is nothing inherently special about them. Some pay well; others don’t. They are not immune from the forces that have led to slow wage growth in other sectors of the economy. When politicians pledge to protect manufacturing jobs, they really mean a certain kind of job: well-paid, long-lasting, with opportunities for advancement. Those aren’t qualities associated with working on a factory floor; they’re qualities associated with being a member of a union.’’},
category={Economics, manufacturing, unions, living wage}
}
% See: jacobslowwagemanufacturing2016
@book{calame2012essay,
title={Essay on oeconomy},
author={Calame, Pierre and Behrent, Michael C},
year={2012},
publisher={JJ Resources},
url={http://www.i-r-e.org/IMG/pdf/P_Calame_Essai_ENG.pdf}
}
% In the book about James Cook by Thomas he quotes, I think it was Forster, using the term “oeconomy” to refer to not just the money economy but to the larger systems of the world in general. This essay seems to expand on that idea.
% I haven’t read it, just skimmed the intro.
@article{bui2016ruralincome,
Author={Bui, Quoctrung},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/upshot/actually-income-in-rural-america-is-growing-too.html},
Title={Actually, Income in Rural America Is Growing, Too},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-09-16},
comment={The Census released a report with numbers showing that income increased in rural areas but not urban areas. On closer inspection, due to mistakes in the colection and calculation of data, it turned out those numbers were wrong, and in fact income increased in rural areas as well. ``Perhaps part of the reason the news media didn’t see the problems in the C.P.S.’s number was that the narrative of a divergence between rural and urban America seemed too irresistible. It confirmed suspicions about a link between people’s economic anxieties in rural America and the rise of Donald J. Trump. In many cases, data further complicates our view of the world, making things murkier instead of clearer. By contrast, the sharp differences in rural and urban income growth suggested by the C.P.S. felt like a gift from the statistics gods.’’},
category={Economics, rural areas, income, census, Politics}
}
@article{manjoogmelectriccar2016,
Author={Manjoo, Farhad},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/technology/how-did-gm-create-teslas-dream-car-first.html?_r=0},
Title={How Did G.M. Create Tesla’s Dream Car First?},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-09-14},
comment={It was Elon Musk and Tesla’s vision to create an affordable long-range electric car. But General Motors will be launching a more affordable, longer-range, and potentially more reliable electric car, called the Chevy Bolt, more or less before Tesla does. This is a mostly a function of GM’s size. Perversely, since the federal government limits GM’s fleet emmissions, even if GM loses money on electric car sales, just the fact that they are selling them will allow them to sell more of the more profitable SUVs and pickups. In effect, every GM electric car sold is carbon-subsidizing a gas-guzzler. This article also discusses the assembly line quality improvement that Toyota uses where any work on a line can slow the line down if they find something wrong. Apparently Tesla has abandoned this technique and the quality of their cars is sufffering for it.},
category={Economics, gm, general motors, electric cars, toyota, assembly lines}
}
@article{shillerinequality2016,
Author={Shiller, Robert J.},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/upshot/todays-inequality-could-easily-become-tomorrows-catastrophe.html},
Title={Today’s Inequality Could Easily Become Tomorrow’s Catastrophe},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-08-26},
comment={Reviews a new book from Princeton that looks at the history of redistribution to solve sever inequality and finds that basically it doesn’t happen. The only thing that triggers real redistribution is war. Most people, the poor included, have a sense that even rich people should only pay about 30% in taxes (this applies across countries.) Future disasters could lead to severe inequality which could only be solved by massive redistribution plans. But no one is talking about plans likes that.},
category={Economics, redistribute, inequality, taxes}
}
@article{MULLAINATHANbanbox2016,
Author={MULLAINATHAN, SENDHIL},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/upshot/ban-the-box-an-effort-to-stop-discrimination-may-actually-increase-it.html},
Title={Ban the Box? An Effort to Stop Discrimination May Actually Increase I},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-08-19},
comment={One new research paper suggests that if employers are not allowed to ask about criminal history, they just assume that any black person has a criminal record. This pernicious result is the economists’ law of unintended consequences. Policy makers can constrain only a few of the large spectrum of choices people make. If motives remain unchanged, there remain many unregulated ways of expressing them. For example, when landlords find that their properties have risen in value, they may want to raise the rent. If the government imposes rent control, landlords find other ways to increase revenue.'' We should actually try to change beliefs and preferences. Economists usually take them as given, yet over the course of decades, civil rights advocates have done astounding work in changing hearts and minds.’’ ``This is the appeal of addressing root causes: The problem is not mitigated, it is erased. Perhaps we should devote more of our efforts toward reaching the day when there will be no box to ban simply because employers will see little reason to have one.’’},
category={ban the box, CUP, Economics, formerly incarcerated, vocal-ny}
}
% Of course the problem with addressing root causes is that it only offers hope for the next generation, not for the individual suffering discrimination right now.
% See NELP’s response to this research: http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/Policy-Brief-Racial-Profiling-in-Hiring-Critique-New-Ban-the-Box-Studies.pdf
@article{frankflow2016,
Author={Frank, Robert H.},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/upshot/first-rule-of-the-job-hunt-find-something-you-love-to-do.html},
Title={First Rule of the Job Hunt: Find Something You Love to Do},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-07-22},
comment = {A nice clear overview of why it’s more important to seek a job that you can reach ``flow’’ in on a regular basis than it is to seek money. If you flow more often you are more likely to become an expert, and experts get paid vastly more in this culture. Also it’s nice to work for a company whose mission you believe in.},
category = {Economics, jobs, flow, expertise}
}
% This doesn’t address that working for a company with a mission you believe in might not be the same kind of happiness that comes with the day-to-day tasks of your job.
@article {Shah688,
author = {Shah, Avni M. and Eisenkraft, Noah and Bettman, James R. and Chartrand, Tanya L.},
title = {``Paper or Plastic?’’: How We Pay Influences Post-Transaction Connection},
volume = {42},
number = {5},
pages = {688–708},
year = {2016},
url = {http://www.ejcr.org/publicity/April_2016/April2016Article4.pdf},
doi = {10.1093/jcr/ucv056},
publisher = {The Oxford University Press},
abstract = {Does the way that individuals pay for a good or service influence the amount of connection they feel after the purchase has occurred? Employing a multi-method approach across four studies, individuals who pay using a relatively more painful form of payment (e.g., cash or check) increase their post-transaction connection to the product they purchased and/or the organization their purchase supports in comparison to those who pay with less painful forms of payment (e.g., debit or credit card). Specifically, individuals who pay with more painful forms of payment increase their emotional attachment to a product, decrease their commitment to nonchosen alternatives, are more likely to publicly signal their commitment to an organization, and are more likely to make a repeat transaction. Moreover, the form of payment influences post-transaction connection even when the objective monetary cost remains constant and when the psychological cost is indirect (i.e., donating someone else{\textquoteright}s money). Increasing the psychological pain of payment appears to have beneficial consequences with respect to increasing downstream product and brand connection.},
issn = {0093-5301},
URL = {http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/content/42/5/688},
eprint = {http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/content/42/5/688.full.pdf},
journal = {Journal of Consumer Research},
category = {Economics, shopping, cash, credit, check, CUP, donations, nonprofits}
}
% Referenced in this NY Times article, \url{http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/business/paying-with-cash-hurts-thats-also-why-it-feels-so-good.html}
@article{shillerhomeinvestment2016,
Author={Shiller, Robert J.},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/upshot/why-land-may-not-be-the-smartest-place-to-put-your-nest-egg.html},
Title={Why Land and Homes Actually Tend to Be Disappointing Investments},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-07-15},
comment = {An economist debunks the myth of buy land, they're not making any more of it'' by talking about how technology (in the form of better food production technology, and technology that makes people happier to live in smaller spaces) in an economic sense creates’’ land, by reducing demand.},
category = {Econmics, housing prices, econ 101, home investment, farms, agriculture}
}
% This suffers from the flaws that every econ 101 argument suffers from. The economic model just doesn’t reflect reality any further than you WANT it to. So, while people MIGHT use technology to live in smaller spaces happily, they also just as easily might start valuing mcmansions again. There’s no predicting that.
% Though I do believe that GENERALLY homes are a lousy investment.
% He does cite some some interesting references to agricultural technology that might be worth following up on: ``From the standpoint of farm output, there was no need for new land. This revolution involved the discovery by Fritz Haber of a cheap process to produce ammonia for fertilizer at the beginning of the century and the discovery of new high-yield strains of wheat by Norman E. Borlaug at midcentury.’’
@article{bowlesmanufacturingsnapshot2015,
Author={Bowles, Jonathan},
url={https://nycfuture.org/data/info/manufacturing-in-nyc-a-snapshot},
Title={Manufacturing in NYC: A Snapshot},
journal={Center for an Urban Future’s Middle Class Jobs Project},
year = {2015},
month = {11},
comment = {Looks at the current state of manufacturing in NYC. Manufacturing represents only 2% of jobs these days. In the last year manufacturing has in fact been growing, but mostly in food production, which has the lowest wages of any manufacturing sector. Textile and apparel manufacturing are way down.},
category = {manufacturing, industrial, food service, food production, nyc, CUP}
}
@article{campionIBOindustrial2014,
Author={Campion, Sean},
url={http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/2014industrialemployment.pdf},
Title={A Profile of New York City’s Industrial Workforce},
journal={New York City Independent Budget Office},
year = {2014},
month = {06},
comment = {Report that finds that while industrial sectors pay more, there is a large variation within subsectors. Particularly that construction pays a lot more. Excluding construction, the remaining industrial subsectors offer wages that are comparable to nonindustrial sectors'' Many of the industrial subsectors that employ a large number of workers without college degrees, like food manufacturing or warehousing, pay wages that are comparable to nonindustrial sectors like retail or food service’’},
category = {manufacturing, food production, food service, nyc, CUP, industrial}
}
@article{jacobslowwagemanufacturing2016,
Author={Jacobs, Ken and Perla, Zohar and Perry, Ian and Graham-Squire, Dave},
url={http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/2016/Producing-Poverty.pdf},
Title={Producing Poverty: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Production Jobs in Manufacturing },
journal={UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education},
year={2016},
month={05},
comment = {Manufacturing jobs now rank in the bottom half of all jobs in the US. This Berkeley report found that the cause is exposure to more trade, hiring through temp agencies, and lack of unions. Those worker rely on social safety net programs, and not for a lack of hours, but because of a lack of pay.},
category = {Economics, manufacturing, wages, manufacturing pay, social safety net, unions}
}
% References research by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) that found manufacturing production wages now rank in the bottom half of all jobs in the United States. Would be worth tracking down that report too.
@article{epsteindiamonds1982,
Author={Epstein, Edward Jay},
url={http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/},
Title={Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?},
journal={The Atlantic},
year={1982},
month={02}
comment = {Classic article exposing De Beers and the diamond trade for manipulating the price of what is essentially a worthless shiny rock. Also, since huge amounts of gem diamonds are already owned by the public the diamond industry forces the buying of diamonds to be only at wholesale prices, in order to prevent people from re-selling them. You can never sell a diamond for more than you paid for it. They are lousy investments.},
category = {Economics, diamonds, de beers, monopoly}
}
% This article is probably worth a re-read.
% Things have changed in the diamond industry. See this article about artificial diamonds gaining traction:
% \url{https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/business/de-beers-synthetic-diamonds.html}
% which says “De Beers, which controls about 30 percent of the world’s supply of mined stones (down from two-thirds in 1998)”
% This article hings that de beers had to surrender to anti-trust lawsuits around 2000 and break up its monopoly.
@article{newmanmistersoftee2016,
Author={Newman, Andy and Rued, Emily S.},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/nyregion/a-king-of-ice-cream-a-renegade-upstart-and-a-simmering-turf-war.html},
Title={A Renegade Muscles In on Mister Softee’s Turf},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-05-30},
comment = {A group of ice cream trucks split from Mister Softee and renamed their trucks Master Softee. They took over the midtown area and are using violence and mob techniques to keep out competition, including Mister Softee. ``“Let me tell you about this business,” Adam Vega, a thickly muscled, heavily tattooed Mister Softee man who works the upper reaches of the Upper East Side and East Harlem, said on Wednesday. “Every truck has a bat inside.”’’},
category = {Economics, ice cream trucks, mister softee, midtown}
}
% More recent news on ice cream trucks:
% \url{https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/nyregion/ice-cream-trucks-seized-nyc.html}
@article{franksuccessluck2016,
Author={Frank, Robert H.},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/upshot/are-you-successful-if-so-youve-already-won-the-lottery.html},
Title={Are You Successful? If So, You’ve Already Won the Lottery},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-05-20},
comment = {Talks about how a huge unrecognized element of success is luck. If you’re first name begins with a letter that comes earlier in the alphabet, you are more likely to get promoted in fields that publish papers with authors listed in order by name. If you are born in the summer and start school as one of the youngest members of your class you are less likely to end up in leadership positions in your job. If you grow up in a place with social programs they will help you do better. He uses the example of the Mona Lisa and how it was unknown until it was stolen. (Like the Kardashians, it is famous just for being famous.) ``Evidence from the social sciences demonstrates that beyond a certain income threshold, people’s sense of well-being depends much more on their relative purchasing power than on how much they spend in absolute terms. If top tax rates were a little higher, all homes would be a little smaller, all cars a little less expensive, all diamonds a little more modest and all celebrations a little less costly. The standards that define “special” would adjust accordingly, leaving most successful people quite satisfied.’’},
category = {Economics, luck, social science}
}
@article{lustgartenglencanyondam2016,
Author={Lustgarten, Abraham},
url={https://www.propublica.org/article/drought-provokes-debate-on-unplugging-great-dams-of-american-west},
Title={Drought be Dammed},
journal={ProPublica},
date={2016-05-20},
comment = {About a proposal to let the Colorado River water through the Glen Canyon dam in Utah and drain Lake Powell to fill up Lake Mead more (behind the Hoover Dam). Lake Powell leaks through the bottom and evaporates massive amounts of water off the surface. This story covers the history of dams, how they go back as far as human civilzation itself, how they seemed like a technological marvel in the mid-20th century, and how now they seem like a big mistake. Has a nice description of why arch dams work. Mentions a proposed dam in Mexico where they want to line the entire river valley in rubber to keep it from leaking.},
category = {dams, Economics, water, colorado river, hoover dam, glen canyon}
}
@article{frankonetaxpayer2016,
Author={Frank, Robert},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top-taxpayer-moved-and-new-jersey-shuddered.html},
Title={One Top Taxpayer Moved, and New Jersey Shuddered},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-04-30},
comment = {The extremely wealthy are so critical to the tax funding of states that a single individual moving to a new state can cause budgetary problems. With the top tenth of 1 percent of the population reaping the largest income gains, states with the highest tax rates on the rich are growing increasingly dependent on a smaller group of superearners for tax revenue.'' In New York, California, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey, the top 1 percent pay a third or more of total income taxes. Now a handful of billionaires or even a single individual like Mr. Tepper can have a noticeable impact on state revenues and budgets.’’ ``While some high earners may be moving for tax reasons, New Jersey, New York, California and other states are replacing rich people faster than they are losing them.’’},
category = {Economics, taxes, wealth, rich people, new jersey}
}
@article{Flowersbasicincome2016,
Author={Flowers, Andrew},
url={https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/universal-basic-income/?ex_cid=story-facebook},
Title={What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?},
journal={FiveThirtyEight},
date={2016-04-25},
comment = {Another article looking in depth at the possibility of a Universal Basic Income.},
category = {universal basic income, Economics, universal income}
}
% Part of the growing media hype around UBI. But at least links to this much more critical progressive response: \url{http://rooseveltinstitute.org/guest-post-max-sawicky-liberal-case-against-universal-basic-income/}
% Which points out that ``a payment of $10,000 to every U.S. adult, a pretty basic basic income, would cost $2.5 trillion. Game over.’’
% I like the idea in principle. But most of the half-baked ideas for it call for an elimination of all other social programs. That means that money that used to be redistributed from rich to poor is no longer redistributed only to the most needy, but to everyone. That hardly sounds like a smart move to me.
% This article has some cool design/art by a Philadelphia firm called Heads of State.
% See this critical column about universal income: \url{http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/business/economy/why-a-universal-basic-income-will-not-solve-poverty.html} which makes most of the critical points that I thought of.
% This New Yorker article cover all sides even-handely. I personally think it doesn’t hit the all-around negatives hard enough, but it does cover them.
% \url{https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/who-really-stands-to-win-from-universal-basic-income}
@techreport{NBERw7520,
title = “The Progressivity of Social Security”,
author = “Julia Lynn Coronado and Don Fullerton and Thomas Glass”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “7520”,
year = “2000”,
month = “February”,
doi = {10.3386/w7520},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w7520”,
abstract = {How much does the current social security system really redistribute from rich to poor? We use the PSID to estimate lifetime wage profiles and actual earnings each year for a sample of 1778 individuals, and we use mortality probabilities to calculate expected payroll taxes and social security benefits. For a given set of facts’ about the net flows received by each individual, measured progressivity depends on many assumptions. This paper attempts to capture and to quantify all of the individual characteristics that are relevant to determine the progressivity of a life-cycle program like social security. We proceed in seven steps. First, we classify individuals by annual income and use Gini coefficients to find that social security is highly progressive. Second, we reclassify individuals on the basis of lifetime income and find that social security is less progressive. Third, we remove the cap on measured earnings and find that social security is even less progressive. Fourth, we switch from actual to potential lifetime earnings (the present value of the wage rate times 4000 hours each year). This measure captures the value of leisure and home production, so those out of the labor force are less poor, and net payments to them are less progressive. Fifth, we assign to each married individual half of the couple’s income. The low-wage spouse is then not so poor less progressive. Sixth, we incorporate mortality probabilities that differ by potential lifetime income. Since the rich live longer and collect benefits longer, social security is no longer progressive. Finally, we increase the discount rate from 2% to 4%, which puts relatively more weight on the earlier-but-regressive payroll tax and less weight on the later-but-progressive benefit schedule. The whole social security system is then regressive.},
comment = {One of the papers finding that since the rich live longer, they reap more from the Social Security program, and thus the program is a regressive tax.},
category = {Economics, social security, taxes, wealth}
}
% This paper was linked to by an article in the Times about how social security benefits the wealthy more: \url{http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/upshot/rich-people-are-living-longer-thats-tilting-social-security-in-their-favor.html} Points out that this means raising the age at which you can take social security benefits actually makes the program even more regressive, and in fact the salary cap should be raised.
% Also see the article about the geography of life spans: irwinpoorgeography2016
@article{engmoonies2006,
Author={Eng, Monica and Alexander, Delroy and Jackson, David},
url={http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/chi-0604sushi-1-story-story.html},
Title={Sushi and Rev. Moon},
journal={The Chicago Tribune},
date={2006-04-11},
comment = {The now-classic story of how the Moonies took over the sushi fish supply chains.},
category = {moonies, Economics, sun myung moon, unification church, cults, sushi}
}
% It would be interesting to see an update to this story. Even the wikipedia references to the Moonie control of the sushi industry are ten years old and link to this story alone.
% Apparently even though this story was clearly told in this article from 2006, the NY Times felt ok saying it was a story still untold: \url{http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/05/magazine/sushi-us.html}
% A pretty good example of how useless “interactive” crap is. The Chi Trib story is way better.
@article{santoracarolinaqueen2016,
Author={Santora, Marc},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/nyregion/mayday-on-the-carolina-queen-off-the-rockaways.html},
Title={Mayday on the Carolina Queen},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-04-15},
comment = {Long-form story about a Coast Guard rescue of a scallop boat off Rockaway during a storm. Includes references to data about how the Northeast coastal waters are the most angerous for fishing.},
category = {commercial fishing, Economics, adventure, ocean}
}
% These stories about Coast Guard rescues always raise the question in my mind if the cost in human lives and money is worth the subsidy from the government of providing Coast Guard rescue services to keep this industry functioning.
% If the fishing industry had to pay for their own safety net, fish would be so insanely expensive nobody would eat fish.
% (Which might be good for our declining fish stocks)
% On the other hand, pretty much EVERY industry relies on huge government subsidy and protections to a greater or lesser extent.
@article{pilonmonopoly2015,
Author={Pilon, Mary},
url={http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-history-monopoly-capitalist-game-leftwing-origins},
Title={The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s leftwing origins},
journal={The Guardian},
date={2015-04-11},
comment = {Before ``Monopoly’’ became Monopoly, it was originally a homemade game created by a woman named Lizzie Magie who was a hard core leftwing activist. She called it The Landlord’s Game and it had two sets of rules, one where everyone benefitted, and another where the monopolists won and crushed everyone else. },
category = {henry george, monopoly, board games, Economics}
}
@article{vinselmaintainers2016,
Author={Vinsel, Lee and Russell, Andrew},
url={https://aeon.co/essays/innovation-is-overvalued-maintenance-often-matters-more},
Title={Hail the maintainers},
journal={Aeon},
date={2016-04-07},
comment = {Outlines the history of the rise of popularity of the word and concept `innovation’ and compares that to our cultural neglect of the maintenance of infrastructure. In 2012, even the Wall Street Journal got into innovation-bashing act, noting ‘the Term Has Begun to Lose Meaning’. At the time, it counted ‘more than 250 books with “innovation” in the title… published in the last three months’. A professional innovation consultant it interviewed advised his clients to ban the word at their companies. He said it was just a ‘word to hide the lack of substance’.'' Evidence has emerged that regions of intense innovation also have systemic problems with inequality. In 2013, protests erupted in San Francisco over the gentrification and social stratification symbolised by Google buses and other private commuter buses. These shuttles brought high-tech employees from hip, pricey urban homes to their lush suburban campuses, without exposing them to the inconvenience of public transportation or to the vast populations of the poor and homeless who also call Silicon Valley their home. The dramatic, unnecessary suffering exposed by such juxtapositions of economic inequality seems to be a feature, not a bug of highly innovative regions.’’ ``Third, focusing on infrastructure or on old, existing things rather than novel ones reminds us of the absolute centrality of the work that goes into keeping the entire world going. Despite recurring fantasies about the end of work or the automation of everything, the central fact of our industrial civilisation is labour, and most of this work falls far outside the realm of innovation. Inventors and innovators are a small slice – perhaps somewhere around one per cent – of this workforce. If gadgets are to be profitable, corporations need people to manufacture, sell, and distribute them.’’ ``The most unappreciated and undervalued forms of technological labour are also the most ordinary: those who repair and maintain technologies that already exist, that were ‘innovated’ long ago.’’ ``Crack cocaine, for example, was a highly innovative product in the 1980s, which involved a great deal of entrepreneurship (called ‘dealing’) and generated lots of revenue. Innovation! Entrepreneurship! Perhaps this point is cynical, but it draws our attention to a perverse reality: contemporary discourse treats innovation as a positive value in itself, when it is not.’’},
category = {richard florida, Economics, infrastructure, innovation, maintenance}
}
% Check out a book referenced in this article: Shock of the Old
% This essay also nicely supports the argument - once again - that manufacturing/labor are critical to an successful economy.
% It seems like most of the “maintainer” work would be “men’s” work, but they include domestic work.
% ``In her classic 1983 book, More Work for Mother, Ruth Schwartz Cowan examined home technologies – such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners – and how they fit into women’s ceaseless labour of domestic upkeep. One of her more famous findings was that new housekeeping technologies, which promised to save labour, literally created more work for mother as cleanliness standards rose, leaving women perpetually unable to keep up.’’
@article{suellentropgarfield2004,
Author={Suellentrop, Chris},
url={http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2004/06/garfield.html},
Title={Garfield Why we hate the Mouse but not the cartoon copycat.},
journal={Slate},
date={2004-06-11},
comment = {Jim Davis carefully crafted Garfield to be a mundane mechandizing product. He put his business background to work to create a character that would be licenseable without being popular enough to create cultural backlash.},
category = {garfield, Economics, marketing, jim davis}
}
@article{krehbielappsdownloadedpermonth2016,
Author={Krehbiel, Karl},
url={https://www.quora.com/How-many-mobile-apps-are-downloaded-by-the-average-smartphone-user-each-month-by-platform},
Title={How many mobile apps are downloaded by the average smartphone user each month (by platform)?},
journal={Quora},
date={2016-04-20},
comment = {According to ComScore’s The U.S. Mobile App Report: The average American smartphone user (on both Android and iOS)* doesn’t download any apps each month. That being said, the average number of apps downloaded per American smartphone user per month is a little more than 1. This is not particularly surprising because most mobile app usage goes to apps that don’t get a lot of turnover–social networks, messaging, retail, or some form of media consumption.},
category = {Economics, marketing, CUP, apps, network affect, facebook, downloads}
}
@article{bramsnowstormeconomics2016,
Author={Bram, Jason},
url={http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2016/03/hey-economist-how-well-do-we-weather-snowstorms.html},
Title={Hey, Economist! How Well Do We Weather Snowstorms?},
journal={Liberty Street Economics},
date={2016-03-04},
comment = {Apparently out of the 16 major snowstorms in nyc (over 15 inches in Central Park) in the last 75 years, 13 of them have fallen on the weekend against astounding odds. Also major storms (even very major storms like Sandy) have very little long-term economic impact.},
category = {Economics, snowstorms, weekends}
}
% This is from the Federal Reserve Bank of NYC
@article{davidsondoddfrank2015,
Author={Davidson, Adam},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/magazine/wall-street-is-using-the-power-of-dodd-frank-against-itself.html},
Title={Wall Street Is Using the Power of Dodd-Frank Against Itself},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2015-05-27},
comment = {Research at the NYU Stern School of Business suggests that large American banks had moved signficantly away from productivity enhancements and towards rent-seeking in the years leading up to the financial crisis. ``The N.Y.U. research cuts against both the standard left- and right-leaning critiques of Wall Street. The perception of many on the left is that banks were once well regulated and then the oversight stopped. But banking regulation has in fact grown over the past 30 years, with more regulators enforcing more (and more complicated) rules. For many on the right, of course, this is itself the problem: All that government intrusion, they argue, is stifling the financial system. But Richardson and Acharya’s research shows that we’re in a scarier place than either side realizes. By freeing banks’ hands, reducing regulation might incentivize them to engage in more rent-seeking. But by increasing the complexity of the rules, overregulation can enable rent-seeking just as easily.’’ },
category = {financial crisis, Economics, dodd-frank, rent-seeking}
}
@article{davidsonfoodtruck2013,
Author={Davidson, Adam},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/the-food-truck-business-stinks.html},
Title={The Food-Truck Business Stinks},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2013-05-07},
comment = {In this article Davidson does this terrific move of pulling in the Yuppie NY Times readers by talking about trying to find a food truck for his kid in Prospect Park, but then turns it around to being about fair wages for street vendors.},
category = {street vendors, food trucks, Economics}
}
@article{porter2016trade,
Author={Porter, Eduardo},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/business/economy/on-trade-angry-voters-have-a-point.html},
Title={On Trade, Angry Voters Have a Point},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-03-15},
comment = {New research suggests that the idea that countries adjust quickly to trade shocks might be wrong. The US never adjusted to losing jobs to China. (Though NAFTA appears to have had less impact.) The suggestion is that, while it would be nearly impossible to undo the open trade deals now, new trade deals should be much more cautious about the cost.},
category = {free trade, globalization, Economics, china, nafta}
}
% And again we see how manufacturing is where the power and the money are.
% Another example of how you shouldn’t put your laboratory-rational theory up against the intuition of hundreds of millions of people unless you are damn sure it’s right.
@article{victorydaylightsavingstime2016,
Author={Victor, Daniel},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/us/daylight-saving-time-farmers.html},
Title={Daylight Saving Time: Why Does It Exist? (It’s Not for Farming)},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-03-11},
comment = {Why do we have daylight savings time? Extra daylight means extra time to spend money. Daylight saving increases gasoline consumption. Farmers were the strongest lobby agaist daylight savings time. ``“It has long been a cynical substitute for real energy policy,” he said. “It’s the ideal energy policy because it has no apparent direct cost to consumers, and it asks no one to consume less.”’’},
category = {daylight savings time, Economics, gasoline}
}
% This article has some interesting tidbits, but doesn’t actually explain WHY we have daylight savings time. Just why we STILL have it.
@article{morozovcybersyn2016,
Author={Morozov, Evgeny},
url={http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine},
Title={The Planning Machine},
journal={The New Yorker},
date={2014-10-13},
comment = {Chile, under Allende in the 1970s, ran an experiment with collecting tons of data from the economy and feedining it into a computer which made decisions to control economic output. Much of it predicts the rise of ``big data’’ and Apple design.},
category = {design, Economics, big data, chile, allende, apple, socialism, computers}
}
@book{bernays1928propaganda,
title={Propaganda},
author={Bernays, E.L. and Miller, M.C.},
isbn={9780970312594},
lccn={2004016015},
url={https://books.google.com/books?id=3De8nd\_B\_C8C},
year={1928},
publisher={Ig Publishing},
comment = {The classic book that started the revolution in advertising away from the practicality of products and towards products defining who you are. A central part of the documentary The Century of Self by Adam Curtis.},
category = {advertising, propaganda, psychology, economics}
}
@article{buigovernmentland,
Author={Bui, Quoctrung and Sanger-Katz, Margot},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/upshot/why-the-government-owns-so-much-land-in-the-west.html},
Title={Why the Government Owns So Much Land in the West},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-01-05},
comment = {A brief history of why the Federal government owns almost half the land west of the Mississippi, and why that is unlikely to change.},
category = {land, west, bureau of land management}
}
@article{barroforcingyourselftothegym,
Author={Barro, Josh},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/upshot/how-to-make-yourself-go-to-the-gym.html},
Title={How to Make Yourself Go to the Gym},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-01-10},
comment = {A piece about trying to come up with economic incentives to go to the gym. Mostly, they fail, though there is a promising method listed in this article.},
category = {behaviorial economics, working out, gyms}
}
@article{cowenassortativemating,
Author={Cowen, Tyler},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/upshot/marriages-of-power-couples-reinforce-income-inequality.html},
Title={The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2015-12-24},
comment = {People are getting married later, to people who share similar interests and social class. This is called assortative mating, and it is contributing to income inequality as people are more often creating power couples, and the wealthy are reinforcing the headstart their children have.},
category = {assortative mating, marriage, power couples, income inequality}
}
@article{chamorroincompetentmaleleaders2013,
Author={Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas},
url={https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men},
Title={Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?},
journal={Havard Business Review},
date={2013-08-22},
comment = {The truth of the matter is that pretty much anywhere in the world men tend to think that they that are much smarter than women. Yet arrogance and overconfidence are inversely related to leadership talent — the ability to build and maintain high-performing teams, and to inspire followers to set aside their selfish agendas in order to work for the common interest of the group. Indeed, whether in sports, politics or business, the best leaders are usually humble — and whether through nature or nurture, humility is a much more common feature in women than men.'' The paradoxical implication is that the same psychological characteristics that enable male managers to rise to the top of the corporate or political ladder are actually responsible for their downfall.’’ Most of the character traits that are truly advantageous for effective leadership are predominantly found in those who fail to impress others about their talent for management. This is especially true for women.'' So it struck me as a little odd that so much of the recent debate over getting women to “lean in” has focused on getting them to adopt more of these dysfunctional leadership traits. Yes, these are the people we often choose as our leaders — but should they be?’’},
category = {women, leadership, humility}
}
@article{nosowitzmadewell,
Author={Nosowitz, Dan},
url={http://www.buzzfeed.com/dannosowitz/how-madewell-bought-and-sold-my-familys-history},
Title={Something Borrowed, Something Blue},
journal={BuzzFeed},
date={2014-09-28},
comment = {A not very good article about the history of the brand Madewell. But includes these interesting bits: It was all women’s clothing — expensive women’s clothing. I found a clerk and said, in some jumbled, excited, confused way, that this was my shop, that Madewell was my family’s business. I think she thought I was angling for a discount. After politely and professionally feigning interest while I struggled to explain a history I didn’t even really know, the clerk stopped me. “We don’t sell men’s clothes,” she said."'' I looked more closely at the flannel-lined denim jacket. It was cool, and vintage, and, being that my great-grandfather’s company made it, I’d have a great story behind it. I tried it on and immediately took it off. I looked like I was wearing a costume. I hadn’t realized how reliant my taste in clothes is on modern shapes; I didn’t at all care for the boxy, un-tailored fit of the jacket, the baggy sleeves, or the too-smooth washed denim. The jacket may have been my birthright, but it wasn’t my style.’’},
category = {madewell, j.crew, fashion, clothing, work wear, men’s clothes, women’s clothes}
}
@techreport{NBERw21770,
title = “Economic Gains for U.S. States from Educational Reform”,
author = “Eric A. Hanushek and Jens Ruhose and Ludger Woessmann”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “21770”,
year = “2015”,
month = “December”,
doi = {10.3386/w21770},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w21770”,
abstract = {There is limited existing evidence justifying the economic case for state education policy. Using newly-developed measures of the human capital of each state that allow for internal migration and foreign immigration, we estimate growth regressions that incorporate worker skills. We find that educational achievement strongly predicts economic growth across U.S. states over the past four decades. Based on projections from our growth models, we show the enormous scope for state economic development through improving the quality of schools. While we consider the impact for each state of a range of educational reforms, an improvement that moves each state to the best-performing state would in the aggregate yield a present value of long-run economic gains of over four times current GDP.},
comment = {Paper suggests that improving schools is a no-brainer in that it almost guarantees economic development.},
category = {Economics, schools, education, development}
}
% I don’t have access to this paper, but I would love to read it.
@article{briscoegovernmentversuscharities,
Author={Briscoe, John},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/11/27/are-charities-more-effective-than-government/vital-needs-dont-always-attract-donations},
Title={Vital Needs Don’t Always Attract Donations},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2012-11-27},
comment = {``In the United States and other rich countries there is a vast array of non-governmental organizations that focus on health and education. Governments, on the other hand, typically and necessarily see things like jobs as overwhelming priorities and sectors like infrastructure as critical for creating jobs and reducing poverty. I know of not a single nongovernmental organization that focuses on job creation, the provision of electricity at scale, or transport. ‘’},
category = {transit, government, charity, NGOs, taxes}
}
% Referenced by the eisingerzuckerberg article. (Which is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone reference a “Room for Debate” column in the Times.)
@article{eisingerzuckerberg,
Author={Eisinger, Jessie},
url={https://www.propublica.org/article/how-mark-zuckerbergs-altruism-helps-himself},
Title={How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself},
journal={ProPublica},
date={2015-12-03},
comment = {``Mega-donations, assuming Zuckerberg makes good on his pledge, are explicit acknowledgments that the money should be plowed back into society. They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend 45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense. Because that is the case, society can’t rely on the beneficence and enlightenment of the superwealthy to realize this individually. We need to take a portion uniformly — some kind of tax on wealth.’’},
category = {taxes, charity, donations, facebook, philanthropy}
}
@article{protergrowth,
Author={Porter, Eduardo},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/business/economy/imagining-a-world-without-growth.html},
Title={Imagining A World Without Growth},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2015-12-01},
comment = {Argument that economic growth is necessary to all the things we hold dear like the end of slavery, democracy, and women’s sufferage. Slowing or ending growth is one possible solution to climate change, but wouldn’t be a good solution for humanity.},
category = {growth, economics, climate change}
}
% Note that he isn’t actually disputing the idea that ``“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”’’ He’s just arguing that it would be bad if growth stopped. Seems like the question to ask then is: do we want to control when growth stops? Or have it forced upon us?
@techreport{NBERw21751,
title = “Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs: Introduction”,
author = “Robert Moffitt”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “21751”,
year = “2015”,
month = “November”,
doi = {10.3386/w21751},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w21751”,
abstract = {This volume collects a series of essays by prominent economists on each of the major means-tested, or welfare, programs in the United States: the Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income, Subsidized Housing, Training, and Early Education programs. Each essay covers the institutional history of a program, the policy issues surrounding it, its rules and regulations, its history of expenditure and caseloads, and, most importantly, a summary of the research that economists have conducted on the program and the findings from that research. The volume is an update of a popular first volume in 2003 which became a reference Handbook on the shelf of all economists and policy-makers who work on, or who are interested in, transfer programs in the United States. The new volume focuses primarily on the changes in programs which have occurred since 2003 and the results of new research since that date. The volume will be a timely contribution to on-going policy discussions in Washington and elsewhere, bringing the available evidence to bear on the many issues surrounding those programs.},
comment = {This is the introduction to a book that introduces the economics of different welfare systems. While the mix of different programs in the U.S. shown in Table 1 may seem to be a rather crazy - quilt assortment of programs with different structures and recipient groups, rather than following from some single rational desi gn for assistance for the poor of all types, it does reflect what are commonly regarded as voter preferences in the country. For example, most programs are in - kind in nature, providing subsidies for specific consumption goods like medical care, food consu mption and nutritional assistance, housing, and early childhood education. When cash is provided, it is generally not provided universally to all low - income families, but only to those with specific characteristics, like workers (the EITC) or the aged and disabled (SSI). The only quasi - general cash program in the country is the TANF program, but it has shrunk dramatically, providing only a modest level of benefits and only to a restricted set of families, again presumably reflecting disfavor for giving a general cash transfer in return for low income per se. For example, n o cash program exists for poor , nonelderly and nondisabled childless nonworkers, whether single individuals or married, and only in - kind benefits are provided to other nonworkers.'' Five distinct periods are discernible. The first phase began in the 1960s (although not shown in the figure) and ran through the mid - 1970s. In this classic period of expansion of the welfare state in the U.S., the AFDC program expanded and grew , the Food Stamp program was exten ded to the nation as a whole, the SSI program was created, and housing aid was expanded. The second phase ran from the mid - 1970s to the late1980s, when expenditures flattened out, with no growth. The flattening out was a result of growth in the Food Stamp and housing programs offset by declines in spending on AFDC and SSI. The third phase, running from the late 1980s to the mid - 1990s, saw another large increase in spending, exceeding that in the early 1970s in some cases. The growth resulted from major expansions in the EITC and in the SSI and subsidized housing programs. The fourth phase ran from the mid - 1990s to 2007, with some expansion in overall spending but relatively little on the top 10 programs. Spending on AFDC declined as it was changed to the TANF program, spending leveled off in the SSI program , housing programs, and the EITC, but a new Child Tax Credi t (CTC) was introduced, pushing up spending. The Great Recession constitutes the fifth phase, where per capita spending on the 10 largest programs grew by 15 percent from 2007 to 2011, arising from increases in expenditure particularly in the recently - renamed SNAP program, the EITC, and SSI.’’},
category = {economics, welfare, means-tested programs},
}
% downloadable URL = {https://www.nber.org/chapters/c13482.pdf},
% I should get this book.
@article{barrosimplifytax,
Author={Barro, Josh},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/upshot/a-three-page-tax-code-not-exactly-simple.html},
Title={The Tax Code Can Be Simpler. But Not Three Pages.},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2015-11-13},
comment = {Breakdown of the reality of simplifying the tax code, and how the main reason not to try is that people like their Mortgage Interest Deduction and chartiable giving deductions. Ends on the ever-more-common suggestion of letting the government pre-fill out your tax return for you.},
category = {taxes, simplification}
}
@article{dayturbotax2013,
Author={Day, Liz},
url={https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-fought-free-simple-tax-filing},
Title={How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing},
journal={ProPublica},
date={2013-03-26},
comment = {Intuit lobbies the government to keep them from passing a law that allows the IRS to pre-fill out all your tax forms for you with the information that employers and banks already have to send them because it would undermine their product TurboTax.},
category = {return-free filing, taxes, intuit, turbotax, Economics}
}
% An update to this article here: \url{https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple-hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it}
% See a detailed history of Intuit’s efforts to keep Turbo Tax profitable, and the government from implementing simple free filing:
% \url{https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free}
@article{barrosocialsecurity,
Author={Barro, Josh},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/upshot/were-living-longer-thats-great-except-for-social-security.html?rref=upshot},
Title={We’re Living Longer. That’s Great, Except for Social Security.},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2015-11-17},
comment = {Break down of the funding “problem” with Social Security.},
category = {social security, aging}
}
% A long explanation of a problem with a simple solution: raise the salary cap on Social Security. Why shouldn’t people making more than ~$100k a year have to pay taxes on that extra income? And it would easily fix this so-called “problem”
@article{reevesmenslib,
Author={Reeves, Richard V. and Sawhill, Isabel V.},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/opinion/sunday/mens-lib.html},
Title={Men’s Lib!},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2015-11-14},
comment = {Data show that women are moving into men’s jobs, but men, who are suffering educationally and economically, are not moving into female roles of either jobs or home care. Women are moving into STEM jobs, but men are not moving into HEAL jobs. Helping men should be about moving closer to equality, not re-establishing the patriarchy of the past. ``Instead, some men, especially those with the bleakest economic prospects, are retreating into what some scholars have labeled “hyper-masculinity.” At the extreme this leads to violence and misogyny, and may be a form of compensation for low status or loss of respect.’’ },
category = {patriarchy, gender roles, marriage, housework}
}
% Two thought-criticisms here: 1, this is another paper that just makes the assumption that we should all be doing the amount of housework we are currently doing, instead of simply everyone doing less. (See: The Case For Filth.)
% 2, “working mother” and “Career woman” roll off the tongue, but so does “family man”. Which may have a traditional meaning that fit in the patriarchial order, but I think also suggests a lot of space for shaping that into a more modern meaning. (Just as “working mother” has gotten more professionalized.
@article{curmudgeoncd,
Author={Coan, Ron},
url={http://journal.c2er.org/2015/11/community-development-its-time-to-question-the-basics/},
Title={Community Development: It’s Time to Question the Basics},
journal={Journal of Applied Research In Economic Development},
volume = {12},
year = {2015},
month = {11},
comment = {Argues that community development cannot simultaneously pursue the goal of neighborhood development and people'' development. These two goals are competing and pull at each other. Development of the physical neighborhood often means the displacement of people who live there. It would be simpler and more effective to focus just on people, he argues. (Though he has some interesting ideas about how the people who should be helped are the people who want your help. The efford is to assimilate’’ people who want to be assimilated. A problematic term, at best.) Refernces Paul Ylvisaker who developed the concept of Gray Area'' neighborhoods, claiming Ylvisaker wanted to assimilate’’ people in those neighborhoods, not revitalize them. },
category = {assimilation, community development, economic development, gray areas}
}
@article{cortrightgentrification,
Author={Cortright, Joe},
url={http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/in-defense-of-gentrification/413425/},
Title={In Defense of Gentrification},
journal={The Atlantic},
date={2015-10-31},
comment = {Covers some new research that the effects of gentrification are not as negative as people intuit. ``While the gentrification narrative (having rich neighbors makes life harder for poor people) is common, news stories seldom promote the narrative of concentrated poverty (having mostly poor neighbors makes life harder for the poor), which is both more prevalent and demonstrably more harmful.’’},
category = {Urbanism, gentrification}
}
@article{freeman2005displacement,
title={Displacement or succession? Residential mobility in gentrifying neighborhoods},
author={Freeman, Lance},
journal={Urban Affairs Review},
volume={40},
number={4},
pages={463–491},
year={2005},
publisher={Sage Publications},
comment = {Research that shows displacement due to gentrification might not be a real problem. Referenced by Vicki Been, covered in this article at Gotham Gazette: \url{http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/government/5988-de-blasio-housing-chief-looks-to-allay-fears-build-support-for-rezonings}},
category = {Urbanism, gentrification, displacement, affordable housing}
}
% This is of course not to say gentrification isn’t a real problem, just the displacement part.
% I annoyingly don’t have access to this article, so I haven’t read it.
% The author of this paper has an interesting piece here, \url {http://furmancenter.org/research/iri/freeman} Several studies have shown that the major force of demographic change in gentrifying neighborhoods is the alteration in who is able to move into such neighborhoods, not how quickly the current residents move out (Freeman and Braconi 2004, Freeman 2005, McKinnish, Walsh et al. 2010, Ellen and O’Regan 2011)'' Too often residents of gentrifying neighborhood feel that the improvements taking place are for the benefit of newcomers. But a mobilized community with the capacity to look after its own interests would be better positioned to effect change in their neighborhood and would likely be less cynical about the changes taking place.’’
@techreport{NBERw25809,
title = “Does Gentrification Displace Poor Children? New Evidence from New York City Medicaid Data”,
author = “Dragan, Kacie and Ellen, Ingrid and Glied, Sherry A”,
institution = “National Bureau of Economic Research”,
type = “Working Paper”,
series = “Working Paper Series”,
number = “25809”,
year = “2019”,
month = “May”,
doi = {10.3386/w25809},
URL = “http://www.nber.org/papers/w25809”,
abstract = {The pace of gentrification has accelerated in cities across the country since 2000, and many observers fear it is displacing low-income populations from their homes and communities. We offer new evidence about the consequences of gentrification on mobility, building and neighborhood conditions, using longitudinal New York City Medicaid records from January 2009 to December 2015 to track the movement of a cohort of low-income children over seven years, during a period of rapid gentrification in the city. We leverage building-level data to examine children in market rate housing separately from those in subsidized housing. We find no evidence that gentrification is associated with meaningful changes in mobility rates over the seven-year period. It is associated with slightly longer distance moves. As for changes in neighborhood conditions, we find that children who start out in a gentrifying area experience larger improvements in some aspects of their residential environment than their counterparts who start out in persistently low-socioeconomic status areas. This effect is driven by families who stay in neighborhoods as they gentrify; we observe few differences in the characteristics of destination neighborhoods among families who move, though we find modest evidence that children moving from gentrifying areas move to lower-quality buildings.},
category = {Urbanism, gentrification, displacement, affordable housing}
}
% more up-to-date research on the “is gentrification real” issue
@article{doi:10.1177/1078087416666959,
author = {Isaac William Martin and Kevin Beck},
title = {Gentrification, Property Tax Limitation, and Displacement},
journal = {Urban Affairs Review},
volume = {0},
number = {0},
pages = {1078087416666959},
year = {0},
doi = {10.1177/1078087416666959},
URL = { http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1078087416666959 },
eprint = { http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1078087416666959 },
abstract = { Scholars have long argued that gentrification may displace long-term homeowners by causing their property taxes to increase, and policy makers, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have cited this argument as a justification for state laws that limit the increase of residential property taxes. We test the hypotheses that gentrification directly displaces homeowners by increasing their property taxes, and that property tax limitation protects residents of gentrifying neighborhoods from displacement, by merging the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with a decennial Census-tract-level measure of gentrification and a new data set on state-level property tax policy covering the period 1987 to 2009. We find some evidence that property tax pressure can trigger involuntary moves by homeowners, but no evidence that such displacement is more common in gentrifying neighborhoods than elsewhere, nor that property tax limitation protects long-term homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods. We do find evidence that gentrification directly displaces renters. },
comment = {Finds that gentrification has almost no effect on homeowners, but greatly increases chances of RENTERS leaving. Renters have about the same chance of leaving because of gentrification as they do if they get a divorce. It’s significant. Also finds that propterty taxes DON’T impact homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods any more than in non-gentrifying ones.},
category = {Urbanism, gentrification, displacement, homeownership}
}
% This totally makes sense (and shocks me that the renter vs homeowner metric hasn’t been broken out before!)
% It actually explains how the research in things like freeman2005displacement jives with the experience of people on the ground.
% This is one of those papers that backs up the notion that researchers really need to pay attention to common sense.
% See Richard Florida’s recap: \url{http://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/01/gentrification-hurts-renters-more-than-homeowners/510074/}
@techreport{zuk2015gentrification,
title={Gentrification, Displacement and the Role of Public Investment: A Literature Review},
author={Zuk, Miriam and Bierbaum, Ariel H and Chapple, Karen and Gorska, Karolina and Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia and Ong, Paul and Thomas, Trevor},
year={2015},
institution={Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco},
url = {http://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/wp2015-05.pdf},
comment = {Reviews all the current literature on displacement, including the Freeman paper above, and concludes that there is no simple way to measure gentrification and displacement, and other papers that claim to are not being very thorough. Also, gentrification and displacement take place over long time periods (generational changes, as I say) which are often not accounted for in papers. Also fixed rail generally leads to increased property values while BRT does not. Also some stuff about the primacy of neighborhoods as the unit of study in literature.},
category = {Economics, bus rapid transit, light rail, gentrification, displacement, neighborhoods}
}
% This paper contains a lot of good references to all sorts of urban theory that could be mined for, say, a class on urban theory.
% Talks about gentrifiers who desire a gritty authentic urban experience, with references to papers documenting that.
% Also see this Washington Post summary of the paper: \url{https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/here-is-everything-we-know-about-whether-gentrification-pushes-people-out/}
% And this CityLab coverage: \url{http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/09/the-role-of-public-investment-in-gentrification/403324/}
% Finding: Cultural strategies can transform places, creating new economic value but at the same time displacing existing meanings.
% Finding: Commercial gentrification can also transform a neighborhood’s meaning, but research is mixed on whether it is positive or negative for existing residents and businesses. (This is in response to Freeman)
@article{greenbergarbitration,
Author={Silver-Greenberg, Jessica and Gebeloff, Robert},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html},
Title={Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2015-10-31},
comment = {New research by the Times shows that many large companies include clauses in their contracts that force complaints into individual arbitration and forbid class-action lawsuits. This was a concientious effort on the part of corporate lawyers.},
category = {law, arbitration, class-action lawsuits}
}
@article{sherman2009short,
title={A short history of financial deregulation in the United States},
author={Sherman, Matthew},
journal={Center for Economic and Policy Research},
volume={7},
year={2009},
url = {http://www.openthegovernment.org/sites/default/files/otg/dereg-timeline-2009-07.pdf},
comment = {Covers not just the repeal of Glass-Steagall but the full timeline of bank deregulation up to the financial crisis.},
category = {Glass-Steagall, banking, deregulation}
}
% This is the paper that made me feel like the one thing the NEDAP project should do is help people understand what a gratuitous and deliberate process bank deregulation was.
@article{wolfersnudge,
Author={Wolfers, Justin},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/upshot/a-better-government-one-tweak-at-a-time.html},
Title={A Better Government, One Tweak at a Time},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2015-09-25},
comment = {Good design matters (says this article) and good design should be based on A/B testing. Small changes (nudges) based on testing like this can yield big results at the government scale.},
category = {design, a/b testing, nudge}
}
%A couple of problems here:
%One, I think these things are moving targets. A new popup telling you to print two-sided might work the first few times you see it, but when it becomes part of the background noise you might start to ignore it.
%Two, small percentage point gains might be great at the scale of Google or the federal government, but on the scale that we actually live on - say writing emails to coworkers, those differences probably don’t matter.
%In addition, if A/B testing consistently yields functional results, then the aesthetic of big organizations will become about efficient function. It seems likely that those those giant functional organizations that care about small percentage point changes will start to all have very similar designs, aesthetics, and operations developed with A/B testing nudging it all in the same direction. Those organizations will soon risk feeling like they don’t have a unique or human voice. Which is maybe no shocking thing to say about the federal government, but consider the recent change to Google’s logo.
@article{mcgraybabycarrots,
Author={McGray, Douglas},
url={http://www.fastcompany.com/1739774/how-carrots-became-new-junk-food},
Title={How Carrots Became The New Junk Food},
journal={Fast Company},
date={2011-03-22},
comment = {The efforts to market baby carrots as junk food.},
category = {marketing, food}
}
@article{walkerPBR,
Author={Walker, Rob},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/magazine/the-marketing-of-no-marketing.html},
Title={The Marketing of No Marketing},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2003-06-22},
comment = {The famous article about how PBR chose to tackle marketing by not marketing to hipsters.},
category = {marketing, food}
}
@article{szalaitastereview2016,
Author={Szalai, Jennifer},
url={http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/books/review/you-may-also-like-and-pretentiousness-why-it-matters.html},
Title={‘You May Also Like’ and ‘Pretentiousness: Why It Matters’},
journal={The New York Times},
date={2016-05-10},
comment = {A review of Tom Vanderbilt’s book “You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice”. “Nothing is more predictive of a person than his music preference,” Vanderbilt continues, paraphrasing what he learns from one of the Echo Nest’s founders, who points to correlations between genres and, for instance, political affiliations (country and Republicans; rap and Democrats; metal apparently has bipartisan appeal). These genres are determined less by the sound of the music itself than by the people who listen to them.'' Vanderbilt makes frequent reference to “Distinction,” Pierre Bourdieu’s pioneering 1979 study of taste as correlated largely with social and educational class, in which the French sociologist asked people of varying educational attainment to say whether scenes like a sunset or “tramps quarreling” would make for a “beautiful, interesting, meaningless or ugly photo.”’’ He becomes uncharacteristically distraught over the argument — one with which I happen to agree — that a pleasurable cultural experience, even if popular and mass-produced, shouldn’t be attended by guilt.'' Also reviews “Pretentiousness: Why It Matters,” by Dan Fox. He argues that pretension, or pretending to something else, is what allows us to shake off complacency and move beyond the status quo. retentiousness in his definition is not self-serious but playful, exemplified by the likes of Brian Eno (who has written about wanting “to turn the word ‘pretentious’ into a compliment”), Kate Bush and David Bowie, to name a few.’’},
category = {Economics, marketing, taste, pretentiousness}
}