Are You a Behavioralist or an Institutionalist?
Noah Smith’s response to my previous post on the future of behavioral economics makes an interesting point: behavioral economics is indeed somewhat more established in finance. I think this is correct...
View ArticleOscar Do-Overs
I’m not a film connoisseur. Then again, I’m also not an expert in football or basketball but it doesn’t take a genius to see that picking Greg Oden over Kevin Durant was a blunder of epic...
View ArticleDisclosing One’s Biases in the Classroom
Over at Crookedtimber, Harry Brighouse poses a very good question. My own policy is to disclose very little, particularly with undergraduate students. The professor is not supposed to dictate positions...
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Cost-Benefit Calculus and Stimulus Spending
I’ve been thinking a bit about stimulus spending recently. In part this is because Emi Nakamura and Jon Steinsson just recently published a paper on the multiplier in the American Economic Review but...
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Needed: Meaningful Progress on Income Inequality
Income inequality in the United States has been rising for decades. As I’m sure many of you know, the best source for data on income inequality is Piketty and Saez. The pictures below (which I’m...
View ArticleInequality Redux
A reader sent me the message below. It makes a very good point and I felt it deserved to have its own post. The reader has asked to remain anonymous. [As someone born in a poor foreign country] I dream...
View ArticleWhy Are Physicists Drawn to Economics?
Even before the financial crisis, there has always been a surprising number of ex-physicists who find their way to graduate study in economics. It could be that many of these math-physics people have...
View ArticleTechnodox Economics and ‘Deepak Chopra Mode’
Both Noah Smith and Mark Buchanan have posted replies to my earlier post on the tendency for physicists to be attracted to economics and both make good points. After posting my original entry I thought...
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