According to a recent study, the United States has more public sector corruption than do many other developed economies. More precisely, Transparency International reports that corruption perceptions are higher for the United States than for 21 other countries. Those nations perceived to be less-corrupt are: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom; The Nordics: Denmark, [...]
Archive for October, 2010
How Corrupt is the United States?
Posted in International, tagged Corruption, Rule of Law, Transparency on October 31, 2010 | 9 Comments »
Another Tepid Quarter for GDP
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Data, Economy, GDP on October 30, 2010 | 5 Comments »
BEA released its first estimates for third-quarter GDP yesterday. Headline growth was a disappointing, if not surprising, 2.0%. Here’s my usual graph of how various components of the economy contributed to overall growth: Housing fell back into the red, while non-residential structures eked out a small gain. Consumers continued to spend at a moderate pace [...]
Gender Arbitrage by Multinationals
Posted in Microeconomics, tagged Discrimination, Microeconomics on October 26, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Economists often argue that market competition can limit some of the economic inequities from discrimination (this idea goes back at least to Gary Becker’s 1957 treatise The Economics of Discrimination). If some businesses refuse to hire well-qualified women or minorities, for example, that creates an opportunity for other businesses to hire those workers at lower [...]
U.S. Economy Word Cloud
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics on October 25, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Tim Kane at the Kauffman Foundation is out with his latest survey of economics bloggers (full disclosure: I am both an adviser to the survey and a participant in it). My favorite feature this quarter is a word cloud of adjectives (and some adverbs) that the respondents offered to an open-ended question about the U.S. [...]
Happy World Statistics Day
Posted in Data, tagged Data on October 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Collecting and disseminating useful data about the economy, government finances, demographics, health, the environment, etc. can be a difficult business. Survey methodologies and estimation techniques are inevitably open to legitimate criticism and also attract a good deal of not-so-legitimate criticism (for examples of both, see the debate over the “birth death model” in estimating payroll employment). But all [...]
Home Construction Hits Yet Another Low
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Housing, Macroeconomics on October 19, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Housing starts and permits usually dominate the headlines on residential construction data day. In September, for example, single-family starts increased a healthy 4.4% (total starts increased 0.3%), and single-family permits rose 0.5% (but total permits declined 5.6%). Those are certainly important measures, but I also like to look at a third measure of residential activity [...]
Can the Chilean Miners Solve the Cartel Problem?
Posted in Microeconomics, tagged Chile, Game Theory on October 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »
The rescue of the Chilean miners was a heartwarming miracle. The miners have both my sympathy and respect – I can’t even begin to imagine what those first 17 days were like, trapped far underground without any hint that rescue was even possible. I wish them the best as they try to return to normal [...]
The Biggest Tax Policy Mistake of the Year
Posted in Budget, Politics, tagged Budget, Politics, Taxes on October 15, 2010 | 3 Comments »
The fine folks over at the New York Times Freakonomics blog recently asked me to identify the “biggest potential tax policy mistake that might be made this year.” Here’s my answer: With little time left on the legislative clock, policymakers will be hard-pressed to top the tax policy blunders they’ve already made this year. Most [...]
Will Budget Concerns Ever Influence Carbon Policy?
Posted in Energy, Environment, Politics, tagged Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Politics, Taxes on October 10, 2010 | 7 Comments »
Climate change legislation died an ignominious death in the Senate earlier this year. If you’d like to understand why, check out Ryan Lizza’s autopsy of the effort in the latest New Yorker. Lizza documents how the “tripartisan” trio of John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham came up short in their effort to craft a [...]
Water Funds: Coase in South America (and New York)
Posted in Environment, Microeconomics, tagged Brazil, Coase, Colombia, Ecuador, Environment, New York City, Property, Water on October 3, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Rivers often create important resource conflicts. Downstream cities want clean water to drink. Upstream residents want to make a living, but that sometimes damages water quality. In the highlands above Quito, Ecuador, for example, residents often convert land to farming and ranching; that allows them to raise valuable crops and livestock, but weakens the land’s [...]
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