I've now read the full Cato Journal immigration issue cover-to-cover.  Leaving aside my lead article, here are my brief reactions:1. Gordon Hanson, "Immigration and Economic Growth."  Pretty good, especially on the interaction between high-skilled native labor and low-skilled immigrant labor:One contribution of low-skilled immigrants is to mak […]

It’s being called the “negative salary”: Due to austerity measures in Greece, it’s being reported that up to 64,000 Greeks will go without pay this month, and some will have to pay for having a job. Numbers in austerity reports have usually reflected figures in the millions, since they reflect industry-wide cuts (i.e.  a 537-million euro cut to […]

1. New Carl Zimmer project on science eBook reviews. 2. Empirical tests of how much “cold start” is a problem in labor economics.  From this general blog on on-line labor markets and their implications. 3. Markets in everything: dog TV. 4. NYT symposium on the farm bill, including yours truly. 5. Whorfian economics. 6. CrookedTimber […]

In our Freakonomics: What Went Wrong article, Kaiser and I wrote: Levitt’s publishers characterize him as a “rogue economist,” yet he received his Ph.D. from MIT, holds the title of Alvin H. Baum Professor at the University of Chicago, and has served as editor of the completely mainstream Journal of Political Economy. Further “rogue” credentials […]

More than 8.5 million workers are now collecting disability insurance, in other words almost 6% of the labor force is officially disabled. Perhaps not surprisingly, disability applications shot up just as unemployment benefits started to exhaust. Applications are often denied so disability beneficiaries do not follow applications immediately. Denied applican […]

Philosopher Michael Huemer on political irrationality and how to combat it:   […]

A showdown over the ALP leadership, and therefore the Prime Ministership, has been inevitable for some time, and Kevin Rudd has finally brought it on, resigning as Foreign Minister in the face of direct personal attacks from Simon Crean (himself, apparently, a covert contender for the top job) and others. Readers won’t be surprised to […]

From Scott Sumner, but endorsed by me in full: Take the current situation in the UK.  If I’m not mistaken, the British political system is different from that in America.  British governments are basically elected dictatorships, with no checks and balances.  Even though the Bank of England is independent, the government can give it whatever […]

I’ve just finished reading Nicholas Wapshott’s enjoyable book I’ll be writing a full review for The Business Economist, so will save the detail for then. But one thing that struck me was actually a striking similarity between the two of … Continue reading → […]

According to this amusing diagram in Cracked, facial tattoos mean "I will never have a job that pays taxes."  Many economists would presumably insist, "It's not causal.  The kind of people who tattoo their faces just have low productivity."  I admit that selection is part of reason why people with face tattoos rarely make the big buc […]