Top ten books about international economic history

From the Foreign Policy.

1. Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (2007).
2. Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell, Jr., How the West Grew Rich (1986).
3. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997).
4. John Nye, War, Wine and Taxes (2007).
5. Douglas Irwin, Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade (1996).
6. Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson, Globalization and History (1999).
7. Jeffry Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century (2006).
8. Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, second edition (2008).
9. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights (1997).
10. Paul Blustein, The Chastening (2001).

The economy will be back on track when..

...when "Timothy Geithner sells his house", says Robert Shiller during an interview by the Daily Show. Below is the hilarious video, well worth watching!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Home Crisis Investigation
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

Is behavioral economics doomed?

See David Levine's Max Weber lecture for the answer.

A review on behavioral economics

A very solid primer on the past, present and future of behavioral economics, by Camerer and Loewenstein. Worth a read.

Frontline Documentaries

Breaking the Bank;
The Madoff Affair;
Black Money;
The Persuaders.

Full programs can be watched online.

Interview with Samuelson

On the rise and fall (and rise) of Keynesianism, the influence of Milton Friedman, and the era of Alan Greenspan. Also on the current crisis and the need for a more stimulus spending.

p.s. Mankiw has some more words to say.

Summer seminar

On The Theory of the Firm and Its Applications in Management Research at Copenhagen Business School (with fancy slides, see here and here).

via Organizations and Markets.

Latest Economics Rankings

Top 10% institutions.

Why chickens go across street?

The Prelim version:

1. "Because the price of going across goes down, and the behavior obeys the Law of Demand."
2. "Because the Pareto optimal allocation is on the tangency of the other side of the street."
3. "It is the result of a unique SPE of the alternating bargaining game, the second chicken agrees the offer immediately in the first period and passes across."
4. "Although it is off the equilibrium path, going across is a best response to its own belief."

Good luck to those Macro prelimers!

What's in the journals?

From the Economist, on how to boycott a company, the value of brands, the economics of prostitution, company reputations, the strength of the glass ceiling, and so on.

Against Intellectual Monopoly

Two professors from the Econ dept here have a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, in which they challenged the conventional wisdom that patents and copy rights are crucial in providing necessary incentives to the inventors. Instead, they argue that copyrights and patents are used by the politically powerful to maintain monopoly profits and that the incentive effects that have been used to justify copyright and patents are exaggerated -- there were few examples from history suggesting that the temporary and not-so-temporary monopoly power from copyright and patents were necessary to induce innovation.

Here is a podcast from Econtalk.

Empathy...

Capitalism vs Socialism

According to Rasmussen Reports:

53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.

Source: Mankiw.

Wolfram Alpha

Having computational difficulties? Try WolframAlpha.

Here is a sneak preview from Youtube.

Saez: A U-Turn

Emmanuel Saez, 36, a public economics expert teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, was awarded the 2009 John Bates Clark Medal last week. Nobody has done more to describe the broad changes in income distribution in the United States that have taken place during the last ninety years.

"[Saez's] work attacks policy questions from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, on the one hand refining the theory in ways that link the characteristics of optimal policy to measurable aspects of the economy and of behavior, while on the other hand undertaking careful and creative empirical studies designed to fill the gaps in measurement identified by the theory. Through a collection of interrelated papers, he has brought the theory of taxation closer to practical policy making, and has helped to lead a resurgence of academic interest in taxation."

Also see here.