Sunday, January 28, 2018
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Various articles of interest from an old blog post
Plenty of good material from the most recent issue of the eminently readable Journal of Economic Perspectives.
"The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer" by Greg Mankiw is a good survey.
Also a must-read is a pretty tough critique of residential recycling by Thomas C. Kinnaman.
And a very scholarly look at "What Has Mattered to Economics Since 1970" in which the authors E. Han Kim, Adair Morse and Luigi Zingales compile a very impressive list of the most cited journal articles in the field.
Meanwhile over at Cato, I had the opportunity to spend a train ride home reading Sallie James's new policy brief, "Milking the Customers: The High Cost of U.S. Dairy Policies." The paper confirms what every free trader knows U.S price supports and other farm subsidies are a crime against the poor.
The new Cato Journal has two great articles (scroll halfway down). William Niskanen casts doubt on Milton Friedman's "starve the beast approach" to limiting Leviathan (government)while Jerry H. Tempelman is less pessimistic.
Niskanen also has a review of James Buchanan's new book, Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative: The Normative Vision of Classical Liberalism.
And who knew? Naples as a fashion capital! Michael Ledeen reports.
"The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer" by Greg Mankiw is a good survey.
Also a must-read is a pretty tough critique of residential recycling by Thomas C. Kinnaman.
And a very scholarly look at "What Has Mattered to Economics Since 1970" in which the authors E. Han Kim, Adair Morse and Luigi Zingales compile a very impressive list of the most cited journal articles in the field.
Meanwhile over at Cato, I had the opportunity to spend a train ride home reading Sallie James's new policy brief, "Milking the Customers: The High Cost of U.S. Dairy Policies." The paper confirms what every free trader knows U.S price supports and other farm subsidies are a crime against the poor.
The new Cato Journal has two great articles (scroll halfway down). William Niskanen casts doubt on Milton Friedman's "starve the beast approach" to limiting Leviathan (government)while Jerry H. Tempelman is less pessimistic.
Niskanen also has a review of James Buchanan's new book, Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative: The Normative Vision of Classical Liberalism.
And who knew? Naples as a fashion capital! Michael Ledeen reports.
Mirrless Review by Martin Felstein
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.50.3.781
Mirrless Review by Mart
Mirrless Review by Mart
Most research is false
http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/courses/bio622/misc/Ioannidis.false%20findings%20PLoS.2005.pdf
Tax Expenditures, the Size and Efficiency of Government, and Implications for Budget Reform
Tax Expenditures, the Size and Efficiency of Government, and Implications for Budget Reform
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c12563.pdf
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c12563.pdf
Caplan: Why I am not an Austrian economist
I consider this piece by Bryan Caplan a classic.
"I do not deny that Austrian economists have made valuable contributions to economics. Rather, as the sequel will argue, I maintain that:
"I do not deny that Austrian economists have made valuable contributions to economics. Rather, as the sequel will argue, I maintain that:
(a) The effort to rebuild economics along foundations substantially different from those of modern neoclassical economics fails.Read the whole thing.
(b) Austrian economists have often misunderstood modern neoclassical economics, causing them to overstate their differences with it.
(c) Several of the most important Austrian claims are false, or at least overstated.
(d) Modern neoclassical economics has made a number of important discoveries which Austrian economists for the most part have not appreciated."
More readings in economics
James M. Buchanan and Viktor J. Vanberg, "The market as a creative process."
Robert Samuelson, "June Journalism 101," September 18, 1996, The Washington Post.
Recent Electricity Market Reforms in Massachusetts; A Report of Benefits and Costs
James Bullard, The Rise and Fall of Labor Force Participation in the U.S. St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank February 14, 2016
Weisang & Awazu, Vagaries of the Euro: an Introduction to ARIMA Modeling
Paul Krugman, Ricardo's Difficult Idea
David Henderson Artful Dodger "A Review of Paul Krugman's Depression Economics" Reason Magazine October 1999.
Dani Rodrik, The Past, Present, and Future of Economic Growth
Bluestone & Bourdeaux, Dynamic Revenue Analysis: Experience of the States More on this topic
Felix & Watkins. KCFed. "The Impact of an Aging U.S. Population on State Tax Revenues"
Journ-Steff Pischke, The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design is Taking the Con out of Econometrics
Paul Pfleiderer, Chameleons: The Misuse of Theoretical Models in Finance and Economics
Charles Frank, The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Technologies, Brookings
Robert Samuelson, "June Journalism 101," September 18, 1996, The Washington Post.
Recent Electricity Market Reforms in Massachusetts; A Report of Benefits and Costs
James Bullard, The Rise and Fall of Labor Force Participation in the U.S. St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank February 14, 2016
Weisang & Awazu, Vagaries of the Euro: an Introduction to ARIMA Modeling
Paul Krugman, Ricardo's Difficult Idea
David Henderson Artful Dodger "A Review of Paul Krugman's Depression Economics" Reason Magazine October 1999.
Dani Rodrik, The Past, Present, and Future of Economic Growth
Bluestone & Bourdeaux, Dynamic Revenue Analysis: Experience of the States More on this topic
Felix & Watkins. KCFed. "The Impact of an Aging U.S. Population on State Tax Revenues"
Journ-Steff Pischke, The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design is Taking the Con out of Econometrics
Paul Pfleiderer, Chameleons: The Misuse of Theoretical Models in Finance and Economics
Charles Frank, The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Technologies, Brookings
Katie Sobczyk Player: The impact of personal income tax rates on the employment decisions of small business
Abstract
Small businesses file taxes in accordance with the personal income tax code because they are considered flow-through entities. Thus, personal income tax reforms directly affect the incentives small business owners face regarding employment and operations. I use the changes in personal income-tax rates during the 1993 and 2001-2003 reforms and micro-level data to estimate the effect of statutory tax-rate changes on small-business employment decisions. I add two contributions to the current literature: first, I allow for intertemporal tax planning and secondly, I allow the firm's decision to employ labor to be correlated with the firm's wage bill decision. Estimation of a Heckman selection model for wage bills shows that the probability that a business will employ labor is 1.18 % higher when current tax rates increase by one percentage point and 0.70 % lower when future rates are expected to increase by one percentage point. Among firms that already employ labor, the median wage bill elasticity with respect to current tax rates is-0.64. These estimates are larger than those reported in previous research because my model includes future taxes and allows for correlation between the firm’s employment and wage bill decisions. Omitting the intertemporal tax responses biases the estimates of previous researchers upwards, whereas assuming the two firm decisions are independent biases estimates towards zero
From Vertical and Horizontal Redistributions from a Carbon Tax and Rebate by Julie Anne Cronin, Don Fullerton, Steven E. Sexton
From Vertical and Horizontal Redistributions from a Carbon Tax and Rebate by Julie Anne Cronin, Don Fullerton, Steven E. Sexton
Abstract: Because electricity is a higher fraction of spending for those with low income, carbon taxes are believed to be regressive. Many argue, however, that their revenues can be used to offset the regressivity. We assess these claims by employing data on 322,000 families in the U.S. Treasury's Distribution Model to study vertical redistributions between rich and poor, as well as horizontal redistributions among families with common incomes but heterogeneous energy intensity of consumption (different home heating and cooling demands). Accounting for the statutory indexing of transfers, and measuring impacts on annual consumption as a proxy for permanent income, we find that the carbon tax burden is progressive, rising across deciles as a fraction of consumption. The rebate of revenue via transfers makes it even more progressive. In every decile, the standard deviation of the change in consumption as a fraction of consumption varies around 1% or 2% and is larger than the average burden (about 0.7%). When existing transfer programs are used to rebate revenue, the tax and rebate together increase that variation to more than 3% within each decile. The average family in the poorest decile gets a net tax cut of about 1% of consumption, but 44% of them get a net tax increase. Relative to no rebate, every type of rebate we consider increases this variation within most deciles.
Abstract: Because electricity is a higher fraction of spending for those with low income, carbon taxes are believed to be regressive. Many argue, however, that their revenues can be used to offset the regressivity. We assess these claims by employing data on 322,000 families in the U.S. Treasury's Distribution Model to study vertical redistributions between rich and poor, as well as horizontal redistributions among families with common incomes but heterogeneous energy intensity of consumption (different home heating and cooling demands). Accounting for the statutory indexing of transfers, and measuring impacts on annual consumption as a proxy for permanent income, we find that the carbon tax burden is progressive, rising across deciles as a fraction of consumption. The rebate of revenue via transfers makes it even more progressive. In every decile, the standard deviation of the change in consumption as a fraction of consumption varies around 1% or 2% and is larger than the average burden (about 0.7%). When existing transfer programs are used to rebate revenue, the tax and rebate together increase that variation to more than 3% within each decile. The average family in the poorest decile gets a net tax cut of about 1% of consumption, but 44% of them get a net tax increase. Relative to no rebate, every type of rebate we consider increases this variation within most deciles.
Link: NBER #23250
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