The latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives had a very interesting symposium on the costs and benefits of the various bailouts implemented during the Great Recession.
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“The Top Ten Reasons Why Trade Agreements Should Not Cover Currency Manipulation”
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard University, and former Member of the Council of Economic Advisers, 1997-99. This post is an extended version of an earlier column at Project Syndicate.
“Goodbye, Madison”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, on what he sees as the destruction of a great research university.
The crown jewel of the Wisconsin university system is the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It is one of the top research universities in the country and the world. With this move [ to strip tenure from professors], you will basically kiss that jewel goodbye. To me this is the more salient reality than whether you think academic tenure is a good thing or not in itself.
If this happens, over time, the professors who can will leave. And as the top flight scholars and researchers depart, so will the reputation of the institution. So will graduate students who want to study with them, the best undergrads, money that flows to prestigious scholarship. Don’t get me wrong. Not in a day or a year or even several years. But it will. If you don’t get this, you don’t understand the economy and incentive structure of university life.
In other news, Author of proposal to abolish Legislative Audit Bureau says it’s not a response to scathing WEDC audits. The Legislative Audit Bureau is the Wisconsin equivalent of the Federal government’s Government Accountability Office (GAO).
NOAA: “No Slowdown in Global Warming”
From NOAA:
“Adding in the last two years of global surface temperature data and other improvements in the quality of the observed record provide evidence that contradict the notion of a hiatus in recent global warming trends,” said Thomas R. Karl, L.H.D., Director, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “Our new analysis suggests that the apparent hiatus may have been largely the result of limitations in past datasets, and that the rate of warming over the first 15 years of this century has, in fact, been as fast or faster than that seen over the last half of the 20th century.”
Norms for Employment Growth in Recoveries
Re-visiting Mitt Romney’s “We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month.” [1]
Wisconsin Economic Metrics: Entrepreneurship
From the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) website:
We’ve [WEDC] put a greater focus on supporting high-growth entrepreneurs in Wisconsin. The Seed Accelerator program is supporting veterans, inner city Milwaukee and water technology businesses; and helping entrepreneurs get their ideas off the ground. …
Ten years of Econbrowser
Last week marked the tenth anniversary of Econbrowser. That gives me an occasion to talk a little about why I started the blog and what we’ve accomplished with it.
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One Department to Rule Them All
Not my idea! With apologies to JRR Tolkein.
One the Regents candidates nominated by Governor Walker (from Wisconsin Public Radio):
Gov. Scott Walker’s latest appointment to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents told a state Senate panel on Thursday that the UW should consider eliminating duplicative degree programs on some campuses.
Assessing the Rational Agent Response to Elimination of Tenure in Wisconsin State Statute
Thinking about “Exit, Voice and Loyalty” in Wisconsin
The Joint Finance Committee motion to remove tenure from state statute. Winners of the most competitive research awards the University of Wisconsin–Madison provides to its scholars have made a statement, found here.
A Parsimonious Error Correction Model of Kansas Economic Activity
Or “Kansas macro crash…and burn”
Patrick Marvin argues that Kansas is doing fine, and the tax cuts just need a bit more time to kick in to spur the economy. My reading of the data and estimates suggest otherwise.
Figure 1: Coincident index for Kansas, March release (dark blue), April release (bold teal). Dark blue triangle (solid teal box) denote corresponding forecasts from March and April releases of leading indices. Source: Philadelphia Fed (coincident), Philadelphia Fed (leading), and author’s calculations.