US Fact of the Day

How Are We Doing?

Moyers - 'Democracy is a story of narrow escapes'

Moyers on Democracy
by Bill Moyers

Related;
Broadcasting Legend Bill Moyers on the 2008 Elections, the Rev. Wright Controversy, the Media, Vietnam and More

The only Kick-Boxing Head of an Economics Department

Danny Quah

Clinton Fact of the Day

The former president has earned $51,855,599 from speeches since leaving the White House. In 2007 alone, former President Clinton earned more than $10 million in speaking fees. The income from his two books, “My Life” and “Giving,” totals $29.6 million. Senator Clinton earned $10.5 million in book income over the period from her book “Living History.”

The Clintons paid $33,783,507 in federal taxes during this period and made $10,256,741 in charitable contributions, according to a summary of the seven years provided by the campaign.

See also TaxProf coverage.

Everybody likes being number one- even Economists

An interesting comment by Bhagwati on university politics (it is 10 minutes into the end of the podcast, talking about Japan bashing);

Everybody likes being number one, .. is almost an obsession…in the way our culture is… When we were trying to hire Robert Barro from Harvard to Columbia...We happen to have the largest apartment on campus, we actually gave 4 rooms away when our daughter went to Yale, because we don’t derive our utility from how large over apartment is, or how big our office,…may be we’re just crazy people, I guess

We were told, even with seven rooms left over in our apartment...,not to invite Robert Barro to our apartment, because he would want one more room than we had.

Related;
Fighting Raids;

The University of California at Berkeley announced last week that it has raised a $1.1 billion fund to fight raids on its faculty by wealthier private universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. The money will endow chairs for 100 professors and facilitate raises for Berkeley professors who now often earn as much as 30 percent less than their counterparts at private universities.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said Berkeley would revamp the management of its $2.9 billion endowment, too, in hopes of matching the 25+ percent returns achieved in recent years by the most successfully-managed private university portfolios.

It is a hopeful sign for the nation’s highest-ranked public university. Perhaps it will be enough to counter over the next few years the threat reported here last week to one of the nation’s most creative economics departments.

Mineshaft Canary

DeLong Morning Coffee-Free vs. Fair Trade

The question of "free" versus "fair" trade, has three baskets: an environmental regulation basket, a labor-standards and freedom basket, and a "wages basket."...

There is a good chance that China is now on the same path to world preeminence that America walked 130 years ago. Come 2047 and again in 2071 and in the years after 2075, America is going to need China. There is nothing more dangerous for America's future national security, nothing more destructive to America's future prosperity, than for Chinese schoolchildren to be taught in 2047 and 2071 and in the years after 2075 that America tried to keep the Chinese as poor as possible for as long as possible.

Is Philadelphia worse than Iraq?

Econ Talks

"Health Care: Capturing the Opportunity in the Nation's Core Fiscal Challenge"
Peter Orszag, Director, U.S. Congressional Budget Office

"Diminishing Returns: Income Inequality in the United States"
Panelists: Alan Krueger, the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy and Director of the Survey Research Center at the Woodrow Wilson School; Douglas Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the School; and Viviana Zelizer, the Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton.

Viviana Zelizer on Money and Intimacy

From Sub-Prime to Prime-Time -- A Debate On the Current Financial Crisis
Guillermo Calvo, Professor of Economics, International and Public Affairs, Columbia University; former Chief Economist, Inter-American Development Bank.
- Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia University.
- Richard Clarida, C. Lowell Harriss Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Columbia University; former Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, US Treasury, 2001-2003.
- Vincent Reinhart, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC; former Director of the Division of Monetary Affairs, and Secretary and Economist of the Federal Open Market Committee.

The Three Trillion Dollar War

Discrimination in the Prostitution Industry

Interesting comment someone had posted on the Blogging Head's The Spitzer Edition;

Around 38 minutes, they ask about skill levels and different "tournaments" for prostitutes. My sense from observing and fighting prostitution while working in the hotel industry is that they are in different tournaments. The high end prostitutes are professional. Lots of low end prostitutes are there because they lack even the most basic level of human capital. They don't even have the work ethic, reliability, personal skills, etc. to really have a professional job. (I've seen prostitutes resumes). This bears on the feasibility of legalization of prostitution, because I seriously doubt that some of these women for whom black market prostitution is the best option would be able to participate well in white market prostitution.

See also the following comment;

Please follow the Justice Dept. narrative to the bitter end. It is implausible that such relatively minor transactions would trigger an investigation of this magnitude. I have trouble buying the "we got very lucky" cover story from the Bush Justice Dept.

The IRS apparently receives millions of "suspicious transaction" reports from banks and investigates only a very small fraction of such reports. This is especially true in the post-Patriot Act era when banks are under pressure to err on the side of excessive reporting.

Is this selective and political prosecution? Let's find out. That's more important than psychoanalyzing Spitzer.

Related;
This Defense Won’t Rest;

Similarly, leaking to the press the details of an investigation has also become commonplace in prosecutions in recent years. An article in this newspaper on Wednesday included information from federal officials who insisted on anonymity because “it can be a crime to disclose the contents of a suspicious activity report.” That federal officials would reveal such information is simply inexcusable. Unfortunately, the Justice Department has been loath to investigate such leaks, and Mr. Spitzer’s supporters are right to criticize them.

Less persuasive, however, is the conspiracy theory that the Justice Department went after Mr. Spitzer to get rid of a high-profile Democrat. It is entirely plausible that, as reported, Mr. Spitzer’s banks reported some suspicious transactions in his accounts to the Treasury Department’s financial crimes network. That is a bank’s obligation under federal law. And the Treasury Department, F.B.I., Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department all seem to have followed proper procedure. Any conspiracy theory seems far-fetched at best.

As enticing as an attack strategy will seem to Mr. Spitzer and his supporters, and however unfair the disclosures to the press have been, no offensive strategy will work in these circumstances. The governor’s alleged conduct was too brazen. In paying to have sex, and to transport a prostitute to Washington to engage in sex, and in moving money to facilitate this illegal conduct in amounts that seemed structured to avoid reporting requirements, Mr. Spitzer apparently engaged in conduct that could support several lines of prosecution.

One involves the Mann Act of 1910, which prohibits transporting people across state lines to engage in prostitution, although I agree with those who feel that Mann-related charges would be inappropriate, as such cases are typically brought against brothel owners, not customers.

But other approaches — illegal structuring of financial transactions, and basic laws against engaging in sex for money — are legitimate prosecutorial avenues. Seen in this light, any complaints about unfairness in the process ring hollow.

A second, more viable, approach for Mr. Spitzer is to play defense and negotiate with federal law enforcement. Speculation is widespread that his resignation might have been in exchange for the government giving up prosecution or for a guilty plea to a minor charge. I have little doubt that such discussions have occurred, but I believe the United States attorney’s statement that no agreement has been reached.

Legalization of prostitution

More on Prostitution and the Law

Development Explainers

How the Millennium Development Goals Are Unfair to Africa


Globalization and Inequality

Train Market of Thailand

via Don Boudreaux

Obama and Trade

Mr. Obama opened his campaign for next week’s Wisconsin primary inside a General Motors plant in Janesville, one day after General Motors Corp. posted a $38 billion loss, the largest ever for a U.S. auto company. He criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed during the Clinton administration, and offered a series of plans to inject more jobs into the economy.

“You know, in the years after her husband signed N.A.F.T.A, Senator Clinton would go around talking about how great it was and how many benefits it would bring,” Mr. Obama said. “Now that she’s running for president, she says we need a time-out on trade. No one knows when this time-out will end. Maybe after the election.”

-McCain and Obama Turn Fire on Each Other

Carnival of Podcasts- Mostly Econ Talks

Harvard's Hausmann Says Stimulus Can Hurt More Than Help

The Benefits of Neuroeconomics
Kevin McCabe, The George Mason University
Jason Zweig, senior writer, Money Magazine
Brooks Robinson, Technology Roundtable Chair, moderator

Easterly on Growth, Poverty, and Aid

The Golden Road (to Unlimited Deflation)?, featuring Lawrence H. White

Diminishing Returns: Income Inequality in the United States
Alan Krueger, Douglas Massey, Viviana Zelizer. Moderator: Stan Katz

Viviana Zelizer on Money and Intimacy

Defense Policy and the Precautionary Principle, featuring Benjamin H. Friedman,

Bush's Budget: Fanciful Accounting, featuring Chris Edwards

Climate Change Versus Other Risks, featuring Indur M. Goklany

Ken Prewitt about the so-called TED spread, which is the difference between what banks and the U.S. government pay for three-month loans, as well as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and the outlook for the U.S. economy


Alex Brill, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former adviser to the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, spoke yesterday with Bloomberg's Tom Keene from Washington about the U.S. Congress's $152 billion economic stimulus package and its impact on the U.S. economy

What Makes a Terrorist?
Sir David Omand GCB, Alan B. Krueger, Simon Israel

Making a difference: The role of the Treasury in 21st Century Britain
Matthew Taylor, Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, Peter Riddell

Who Runs Britain?
Robert Peston lifts the lid on Britain’s new ruling class and how they affect us.

Steven Pinker

Muhammad Yunus

Thinking Like a Social Scientist: a lecture by Professor Stuart Corbridge

The Logic of Life

Measuring American Power in Today's Fractured World
Speaker: Professor Paul Kennedy

An Open Economy – the Progressive Response to Global Change
Speaker: John Hutton MP

Iraq: The Way Out
Speaker: Jonathan Steele


Somalia: legal and humanitarian challenges
Speaker: Guillermo Bettocchi

New Industrial Centres and the Rise of the Justice and Development Party to Power in Turkey
Speaker(s): Professor Sevket Pamuk

Thinking Like a Social Scientist: a lecture by Professor Danny Quah

Cyprus Enters the 'Euro-zone': challenges and implications
Speaker(s): Professor Christopher Pissarides; Michalis Sarris

Thinking Like a Social Scientist: a lecture by Professor Ron Anderson

Transit Talk
Megan McArdle talks transportation with her father and special guest podcaster Ryan Avent of The Economist's Free Exchange blog

McCainomics
Doug Holtz-Eakin, John McCain's economics advisor, talks taxes, trade, and the coming fiscal crisis

Barack Obama and the Economic Future of America
Obama's economic advisor, Professor Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago, discusses the health care debate, the credit debacle, the Federal Reserve's limitations, and other major issues that will face the next American president.

GlobalBiz: China 1
This week, in the first of a series of programmes from China, Peter Day visits one of the poorest regions of rural China - Ningxia - where he speaks to those being left behind in China’s economic boom and finds out what, if anything, is being done to change their fate.

BBC Start of the Week with Sudhir Venkatesh
Andrew Marr is joined by Sudhir Venkatesh who talks about his book 'Gang Leader for a Day'; Peter Berry discusses his series 'The Last Enemy'; Lisa Appignanesi talks about her book 'Mad, Bad and Sad'; and Mark Leonard discusses his book 'What Does China Think?'.

Rupert's Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife

The Rise of the Creative Class

Prehistory
Homo sapiens emerged in Africa more than 100,000 years ago and started to disperse to other continents in a big way 60,000 years ago.But why did it then take another 50,000 years before we developed villages and agriculture. Why the big wait?

Moral consequences of economic growth

Weird history
Did the Chinese visit England and America in the 15th century? Did the Mongols really invade Russia? Were there secret visitors to Australia? These are all examples of what Greg Melluish calls weird history, which is a type of history that sounds more like science fiction than a reliable account of the past.

The Emergence of Science, Part 1
In the twenty-first century, science doesn't just explain the world: it dominates the world. Religion, art, human relationships, history - we expect them all to be explained in scientific terms. How did science acquire this dominance over our way of thinking? Today, in the first episode of a two-part special, we examine the rise of science in the western mind.

The Emergence of Science, Part 2
Why did the great scientific revolution occur in the West and not in China or the Arab-Islamic world? This week, in the second part of an interview with Stephen Gaukroger from the University of Sydney, we find out why it happened, where it happened and how science became the bearer of general standards of rationality.

Proust was a neuroscientist

Abraham Lincoln revisited
26 years ago medical historian Dr Jim Leavesley gave his first talk in this time slot and today he revisits the same subject which dealt with the ailments of President Abraham Lincoln. Over the years opinions have changed. It was believed that the President suffered from Marfan's Disease, but did he?

Shara Bailey, who calls herself a dental palaeoanthropologist

Surviving cancer
Because cancer screening procedures and treatments are continuously improving many more people are surviving the disease. However, dealing with the shock of a cancer diagnosis is the first of many challenging and difficult hurdles one faces. We hear some personal experiences in the journey to cancer survival and the latest research on how to meet people's social and emotional needs to ensure a better quality of life during and after treatment.

The knee files - part one
This is the first of two special reports by Associate Professor Alex Barratt on knees and the most common form of arthritis, osteoarthritis. In part one she sorts out the myths from the evidence about what causes knee arthritis and which of the common treatments really work. There's also information about the effects of lifestyle factors and the latest drug treatments.

The knee files - part two

Ants
The Argentine ant and the red imported fire ant are boht competitive species which coexist. They compete intensively. David Holway says they hate each other. Argentine ants will try to prevent fire ants from leaving their nests. In California, control of fire ants has been successful. But they are still present and may increase in number. Present studies are looking at interactions between ants and other species, such as aphids, scales and mealybugs which produce honeydew.

How nerves grow in the body
Yvonne Jones tracks how nerves grow in the body. Through a complex series of communications, the nerves follow a trail of proteins and special glue molucules. The process is observed using X-rays from a synchrotron named Diamond.

The psychological power of forgiveness in South Africa

Robert M. Kimmitt on Sovereign Wealth Funds and the World Economy

The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation

Fundamentals of Chinese medicine

Sharia and UK Law
Professor Shaheen Ali talks about Dr Rowan Williams' recent comments regarding Sharia and English law

Writing numbers -- Rachel Robertson and Toni Jordan
What is it like to write about numbers? To tell a story through characters who count? To make numbers almost another character of the work?
Two writers who have written about people with numbers obsessions are Rachel Robertson and Toni Jordan. But neither Toni nor Rachel are obsessive themselves.

Marketing Lady Chatterley: origins of spin in publishing with Jonathan Rose

The Year of Festivals: Chinese New Year

Mother Maya
Sri Swamini Mayatitananda is one of the few female gurus in the Indian Veda Vyasa lineage. Known as Mother Maya, she survived ovarian cancer in her teenage years and is now a healer, educator and head of Wise Earth School of Ayurveda in North Carolina. And placing the ancient Hindu healing practice of Ayurveda in an Australian context is Raman Das Mahatyagi, a registered Vaidya or Ayurvedic physician.

The Contemplative Life
Encounter visits the monks of the Benedictine Catholic and Theravadin Buddhist orders and discovers that monastic lives are deeply linked to the temporal and spiritual life of the lay community.

Assorted on Trade, Outsourcing and Globalization

Multimedia Links;

Leamer on Outsourcing and Globalization

Don Boudreaux on Globalization and Trade Deficits

Paul Samuelson: Rethinking Free Trade

Globalisation and Welfare- Paul Krugman

The Human Cost of Trade and Economic Liberalization
Jagdish Bhagwati, Robert Solow and Paul Krugman

Others;
Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization
Why the Recent Samuelson Article is NOT about Offshore Outsourcing
The Muddles over Outsourcing

Obama's Economics

David Leonhardt on Obama's economic plan;

In an hourlong interview outlining his economic views, Mr. Obama praised the Clinton administration for reducing the deficit and setting the stage for the ’90s boom. But he said Mr. Clinton had failed to halt a long-term increase in income inequality that had left the middle class feeling squeezed.

If elected, Mr. Obama said he would to try to forge a popular mandate for policy changes that could reverse a generation of slow wage growth and outlast any one administration. At the top of his list would be shifting the tax burden more toward the wealthy and making investments — in health care, alternative-energy research and education — that would cost a significant amount of money but could ultimately lift economic growth.

“The project of the next president is figuring out how do you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth that George Bush has been so enamored with,” Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, said.

Regional Income Disparity in China

The Trend of Regional Income Disparity in the People’s Republic of China

Based on recent updated statistical data that has become available since the PRC implemented its first national economic census in 2004, this paper studies the trend of regional disparity both among and within the provinces of the PRC from 1978 to 2005. The authors find that compared with the 1990s, the expansive trend of inter-provincial disparities has slowed down and started to decrease somewhat since 2000. Disparities within many provinces have even exceeded inter-provincial disparities.

The authors find that changes in regional disparities in recent years can be attributed to many factors, including policies and regional specific factors as well as some cyclical factors. They conclude that it is not yet possible to say that the PRC's regional disparities have started a decline that will continue.

Does Davos make you sick?

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Banding Together to Raise AIDS Awareness

A rock star, a software tycoon and a computer hardware impresario walk into a Swiss village...

Google’s Davos Party Set Dance for the Love of Money

Austan Goolsbee on the New Supply Siders

The work of the new supply-siders shies away from the old claims that low taxes will generate an explosion of entrepreneurship or extra hours on the job. Instead, it just looks at the data. When top marginal rates fell, as they did under President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and 1986 or under President Bush in 2001 and 2003, taxpayers whose rates declined the most reported the biggest increases in income in the following years. The supply-side advocates attribute those gains to tax cuts and argue that the Laffer curve — which suggests that some tax cuts can pay for themselves — may live yet.

Some of the most important research was done by Lawrence B. Lindsey, former head of the National Economic Council under President Bush and now the senior economic adviser to the Republican presidential contender Fred D. Thompson. But the origins of the current debate, and the seriousness with which it is taken in academic circles, largely center on the work of the Harvard economist Martin Feldstein.

Professor Feldstein, head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, is perhaps the godfather of modern public-sector economics and is often cited as a potential Nobel laureate. The former chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, he has always been known for his conservative views. He has brought more comprehensive data to bear and has made the most influential case; if you accept the evidence he offers, progressivity in the tax code appears very damaging. Raising taxes on high-income people seems to make the economy much less efficient and raises little revenue.

As he put it in a 2006 interview published in a magazine of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, when you raise top marginal rates, “it shows up as lower taxable income.” He added: “A reduction in taxable income, whether it occurs because I work less or because I take my compensation in this other form, creates the same kind of inefficiency.”

But for all the renewed interest in supply-side ideas, the politicians espousing these views have missed three important points that have come out of the continuing academic debate...

Second, other research has shown that the new supply-side movement missed a fundamental shift over the last 30 years — the dramatic, disproportionate rise in the compensation of high-income people. The new supply-siders have confused this shift with the impact of tax cuts.

An example illustrates the point: Emmanuel Saez, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, has compiled data on the incomes of the very rich from 1913 to 2006. Using his data, my calculations show that in the four years after top marginal rates were cut in 1981 and 1986, and in the three years after the rate cut of 2003, average real salaries (subtracting inflation) for the top 1 percent of earners grew 18.8 percent, 22.5 percent and 17.4 percent. But for the bottom 90 percent of earners over those periods, the average salary changes were 2.6 percent, minus 0.3 percent and minus 0.1 percent. A supply-sider might see this as evidence of the growth power of cutting top rates.

But the data also show that incomes at the top have been growing rapidly regardless of what happened to tax rates. In the four years after the increase in top marginal rates in 1993, average salaries grew 18.7 percent among the top 1 percent of earners and less than 0.1 percent for the bottom 90 percent.

Seeing the same pattern when taxes rose as when they fell indicates that tax cuts weren’t responsible. It suggests that cuts for high-income taxpayers likely gave windfalls to those whose incomes were already rising sharply because of broader market forces.

-Is the New Supply Side Better Than the Old?

Today's Econ Debate- Stolper-Samuelson is Dead?

Paul Krugman wrote Trouble With Trade, and clarified it here

Responses;
Tyler Cowen-What if Paul Krugman were right about trade and wages?
Rodrik- Sensible words from Paul Krugman
Mankiw writes
Australian Harry Clarke- Freeing up international trade with poor countries & wage inequality
SCSU Scholars- Trade: It's an empirical question

At Cafe Hayek- Perspective on Trade, The Wages of Misunderstanding, Krugman vs. Krugman, Again

The Economist- Paul Krugman is not a protectionist
The Economics and Politics of Trade

Stolper-Samuelson is Dead
Stop bashing Krugman on trade and inequality

The Conscience of a Liberal at Google