The Curious Engineer

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Conversable Economist

conversableeconomist.blogspot.com

In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”

Society / politics / economy

’15’20’25
Posts
2,553 from 17 May 2011 to 15 Jul 2021
Posting
quiet since 2021
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personal blog
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Latest

July 2021

  1. If You Haven't Switched to the New Conversable Economist Website Yet ...
  2. Learned Hand: "The Spirit of Liberty is the Spirit Which is Not Too Sure That It is Right"

June 2021

  1. Last Post Here: Moving From Blogger to WordPress
  2. Interview: Amartya Sen on a Bicycle
  3. From Pandemic to Digitalization to Productivity?
  4. The Social Nature of Government Actions
  5. How to Improve College Completion Rates: The Time Commitment Problem
  6. Some Economics of Preventive Health Care
  7. Some Economics of James Buchanan
  8. The Shrinking Role of European Companies in the Global Economy
  9. Why Have Mortality Rates Been Rising for US Working-Age Adults?
  10. What is Complexity Economics?

May 2021

  1. Clean Energy and Pro-Mining
  2. Do Riskier Jobs Get Correspondingly Higher Pay?
  3. Economic Research Becomes a Team Sport
  4. Can Policy Tame Credit Cycles?
  5. A Primer on SPACs: An Alternative to IPOs?
  6. NItrous Oxide, Agriculture, and Climate Change
  7. Taxation Tales and the Window Tax
  8. What is Behind People's Views on Tax Policy?
  9. Interview with Christopher Pissarides: Unemployment and Labor Markets
  10. Political Economy of the Pandemic Response
  11. Is the Pandemic Worse in Lower- or Higher-Income Countries?
  12. The Slow Magic from Agricultural R&D
  13. Interview with Matthew Jackson: Human Networks
  14. The Great Texas Power Failure of February 2021
  15. China's Population: The Coming Decline
  16. Spring 2021 Journal of Economic Perspectives Available Online

April 2021

  1. Electrification of Everything: The Transmission Lines Challenge
  2. Amazon and Value Creation: A Bezos Farewell
  3. Nine Principles of Policing from 1829
  4. Stigler's Economic Theory of Regulation: The Semicentennial
  5. International Trade and Economic Disruption in Context
  6. An Economics with Verbs, Not Just Nouns
  7. The US Net International Investment Position, aka "Debtor Nation"
  8. A Hive of Authentic College Applicants
  9. Interview with Esther Duflo: On Experimental Methods and Inequality
  10. Pharma R&D: Vaccines and Other Drugs
  11. What Do You Call a Bigger Wave of Debt?
  12. The US Productivity Slowdown After 2005
  13. Electrify Everything: Some Limitations of Solar and Wind
  14. Dispose of Masks Properly, Or Else
  15. Evolving Patterns of Innovation Across States and Industries
  16. Policy for the Next Pandemics
  17. Nature as Part of the Stock of Humanity's Wealth

March 2021

  1. The Spread in Labor Costs Across the European Union
  2. Data and Development
  3. Will the Fed Keep Interest Rates Low for the US Treasury?
  4. China-US Trade: Some Patterns Since 1990
  5. Mission Creep for Bank Regulators and Central Banks
  6. Measuring Teaching Quality in Higher Education
  7. Carbon Capture and Storage: The Negative Carbon Option?
  8. Will Workers Disperse from Cities?
  9. Negative Interest Rates: Practical, but Limited
  10. Retail Investors Show "Exuberance"
  11. The Case for More Activist Antitrust Policy
  12. What's Happening with Global Connectedness in the Pandemic?
  13. Intergenerational Mobility and Neighborhood Effects
  14. Debt and Deficits: Nostalgia for the 1980s
  15. Teaching Current Monetary Policy
  16. Putting Monetary Values on Health Costs of Coronavirus
  17. The Coming Evolution of Electric Power in the US

February 2021

  1. India: Pivoting from the Pandemic to Economic Reforms
  2. Robert J. Gordon: Thoughts on Long-Run US Productivity Growth
  3. Including Illegal Activities in GDP: Drugs, Prostitution, Gambling
  4. The Dependence of US Higher Education on International Students
  5. The Minimum Wage Controversy
  6. Rural Poverty
  7. Robert Shiller on Narrative Economics
  8. The Allure and Curse of Mini-Assignments
  9. Interview with Seema Jayachandran: Women and Development, Deforestation, and Other Topics
  10. The Coin Shortage: Velocity Stories
  11. What Gets Counted When Measuring US Tax Progressivity
  12. Judges and Ideology
  13. How to Regulate a Railroad
  14. Some Evidence on Those Who Hold Multiple Jobs
  15. Winter 2021 Journal of Economic Perspectives Available Online
  16. Why High-Income Economies Need to Fight COVID Everywhere
  17. Why Have Other High-Income Countries Dropped Wealth Taxes?

January 2021

  1. Interview with Benjamin Friedman on Religion, Economic Growth, and Much Else
  2. The Importance of Unimportant Inventions
  3. Could Environmentalists Just Buy What They Want?
  4. The Reproducibility Challenge with Economic Data
  5. Interview with Valerie Ramey: Fiscal Policy, Time Use, and More
  6. How Cities Stopped Being Ladders of Opportunity
  7. The Broken Promises of the Freedman's Savings Bank: 1865-1874
  8. More on the Origins of "Pushing on a String"
  9. An Interview with John Roemer on Inequality of Opportunity
  10. Facing the Long-Term Problem of Low Interest Rates
  11. Some Economics of the Middle Class
  12. Will Population Fall for Many Countries--and the World?
  13. The Curse of Knowledge: Bad Writing, Bad Teaching, and Bad Communication
  14. The Planning Fallacy or How I Ever Get Anything Done

December 2020

  1. Lessons from World War II Statisticians: Survivorship Bias and Sequential Analysis
  2. Thomas Sowell on Editors and Writing
  3. Joseph Schumpeter: "Capitalism Stands Its Trial before Judges Who Have the Sentence of Death in their Pockets"
  4. A Dose of Skepticism about Randomized Control Trials
  5. Charles Dickens on Management and Labor
  6. Charles Dickens on Seeing the Poor
  7. Gifts and Consumer Durables: A Meditation with Adam Smith
  8. Real vs. Artificial Christmas Trees: Comparing Environmental Effects
  9. What Should Be Included in Income Inequality?
  10. How Goethe Turned a Publishing Negotiation into a Second-Price Auction
  11. Working Later in Life
  12. The Coase Theorem: A Process of Becoming
  13. Some Thoughts on US Wealth Patterns
  14. What Distinguishes Austrian Economics?
  15. Prime-Age Males Not in the Labor Force: Some Patterns
  16. China's Belt and Road Initiative Collides with Pandemic Realities
  17. Recessions and Energy Efficiency
  18. Lessons about Copyright from the History of Italian Operas
  19. Why Some of the Shift to Telecommuting Will Stick
  20. COVID Comparisons Across Countries and US States: A Graphing Tool from the FT
  21. Time to Worry Less About Federal Budget Deficits?
  22. Remember the Opioid Crisis?

November 2020

  1. Cancelling Plans for a Robo-Apocalyse?
  2. When Hamilton and Jefferson Agreed! On Fisheries
  3. An Economist Chews Over Thanksgiving
  4. Thanksgiving Origins
  5. The Dominance of Peoria in the Processed Pumpkin Market
  6. What If All Jobs Were Potentially Part-time?
  7. Where Does Increased Revenue from Men's College Football and Basketball Go?
  8. Futures and Options for Farmers, But Why Not for Homeowners?
  9. Are Editors Just Failed Writers?
  10. Jane Haldimand Marcet and the "Conversations on Political Economy"
  11. The Super-rich and How to Tax Them
  12. Public-Private Partnerships: The Importance of Contract Design
  13. Extraordinary Spending in the 2020 Campaign
  14. The Work/Family Balance for College-Graduate Women: From a Century Ago to the COVID Era
  15. Some Economics of Collectibles
  16. Revisiting March 2020: What Were Epidemiologists Thinking about Masks?
  17. Revisiting March 2020: What Was Wrong With the Very High Early Death Estimates?
  18. Entering the Labor Market in a Recession: Some Findings and Advice
  19. Fall 2020 Journal of Economic Perspectives Online
  20. The Dam Removal Problem
  21. Max Weber: "He Who Lets Himself in for Politics ... Contracts with Diabolical Powers"
  22. Bertrand Russell: Thoughts on Politics, Passion, and Skepticism
  23. Is Political Polarization a Rise in Tribalism?
  24. Henry Adams: "Politics ... Had Always Been the Systematic Organization of Hatreds"

October 2020

  1. Reflections on Editing from the Podhoretz Clan, Father and Son
  2. Some 12-Grader Education Inequalities by Race
  3. Return of the Tontine?
  4. The Need for Large Firms in Developing Countries
  5. Thinking about Better Graphs and Use of Color
  6. Will China Be Caught in the Middle-Income Trap?
  7. interview with Sandra Black: Education Outcomes and A Stint in Politics
  8. The Google Antitrust Case and Echoes of Microsoft
  9. Will Vote-by-Mail Affect the Election Outcome?
  10. The Ada Lovelace Controversies
  11. Interview with Gary Hoover: Economics and Discrimination

Every year

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