Inequality and Growth. Joshua Gans has a new paper out with Dan Andrews and Christopher Jencks, on the relationship between inequality and growth. We reach a finding that is pretty standard in this literature – when we restrict the sample to 1960-2000, more inequality seems to be good for growth. However, if the inequality arises from a transfer from the bottom…
Tag Archives Economy
Andrew Leigh says: Jeff Borland has a splendid article (gated, sorry) in the latest Australian Economic Review on what happens to the labour market in recessions. 4 Key points: The impact across industries differs greatly. In past recessions, employment tends to fall in agriculture, manufacturing and construction, but also tends to rise in ‘recreation and personal services’, and sometimes also in…
Facts versus faith. Joshua Gans - I was asked to write an opinion piece about Kevin Rudd’s essay in The Monthly on the GFC which, by the way, should stand for Great Fracking Complacency. It is in today’s Age and my opinion and disappointment speaks for itself. (Others seem more willing to carry ideological baggage than I am). Forget ideology…
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street. A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that a math wizard like David X. Li might someday earn a Nobel Prize. After all, financial economists—even Wall Street quants—have received the Nobel in economics before, and Li's work on measuring risk has had more impact, more quickly, than previous Nobel Prize-winning contributions…
Crisis wipes $115b from Govt revenue. The global financial crisis has slashed a massive $115 billion from Government revenues over the next four years, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has revealed. [ABC News: Breaking Stories]
Detroit Goes for Electric Cars, but Will Drivers?. Ford and other carmakers are betting billions on electric cars despite questions about consumer demand for them. [NYT > Business]
Dollar falls on job ads slump. THE dollar was weaker at noon as worries about a rising jobless rate figure this week sparked a sell-off in the currency. [Herald Sun | Breaking News]
The failure of unregulated markets. [HT: Simon Johnson] MIT’s Daron Acemoglu has written one of the best essays on the financial crisis and what it means for economics that I have read. He argues, convincingly, that forgetting about what drives economic growth when formulating policy is a big mistake. Importantly, it has been all too easy to forget about how…
OECD figures show 'flash flood' stimulus not working. The Federal Opposition says the latest report on the world economy by the OECD shows that the United States is the only country to have spent more than Australia on economic stimulus packages. [ABC News: Breaking Stories]