Governance Indicators Database

From IADB

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project- World Bank

World Economic Outlook

World Economic Outlook Analytical Chapters Out;

Chapter 3. Managing Large Capital Inflows
Two Waves of Large Capital Inflows to Emerging Markets
Identifying Episodes of Large Capital Inflows
Policy Responses to Large Capital Inflows
Linking Macroeconomic Outcomes and Policy Responses

Chapter 4. Globalization and Inequality
Recent Trends in Inequality and Globalization
What Is the Impact of Globalization on Inequality?
An Empirical Investigation of Globalization and Inequality
Conclusions and Policy Implications


Chapter 5. The Changing Dynamics of the Global Business Cycle
Global Business Cycles: A Historical Perspective
Has the World Economy Become More Stable?
What Is Driving the Moderation of the Global Business Cycle?
Conclusions

Thinking with Data

A good supplementary text on econometrics; Econometrics and Data Analysis for Developing Countries

Related;
Download Data Files for the book
Journal of Applied Econometrics Data Archive
World Income Inequality Database V 2.0b May 2007

CDS: MPhil Course 102 (Instructor: Chandan Mukherjee) see their Class Notes

Review of the Book by Stata;

Chandan Mukherjee, Howard White, and Marc Wuyts provide an interesting introduction to econometrics in Econometrics and Data Analysis for Developing Countries.

The authors cover an impressive range of topics, emphasizing the importance of model specification and evaluating different methods for obtaining acceptable specifications. They also discuss several graphical methods that are frequently overlooked in treatments of econometrics and point out that graphical methods can be informative even without p-values.

This book does not discuss methods that are robust to distributional assumptions and does not make it clear that only small-sample statistics require the normality assumption of linear regression to be valid. (Asymptotically, the standard errors are consistent, and the test statistics converge to standard distributions without assuming that the disturbances are normally distributed.) If you are interested in a more formal treatment of this topic with emphasis on robust methods, you might want to supplement this book with Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach (Wooldridge 1999).

What this book does well is provide practical approaches to data analysis and model development, with an emphasis on development economics. It will be a valuable tool for those who need to analyze policy based on quantitative information.

R-Stuff
R video tutorial
vikasrawal blog

The Centre for Development Studies- top centre for development economics in Asia?

The Centre for Development Studies (CDS), India- a good quality institute in development economics.

One of their programs;
CDS M Phil Programme in Applied Economics

Blog of the Day

postsecret

Assorted Data and Stats

DataBasics - From Dallas Fed;

Annualizing Data
Growth Rates Versus Levels
Seasonally Adjusting Data
Deflating Nominal Values to Real Values
Smoothing Data with Moving Averages

Does Joe DiMaggio's Streak Deserve an Asterisk?;

Elusive Numbers on a Hidden Crime

USING AND UNDERSTANDING STATISTICAL INFORMATION- Reserve Bank of Australia

Statistics in the real world

The Clash of Easterly and Stiglitz- On the role of Foreign Aid?

Let us hear about the event from those who went to the event at Columbia.

Acemoglu Lectures

How to Create a successful Society

Podcasts - Heavy Weight Economics, etc

Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warriors Shaped Globalization

Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich

Atlas Shrugged: 50 years

Sixty Years of Indian Democracy: An Unfinished Project

Phelps, Economist, Doubts Fed Can Prevent a Recession

Kaufman, Economist, Says Inflation Will `Creep' Up

Burma: 'I resist in my Mind only'

Bhagwati, Economist, Says China Should Set Yuan Policy

Sauer, Economist, Calls Mets' Collapse a `Catastrophe'

Bruner, Professor, Discusses His Book `Panic of 1907'
Feldstein Says U.S. Dollar May Suffer `Rapid' Decline
Zentner, Economist, Says U.S. In a `Growth Recession'
Bernstein, Economist, Says U.S. Job Growth Is `Too Slow'
Tilton of Goldman Sachs Sees `Slower' Corporate Earnings

Towards the Light: The Story of the Struggles for Liberty and Rights that Made the Modern West

McCraw on Schumpeter, Innovation, and Creative Destruction

Joseph Stiglitz on Fostering an Independent Media

Atlas of Freedom

World Freedom Atlas

Pregnant Women-To eat or not to eat Fish

Should Pregnant Women Eat More Seafood?

For years, pregnant and nursing women have been warned to limit the amount of fish they eat, because many marine species may contain high levels of mercury, which endangers newborns and fetuses. Yesterday, however, a children’s health group challenged the conventional wisdom, advising pregnant women and nursing mothers to eat more fish so as to ensure optimal brain development in their babies.

What’s going on here? Currently, the Food and Drug Administration advises pregnant women to limit their weekly seafood consumption to no more than 12 ounces, or about two servings, per week. The newest recommendation comes from the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, a nonprofit group that focuses on childhood health issues. That group’s scientific advisors say that pregnant women and nursing mothers should eat at least 12 ounces of fish per week.

Guide to Social Security Reform

A Guide to Posts on Social Security Reform- Vox Baby

Ignoble Prize Inventors

Net trapping system for capturing a robber immediately

A net trapping system for capturing a robber immediately is used in a place of business such as a bank. The device looks like a storing box and is installed above the entrance of the business. When a robbery takes place and the system is activated, an infrared detecting device determines if a robber is in a zone beneath the storing box. A net, a curtain, and a plurality of barriers will drop down immediately and simultaneously. After a lifting motor is activated, the system traps the robber and suspends him above the floor.

An alarm clock that runs away and hides


Another Ignoble Winner;
Dying to Save Taxes: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns on the Death Elasticity Wojciech Kopczuk and Joel Slemrod;

This paper examines data from U.S. federal tax returns to shed light on whether the timing of death is responsive to its tax consequences. We investigate the temporal pattern of deaths around the time of changes in the estate tax system periods when living longer, or dying sooner, could significantly affect estate tax liability. We find some evidence that there is a small death elasticity, although we cannot rule out that what we have uncovered is ex post doctoring of the reported date of death. However, the fact that we find that postponement, rather than acceleration, of death is more likely to occur suggests that this phenomenon is at last partly a real (albeit timing) response to taxation.

Alex Tabarrok's Favorite Public Finance Textbook

An old post by Alex Tabarrok;

Public Finance and Public Policy, the new textbook by Jonathan Gruber, is not only the best public finance textbooks I've ever read it is one of the best textbooks I've read in any field. Gruber and Worth Publishers have clearly put a huge amount of money and effort into this book - the content is superb and so is the presentation (graphs, organization, supplementary material - e.g. check out these cool powerpoint presentations.).

Related;
Public Finance & Public Policy- Course Materials by Gruber

Free Chapters-
Chapter 5. Externalities: Problems and Solutions
Chapter 12. Social Security
Chapter 18. Taxation in the United States and Around the World

Who's Using this Textbook


Answers to Textbook Problems

MIT OpenCourseWare
Public Economics, Fall 2004
Public Economics I, Fall 2003
Public Economics II, Spring 2004

Ghost Train

Photo of the Day

Two men stand at the door of a shoe repair shop on a street in Nairobi's outskirts October 5, 2007 (Reuters)

You Tube Lecture of the Day- Atul Gawande

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

On Monetary Policy

Will Monetary Policy Become More of a Science?

Recent Financial Market Developments And Implications For Monetary Policy

The Revolution in Monetary Policymaking Institutions

Does a downward-sloping yield curve predict a recession?

Interview with Frederic Mishkin;

Stern: The European Central Bank arguably doesn't have a dual mandate. At the end of the day, do you think that's going to matter to economic performance in Europe?

Mishkin: The Congress has given us a dual mandate; that is, the Federal Reserve seeks to promote the two equal objectives of maximum employment and price stability, so that's what we have to execute. Even if the Congress hadn't given us such a mandate, the basic structure of the dual mandate is what I would feel is appropriate, and so we should be aiming to pursue such an objective anyway.

A hierarchical mandate says that first we focus on price stability and if we're successful then we'll focus on other concerns, particularly output fluctuations. If you interpret a hierarchical mandate as focusing on price stability in the long run, making sure that long-run inflation expectations are grounded—and we've seen tremendous success not just in the United States but in Europe in terms of grounding inflation expectations—then the dual mandate and the hierarchical mandate are identical.

Some people have said to me that the dual mandate versus hierarchical mandate dichotomy is a red herring. I don't agree, because I think it is an important issue in communications strategy. It's important to make it clear that you care about output fluctuations, but you're going to look at this from a long-run context and never take your eye off the inflation ball. That's the right way to do the dual mandate.

Similarly, with the hierarchical mandate, you should not be an “inflation-nutter,” as Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has expressed it. That is, you shouldn't be focused solely on inflation control. You must also worry about the fact that if you act too quickly to get inflation down to your long-run objective, you might have excessive, unnecessary fluctuations in output. So I think modern monetary theory, in writing down a hierarchical mandate or a dual mandate, will write exactly the same loss function, exactly the same kind of optimization theory for a central bank.

In some contexts it may be better to discuss monetary policy in terms of the hierarchical mandate. I think the reason it's been done in Europe is because they have had so much worse monetary policy in many countries. To make sure that people understood that they would really control inflation, they had to do it by talking about it as a hierarchical mandate. While in the United States, which has actually never had a hyperinflation and has had much more successful monetary policy, it's more appropriate to talk about it in terms of a dual mandate.

Stern: Maybe we're less prone to the time consistency problem.

Mishkin: Exactly. The time consistency problem is a central issue in thinking about how to do central banking—and also in terms of bank supervision. It's really the same issue. You want to make sure that you're doing the right thing in the long run and not pursuing short-run strategies that end up with very bad long-run outcomes. It's extremely important—in order to deal with the time consistency problem—to say that in the long run, price stability is absolutely going to happen. And that means that you can actually exercise "constrained discretion," the phrase Ben Bernanke and I coined in our earlier work. The idea is that you do need some discretion to deal with the shocks in the economy, but you want to make sure that that discretion is constrained in the sense that you don't ever get into the time consistency problem of allowing the nominal anchor to be weakened. And that's really what the whole concept of constrained discretion is.

This also relates to bank supervision. In my research on this, I felt that the distinction between rules and discretion is too stark. We know with discretion you can get into the time consistency problem. The way I think about this is, suppose it's New Year's Eve and I say I'm going to go on a diet. Then, of course, at the next meal I see a beautiful piece of cake and I can't resist: I've got to eat it. But I say to myself, It's no problem because I won't eat it tomorrow. Well, the next day comes and I can't resist again and keep on eating that cake, and I end up being obese. So we know that one of the ways to solve that problem is to set yourself a rule: Thou shalt not eat cake.

The problem is that there are always going to be unforeseen circumstances where actually you may need to use discretion. It's something you couldn't predict beforehand. If you have a rigid rule, you may find the rule no longer applies, and if you stick to it you will get very bad outcomes.

In terms of bank supervision, in my initial work on this I looked at prompt corrective action strategies. Originally, the idea was that PCA should be a hard and fast rule. No matter what, it has to be done. When you hit particular triggers, you automatically have to do X, Y and Z. What the Congress did in the FDICIA legislation of 1991, which I thought was very smart, was to say, “Look, there is a norm, and that's what should usually be done. But there could be unforeseen circumstances where we need to allow for deviation from that rule.” They did this by saying that there would be a presumption that the rule should be followed but did give the supervisory agencies some discretion to deviate from the rule.

Why then aren't we back in a time inconsistency view of the world? Because Congress constrained the discretion. How? Through transparency. FDICIA requires a mandatory review of any bank failure that imposes a cost on the FDIC. The result report on what actions the supervisory agencies took must then be made available to any member of Congress and to the general public upon request, and the Government Accountability Office must do an annual review of these reports. Opening up the actions of the supervisors to public scrutiny will make it far more likely that they will follow PCA unless they have a very good reason for doing otherwise.

So it's exactly this constrained discretion kind of idea. Constrained discretion says that for most cases you want to operate according to a rule. On the other hand, there are going to be circumstances we can't predict where you may have to deviate from the rule. But in that case we don't want to let you do whatever you want. We want to have some check-and-balance on the system. In fact, my view is that this is also what our Constitution is all about. Having an institutional framework to deal with some of these time consistency problems is something that we see in the political sphere as well.

Q&A on OECD Education

From OECD;

Q. How do you see the Spanish education system in a decade? Which are its main challenges?
Ana Martínez, Diario Expansión

A. Among European countries, Spain is among the countries with the most rapid educational progress over recent decades, as measured in levels of educational attainment. After becoming bigger, the Spanish education system now needs to become better, in quality terms, as learning outcomes in Spanish schools, as measured by PISA, are still some distance away from the best performing systems. A challenge will be to maintain the relatively high levels of equity in the system as overall performance rises.

World Bank's Comparative Advantage

Moving Out of Poverty: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

Game Theory in the Middle East- Part 2

Israel is listening to Robert Aumann- will the Arabs listen to him?


How Israel Spoofed Syria's Air Defense System
Why Syria's Air Defenses Failed to Detect Israelis;

U.S. aerospace industry and retired military officials indicated today that a technology like the U.S.-developed “Suter” airborne network attack system developed by BAE Systems and integrated into U.S. unmanned aircraft by L-3 Communications was used by the Israelis. The system has been used or at least tested operationally in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last year.

The technology allows users to invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions so that approaching aircraft can’t be seen, they say. The process involves locating enemy emitters with great precision and then directing data streams into them that can include false targets and misleading messages algorithms that allow a number of activities including control.

A Kuwaiti newspaper wrote that "Russian experts are studying why the two state-of-the art Russian-built radar systems in Syria did not detect the Israeli jets entering Syrian territory. Iran reportedly has asked the same question, since it is buying the same systems and might have paid for the Syrian acquisitions."

The system in question is thought to be the new Tor-M1 launchers which carries eight missiles as well as two of the Pachora-2A system. Iran bought 29 of the Tor launchers from Russia for $750 million to guard its nuclear sites, and they were delivered in Jan., according to Agency France-Press and ITAR-TASS. Syrian press reports they were tested in February. They also are expected to form a formidable system when used with the longer-range S-300/SA-10 which Iran has been trying to buy from Russia. Syria has operated SA-6s for years and more recently has been negotiating with Russians for the Tor-M1. What systems were actually guarding the Syrian site are not known.

Related;
The Game of Chicken or Naval Intelligence
Game Theory Explains the Middle East

Jim Ratliff's Graduate-Level Course in Game Theory
Game Theory for Managers
Introduction to Game Theory
Games and Information

My other wish for a TED Wish-Course Readings for University Educators

I wish the following approach 'Course Readings for University Educators' by New York Fed be adopted for all research produced by publicly funded think tanks, institutions, and multilateral institutions like OECD, IMF, ADB and World Bank.

A selection of research articles, classified by course title and level of mathematical complexity, that can be used as course readings

Any volunteers who could expand it to the entire field of economics.

Theorem of the Day-Tychonoff's theorem

Tychonoff's theorem

Related Blog-Mort aux Triangles!

How Dictators Make Films-Pulgasari

Writer and film historian Mark Jordan Legan tells the story of one of his all-time favorite monster flicks, Pulgasari. The film was commissioned by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, who kidnapped the director and the lead actress, and forced them to make the movie.

Free Our Data

Free Our Data: the blog
See how the information garden grows
We Feel Fine
Via TED blog

The Samaritan Paradox

The Samaritan Paradox;

The idea that selfishness can contribute to the rise and maintenance of a cooperative society is a long-standing topic of political philosophy. At the beginning of the 18th century, in an essay called "The Fable of the Bees," Dutch-born English doctor and philosopher Bernard Mandeville maintained that "private vice" rather than "virtue" was really at the root of all "publick benefit." Morality and the public welfare, he reasoned, were based purely on the egoism of the individual. Further, if each member of society pursued his own best interests consistently, the greatest possible good would result. Mandeville concluded that government would collapse if egoism ceased to motivate our actions.

In an era when ecclesiastical authority imposed religious values, philosophers vociferously rejected Mandeville's ideas. But similar notions were put forth over the subsequent three centuries. Charles Darwin's 1859 On the Origin of Species posited that any organism that is less than completely engaged in the struggle for food, sex and territory lessens its chances of passing on its characteristics to offspring. In 1874 Darwin wrote that a tribe that collaborated "would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection." Nineteenth-century economists and social scientists constructed a theory of Homo economicus, according to which Homo sapiens strive exclusively to maximize their own advantage.

In 1976 British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins reopened the public discussion dramatically with his best-seller The Selfish Gene. He argued that molecular genetic material uses its host--whether it is an amoeba, hippopotamus or human--as a "vehicle" to maximize its own propagation. "We are survival machines--robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes," Dawkins wrote.

Following those precepts, altruism becomes a form of disguised egoism. Philanthropy is less the expression of a love of humankind than of the cool calculation of the entrepreneur who seeks to ensure future profit by clever public relations. For example, according to the sociobiology theory of reciprocal altruism, people are most likely to help one another if frequent contact is expected in the future: "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine." The giver assumes that his generosity will be reciprocated at a later date. Reputation theory, which explains another form of altruism that results in personal gain, proceeds from the assumption that it is generally advantageous to establish a reputation for benevolence and impartiality through the use of well-targeted good deeds. The result is to enhance one's image and improve the potential for long-term profits. Homo geneticus is closely allied with Homo economicus.

Related;
Crime and Punishment: Why Do We Conform to Society?

My wish for a TED wish- create a Knowledge NGO for Students of poor countries

For a student in a poor country one of the acute problems is the lack of access to proper research materials. I suggest below one way we could assist them.

A poor country student will submit a request for a paper to a group of ‘volunteer’ students in the developed world-the list can be put on a database. The rich country student picks from the list the journal article and emails it to the poor country student. Simple as that.

I think it would be more effective than many of the ‘fads’ that are suggested- things like let us connect the whole of Africa to the internet. Schools and universities often cannot just afford to subscribe to decent databases of journals.

Are we violating copyright? May be. Anybody who’s interested in creating this NGO, leave a comment below.

SCHIP

Furman on SCHIP

POTUS on SCHIP

Child Health Battle Foreshadows a Larger War

John Kao- Braindrain to Finland

Innovation Nation

Advice to Asian Development Bank

William Easterly - Die;

Pity the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It is trying to come up with a reason to exist for an Asian continent that already is achieving development and doesn’t need a Development Bank. Given all the success stories in today’s Asia, you’d think ADB could pat itself on the back for a job well done and then pack up and go home. But not so fast, says ADB, which is desperately trying to find new things to do with its 2,000 employees and $6 billion of annual lending.

To that end, ADB is working on a Long Term Strategic Framework 2020, a project best read as bureaucratic jargon for ADB’s promise to keep producing bureaucratic jargon through the year 2020. For help with the framework, ADB commissioned an Eminent Persons Group to tell it what to do with itself. The learned committee was chaired by Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, a body that has long distinguished itself by promoting all the bad ideas that stifle both trade and development. The end result was a report called Toward a New Asian Development Bank in a New Asia. The eminences have pointed out to ADB what should be obvious to anyone who reads The Wall Street Journal: ADB’s original raison d’etre of providing capital is obsolete in a capital-surplus region with a large excess of saving over investment.

He should have said it last year when he was invited by ADB

Related;
Distinguished Speakers Program
Are Aid Agencies improving? forthcoming, Economic Policy.

Interview with Easterly- Economic Policy

Event Coming Up-Columbia;
What Use is Aid? Monday, October 8, 2007. NEW LOCATION! Altschul Auditorium, 417 IAB. 8:00pm.Featuring William Easterly, Peter Singer, and Joseph Stiglitz.

Assorted

Gregory Clark's Farewell to Alms: It's Not What You Think

Malthus on Stilts: Clark Misinterpets the Malthusian Model

Oomph v. Statistical Significance

Why I wrote a book;

Now that my new book One Economics, Many Recipes is selling at Amazon, here is something that I should have written in the Introduction, but did not.

My main goal in writing the book was to present a sensible alternative to two mutually hostile schools of thought. One school identifies too much government intervention in markets as the central problem of underdevelopment, tends to downplay the second-best complications graduate students in economics learn about, and prescribes a standard policy package made up of free trade, privatization, and deregulation, along with an increasingly ambitious set of governance reforms. This is the orthodox policy agenda, represented by the original Washington Consensus and its descendants. If you want to attach names and faces to this school, think of Al Harberger, Anne Krueger, Jeff Sachs (before Africa), and Larry Summers (circa 1990s).

The other school takes as its starting point the historical experience of rich and growing countries, and notes that none of these countries achieved success through policies of free trade and free markets. It faults mainstream economists (and mainstream economics) for peddling dangerous medicine. Two books published this year are good representatives of this genre: Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism and Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor.

The most embarrassing thing Joe Stiglitz ever wrote?

The Good Life of a Nobel Laureate

Edmund Phelps recently talked about "The Good Life and the Good Economy: The View from Aristotle to Bergson and Rawls"- The Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Lecture on Aristotle and the Moderns at Columbia.

If any of you went, let us hear what he had to say.

Related;
Phelps: I Can Afford To Be As Radical As I Want To Be

Unhappy People -Dried up, washed out, fed up

They're Australia's farmers according to The Economist

PPP and iPod

The CommSec iPod Index, based on October 2007 prices in U.S. dollars.

1. Brazil $369.61

2. Bulgaria $318.60

3. Argentina $317.45

4. Israel $300.80

5. Peru $294.08

6. Chile $294.06

7. Malta $293.83

8. Egypt $269.10

9. Romania $266.60

10. Uruguay $260.00

11. Turkey $256.12

12. Hungary $254.50

13. Azerbaijan $252.11

14. Serbia $249.14

15. Croatia $245.41

16. Czech $242.54

17. Slovakia $234.13

18. Estonia $226.67

19. South Africa $226.60

20. Finland $225.82

21. France $225.82

22. Russia $220.32

23. Norway $220.20

24. Sweden $215.35

25. Belgium $211.62

26. Austria $211.62

27. Italy $211.62

28. Portugal $211.62

29. Ireland $211.62

30. Germany $211.62

31. Netherlands $211.62

32. Denmark $209.26

33. UK $201.92

34. Mexico $201.87

35. Cyprus $201.85

Via CoreEcon

Related; CommSec iPod index: Something for nothing

Intellectual Trespassing- is it always good?

Tim Harford writes about Emily Oster;

Take the experience of Emily Oster, a young assistant professor of economics at Chicago with a big reputation. One of her celebrated articles is an analysis of the Aids epidemic in Africa: she offers her own epidemiological model and concludes that the virus is best fought by treating other sexually transmitted diseases. The research was published in the prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) in May 2005.

But Oster’s conclusion is probably wrong. Epidemiologists embraced the idea of treating other sexually transmitted diseases a long time ago, but it has been discredited (to their deep disappointment) by a series of rigorous clinical trials. Oster says that the most convincing evidence came out after her paper was written; still, she has repeated her recommendations more recently in Esquire magazine.

Oster also made a mistake in handling her data. The error – which she has acknowledged, and which makes a modest but noticeable difference to her calculations – was quickly spotted when I asked two epidemiologists to review her research. The QJE will be publishing a correction.

Oster quite reasonably says that her article has other merits. But it might have been much better if the epidemiologists had taken a look long before the FT got involved.

The problem is that the economists couldn’t get the epidemiologists to take the research seriously enough to comment. Oster tells me that she tried, but she couldn’t name an epidemiologist who was familiar with her QJE paper. And Larry Katz, the QJE editor who published Oster’s paper, acknowledges that the epidemiologists would not typically agree to review papers for the QJE.

Different academic disciplines should talk to each other more – but that is easy to say. “Every discipline develops a different set of things they care about,” says Michael Kremer, a Harvard economist.

Related;
Economists doing medical research

Best Books on Economic Growth

1. Economic Growth by Robert J. Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin

2. Introduction to Economic Growth by Charles Jones

3. HANDBOOK OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

4. Van Den Berg, Hendrik, “Economic Growth and Development”, McGraw Hill.

5. Weil, David N., “Economic Growth”, Addison Wesley (power points online)

6. Endogenous Growth Theory by Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt

7. Introduction to Modern Economic Growth, Acemoglu lecture notes

What other books do you suggest?

Podcast of the Day- Antimatter

Melvyn Bragg talks to Val Gibson, Reader in High Energy Physics at the University of Cambridge; Frank Close, Professor of Physics at Exeter College, University of Oxford and Ruth Gregory, Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Durham about the elusive opposite of Matter, Antimatter.

Blog of the Day

Donor's Choose

One Korea

On Wednesday, though, Mr. Kim surprised Mr. Roh by suddenly asking him to extend his visit by one day. Mr. Kim apparently withdrew the invitation after Mr. Roh told his host that he would have to consult his staff.

“Can’t a president decide?” Mr. Kim asked in a seemingly teasing manner. “Presidents should be able to decide.”

Mr. Roh said, “I can decide on big things, but on little things, I can’t decide.”

-Korean Leaders Agree on Economic Projects

Blogs on Turkish Economy

Turkish Economy Blog

Another related blog

Lecture of the Day- Taxation, Incomplete Markets and Social Security

Peter Diamond on Taxation, Incomplete Markets and Social Security

Career Advice from a great Aussie Economist

From a profile of Justin Wolfers, now guest blogging at MR;

Wolfers earned his bachelor’s in economics at the University of Sydney with first-class honors in 1994, then went to work at the Reserve Bank of Australia, the country’s central bank. In 1997, he arrived at Harvard for Ph.D. work, planning to return home with his sights on becoming Secretary to the Treasury some day. Unlike his father, a political science professor, he preferred public policy to academe.

But after just a few months at Harvard, one of his advisers invited Wolfers to a meeting of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the prestigious orga¬nization headed by Martin Feldstein, who chaired President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. The room was filled with some of the best economists in the world, conducting exciting, original research. Wolfers decided then on the aca¬demic life in the United States. He would not be returning to Australia.

“I realized that what was happening in that room—50 central banks from around the world were more or less going to take those ideas and implement them. I thought, wow! This is a lot more exciting than being the guy back home who replicates their research,” Wolfers said...

“He’s very creative, in terms of asking inter¬esting research questions,” says Eric Zitzewitz, a highly regarded assistant professor of econom¬ics at Stanford’s business school who has known Wolfers for years and collaborated with him on such projects as a chapter on prediction markets in the book, Information Markets: A New Way of Making Decisions, published by AEI-Brookings Press...

While Wolfers’s study was inconclusive, Zitzewitz said that “it was a really creative way of approach¬ing the policy-relevant question, ‘Should we go to war?’ Justin is technically competent, and he’s well trained, but he’s not super-mathematical. He doesn’t delve into new econometric techniques. He simply takes existing techniques and applies them to really interesting questions.”...

He likes the life he’s chosen. “I could do the same work I’m doing now for an Australian institution, and the truth is, no one would listen,” he says. But from his perch at Wharton, his work finds its way to financiers, business leaders, and policymakers all over the world.

Related;
Justin Wolfers’s Solution for Gambling Scandals: More Gambling

Israel Lobby on Colbert Show

John J. Mearsheimer on the Colbert Report

Britney Spears timeline

Britney Spears timeline - BBC

Ideas for teching Econ 101

Estimating the Cost to Consumers of the U. S. Sugar Quota: An Exercise for Introductory Economics Classes

Labor vs. Capital Intensity


Should we send a macro principles book along with the food?

Must Listen Podcast

Don Boudreaux on Market Failure, Government Failure and the Economics of Antitrust Regulation

Assorted

Teach yourself statistics?

Question on hypothesis testing


Does Aid Work? - for the MDGs

The Significance of Changes in the Gender Happiness Gap

Aid the precarious

Is there a growth payoff to economic freedom?

Justin Wolfers on Divorce

The Five Sorry Rules of Lateness

Ticket Economics

Pick a finger

Why Are Women So Unhappy?

the next economics nobel prize goes to … mark granovetter??

Social Security Reform: The Nature of the Problem

Lies About Sex

What makes an economist?

The happiness gender gap

Playing games with the planet

Stallone: Burma "a hellhole beyond your wildest dreams"

'Self-silencing' may affect women's health

The advantages of amnesia

Why aren't there more women in science and math? Part 3

A "Master Class" By Danny Kahneman

Why are economists so misleading?

According to Language Log

Commission on Growth and Development

What has happened to this Commission

Free Textbook- Applied Intermediate Macroeconomics

Drafts chapters of Applied Intermediate Macroeconomics by Kevin D. Hoover

Of which recommended;
A Guide to Working with Economic Data