Why is it harder to predict the climate in 2050 than 2020? Tim Harford investigates reports saying the world will cool over the next two decades before global warming resumes. The More or Less team examine a claim that beautiful people have more daughters. And they use maths to decode a Beatles musical mystery.
Tags / economics:economist
Tagged with “economics:economist”
(29)
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More or Less: Behind the Stats — Blowing cold, then hot
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Against Intellectual Property
http://www.sfu.ca/cstudies/mpprog/sfubmo_levine.htm
Copyrights and patents have come to be called “intellectual property,” a phrase which suggests that they are much akin to ordinary property. They are not: they are a government grant of monopoly power. The argument in favour of intellectual property must then be that these monopolies provide important offsetting incentives for innovation and creation.
However, all the available evidence suggests that patents and copyrights are a failure, and inhibit innovation and creativity at least as much they encourage it.
In this lively and entertaining lecture, Dr. David Levine documents the history of intellectual property, arguing that the best strategy for stimulating creativity in 21st century society is to eliminate copyrights and patents entirely.
SFU/BMO Bank of Montreal Lecture Series
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Russ Roberts on MPR Midmorning, 18 June 09
Obama proposes remaking rules governing finance
The way the financial industry is regulated will change dramatically if a proposal by the Obama administration passes Congress. The goal of the package is to make banks and other financial industries more transparent. Opponents don’t like giving the Federal Reserve more regulatory power. Guests
Phil Mattingly: Economics reporter, Congressional Quarterly.
Russell Roberts: Professor of economics at George Mason University. He has a weekly podcast, EconTalk.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/06/18/midmorning1/
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How Human Psychology Drives the Economy – Robert Shiller
Acclaimed economist Robert Shiller challenges the economic wisdom that got us into the current financial mess, and puts forward a bold new vision to transform economics and restore prosperity. The global financial crisis has made it clear that powerful psychological forces are imperilling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, ‘animal spirits’ are driving financial events worldwide.
Shiller reasserts the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of ‘animal spirits’, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Managing these animal spirits argues Shiller, requires the steady hand of government - simply allowing markets to work won’t do it.
In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviourally informed Keynesianism, Shiller looks at the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in today’s economic life - confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, and a concern for fairness - showing how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them.
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Our Urban Future: the death of distance and the rise of cities
Improvements in transportation and communication technologies have led some to predict the death of distance, and with that, the death of the city. In this lecture Professor Ed Glaeser will argue that these improvements have actually been good for idea-producing cities at the same time as they have been devastating for goods-producing places. What, then, does the future hold for our cities?
Speaker: Professor Edward Glaeser, Professor of Economics at Harvard, and Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston; Chair: Howard Davies
(Nov 13, 2008 at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE))
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Munger on the Nature of the Firm
From http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/01/munger_on_the_n.html
Mike Munger, of Duke University, talks about why firms exist. If prices and markets work so well (and they do) in steering economic resources, then why does so much economic activity take place within organizations that use command-and-control, top-down, centralized structures called firms? Within a firm, most of the goods and services that the workers use are given away rather than allocated by prices—computer services, legal services and almost everything else is not handed out by competition but by fiat, decided by a boss. A firm, the lynchpin of capitalism, is run like something akin to a centrally planned economy. Munger’s answer, drawing on work of Ronald Coase, is a fascinating look at the often unseen costs of making various types of economic decisions. The result is a set of fascinating insights into why firms exist and why they do what they do.
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Boldrin on intellectual property | EconTalk
From http://econtalk.org/
Economist Michele Boldrin argues that copyright and patent are used by the politically powerful to create monopoly and that there are surprisingly few examples in history that demonstrate this monopoly was what drove innovation.
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The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity | book forum
CATO Institute book forum, 1 Dec 08
Author: Russell Roberts, Professor of Economics, George Mason University Comments by Nick Gillespie, Editor, Reason.tv and Reason.com
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Richard Thaler on Libertarian Paternalism
From http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/11/richard_thaler_1.html
Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business defends the idea of libertarian paternalism—how government might use the insights of behavioral economics to help citizens make better choices. Host Russ Roberts accepts the premise that individuals make imperfect choices but challenges Thaler on the likelihood that government, in practice, will improve matters. Along the way they discuss the design of Sweden’s social security system, organ donations and whether professors at Cornell University are more or less like you and me.
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Nassim Taleb and Daniel Kahneman: Reflection on a Crisis
From http://odeo.com/episodes/24211619-Daniel-Kahneman-How-Greenspan-s-Framework-Went-Awry
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman examines Alan Greenspan’s financial framework in light of the current economic crisis. ——- Author Nassim Taleb and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman discuss the intricacies of the financial crisis and its far-reaching influence. Looking forward, they offer proposals to remedy the situation and prevent it from ever recurring. - DLD 2009 Daniel Kahneman is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University. He was educated at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and obtained his PhD in Berkeley. He taught at The Hebrew University, at the University of British Columbia and at Berkeley, and joined the Princeton faculty in 1994, retiring in 2007. He is best known for his contributions, with his late colleague Amos Tversky, to the psychology of judgment and decision making, which inspired the development of behavioral economics in general, and of behavioral finance in particular. This work earned Kahneman the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 and many other honors, including the 2006 Thomas Schelling Award given by the Kennedy School at Harvard "to an individual whose remarkable intellectual work has had a transformative impact on public policy", and the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association in 2007.
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