How Real are the Defects in Toyota’s Cars? The Atlantic‘s Megan McArdle parses the data. It appears to me that this whole episode may have created a once in a lifetime “buying opportunity” for people who may currently be in the market for a new, high quality car; i.e., a Toyota or a Lexus!
Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading today (organized by topic):
Economics and Happiness
Are economics students happier? One estimation from Germany, by Tyler Cowen
Health Care Reform
Single Payer, Many Faults, by Joseph Rago
“Roger M. Battistella argues in “Health Care Turning Point” that the last thing the health-care system needs is more government involvement. [...]
From Tyler Cowen at Marginalrevolution.com:
“Gary Gorton has a new and excellent paper… called “Questions and Answers About the Financial Crisis.”…Gorton’s short paper is one of the best essays on the crisis so far.
For what it’s worth, I heartily agree with Tyler Cowen’s assessment of Gorton’s financial crisis FAQ…
Postal Service expected to announce ’significant changes’ – washingtonpost.com “The U.S. Postal Service will release projections Tuesday that confirm for the first time the suspicion that mail volume will never return to pre-recession levels. In response, the agency is pushing anew for a dramatic reshaping of how Americans get and send their letters and packages.”
My brother [...]
I would like to call attention to a short video presentation by Nobel economics laureate Daniel Kahneman on the science of happiness which is well worth watching and thinking about. This video was filmed last month at the TED 2010 conference (held February 9–13 in Long Beach, CA; according to TED’s website, “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to [...]
I recommend reading the WSJ Health Blog entry entitled “WellPoint’s Argument for 39% Rate Hike: Adverse Selection”, by Jacob Goldstein. This article explains how adverse selection is causing health insurance claims costs to increase substantially in the individual health insurance market in California. The adverse selection has come primarily in the form of healthy policyholders [...]
Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading today (organized by topic): Economics and Public Policy
The Stimulus Evidence One Year On, by Robert Barro
“Over five years, my research shows an extra $600 billion of public spending at the cost of $900 billion in private expenditure. That’s a bad deal.”
How Not to Stop Healthcare [...]
I am reading a fascinating book at the moment, entitled “Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition” by Michael J. Mauboussin. The book is about decision-making, and it provides some very useful advice for groups as well as individuals concerning how to avoid making bad decisions that generate (mostly undesirable) unintended consequences. The following excerpt from [...]
Professors Veronesi and Zingales at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business have coauthored a new research paper entitled “Paulson’s Gift” which empirically calculates the costs and benefits of the US government’s October 2008 bailout of the financial sector of the US economy. Here’s the abstract from their paper:
“We calculate the costs and benefits [...]
Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading today (organized by topic): Economics and Public Policy
How to Destroy American Jobs, by Matthew Slaughter
“Obama’s proposals for increasing the tax burden on U.S.-based multinationals would harm our most dynamic companies.”
From bail-out to bail-in, by Paul Calello and Wilson Ervin
“…Paul Calello, the head of Credit Suisse’s [...]