Noted for February 8, 2013 (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)

February 07, 2013

Noted for February 8, 2013

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Petra Moser: Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History
Nicholas C. Barberis: Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment
Jared Bernstein: Senator John McKeynes: "From this AM’s NYT: '…the potential impact of the cuts is being cited by both parties. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the military side alone would eliminate 350,000 jobs directly, and 650,000 more that depend on the government programs.' So, not only is this pure Keynesian analysis, but the Senator is recognizing both the direct and indirect effects of the cuts of jobs. In other words, he’s got a multiplier, and it’s a big one! I can’t say how long will it be until these guys go back to saying 'the government doesn’t create jobs!' but until then we need to add to our working definition of a Keynesian. It used to be 'a Republican in a recession.' Now it’s also 'a Republican facing defense cuts.'"
Chris Giles: Print money to fund spending – Turner: "Lord Turner, the departing chairman of the Financial Services Authority has defended financing government spending by printing money arguing that, within limits, it 'absolutely, definitively [does] not' lead to inflation… called for “intellectual clarity” in economic policy…. 'I accept entirely that this is a very dangerous thing to let out of the bag, that this is a medicine in small quantities but a poison in large quantities but that there exist some circumstances, in which it is appropriate to take that risk', he told the Financial Times. The tool should have been used in 1930s Germany and 1990s Japan, he said. It should be considered across the world, he added, at a time when banks, companies and households are trying to pay down debts and seeking to return to growth by borrowing more is seen as perverse."
Steve M.: No More Mister Nice Blog: Policy Suggestion for George P. Bush: "Um, maybe one thing we can do is not encourage returning vets with severe PTSD to shoot guns?"
Whimsley | …where Tom Slee writes about technology and politics
Duncan Black: Eschaton: Retirement Crisis: "The crisis is that a bunch of people in and nearing retirement just don't have enough in retirement savings to supplement their meager Social Security benefits…. The failed experiment is that I cannot see plausibly how we can expect the situation to be any better for the current young…. Over the past few decades, employees fortunate enough to have employer-based retirement benefits have been shifted from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. We are now seeing the results of that grand experiment, and they are frightening. Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles…. According to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the median household retirement account balance in 2010 for workers between the ages of 55-64 was just $120,000. For people expecting to retire at around age 65, and to live for another 15 years or more, this will provide for only a trivial supplement to Social Security benefits. And that's for people who actually have a retirement account of some kind. A third of households do not. For these people, their sole retirement income, aside from potential aid from friends and family, comes from Social Security, for which the current average monthly benefit is $1,230."

Coding Horror: Civilized Discourse Construction Kit
Irin Carmon: Clergy are not doctors — and the U.S. has its own Savita Halappanavars: "The priest who made the decision Googled 'molar pregnancy'…"
Livio Di Matteo: Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: Is Economic Growth Really Ending?
John Cassidy: The C.BO.'s New Budget Outlook Shows How U.S. Fiscal Policy is Upside Down
Seth B. Carpenter and Selva Demiralp: Money, Reserves, and the Transmission of Monetary Policy: Does the Money Multiplier Exist?
Daniel Kuehn: Keynes, Newton and the Royal Society: the events of 1942 and 1943): "Most discussions of John Maynard Keynes's activities in connection with Newton are restricted to the sale in 1936 at Sotheby's of Newton's Portsmouth Papers and to Keynes's 1946 essay ‘Newton, the Man’. This paper provides a history of Keynes's Newton-related work in the interim, highlighting especially the events of 1942 and 1943, which were particularly relevant to the Royal Society's role in the domestic and international promotion of Newton's legacy. During this period, Keynes lectured twice on Newton, leaving notes that would later be read by his brother Geoffrey in the famous commemoration of the Newton tercentenary in 1946. In 1943 Keynes assisted the Royal Society in its recognition of the Soviet celebrations and in the acquisition and preservation of more of the Newton library. In each instance Keynes took the opportunity to promote his interpretation of Newton as ‘the last of the magicians’: a scientist who had one foot in the pre-modern world and whose approach to understanding the world was as much intuitive as it was methodical."
Aaron Carroll: Why (some) governors oppose the Medicaid expansion
Abigail Pesta: On Pins and Needles: Stylist Turns Ancient Hairdo Debate on Its Head - WSJ.com: "By day, Janet Stephens is a hairdresser at a Baltimore salon, trimming bobs and wispy bangs. By night she dwells in a different world. At home in her basement, with a mannequin head, she meticulously re-creates the hairstyles of ancient Rome and Greece. Ms. Stephens is a hairdo archaeologist. Her amateur scholarship is sticking a pin in the long-held assumptions among historians about the complicated, gravity-defying styles of ancient times. Basically, she has set out to prove that the ancients probably weren't wearing wigs after all."
Sean Carroll: The Most Embarrassing Graph in Modern Physics: "[Q]uantum mechanics has been around since the 1920′s at least…. [Q]uantum mechanics has become the most important and best-tested part of modern physics. Without it, nothing makes sense. Every student who gets a degree in physics is supposed to learn QM above all else. There are a variety of experimental probes, all of which confirm the theory to spectacular precision. And yet — we don’t understand it. Embarrassing…. [H]ere in 2013, we don’t really know whether objective 'wave function collapse' is part of reality…. Not that we should be spending as much money trying to pinpoint a correct understanding of quantum mechanics as we do looking for supersymmetry, of course. The appropriate tools are very different…. For quantum mechanics, by contrast, all we really have to do (most people believe) is think about it in the right way. No elaborate experiments necessarily required (although they could help nudge us in the right direction, no doubt about that). But if anything, that makes the embarrassment more acute. All we have to do is wrap our brains around the issue, and yet we’ve failed to do so. I’m optimistic that we will, however. And I suspect it will take a lot fewer than another eighty years. The advance of experimental techniques that push the quantum/classical boundary is forcing people to take these issues more seriously. I’d like to believe that in the 21st century we’ll finally develop a convincing and believable understanding of the greatest triumph of 20th-century physics."

On February 7, 2013:

J. Bradford DeLong on February 07, 2013 at 10:45 PM in Liveblogging, Weblogs | Permalink

Comments

NewImage

Petra Moser: Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History
Nicholas C. Barberis: Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment
Jared Bernstein: Senator John McKeynes: "From this AM’s NYT: '…the potential impact of the cuts is being cited by both parties. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the military side alone would eliminate 350,000 jobs directly, and 650,000 more that depend on the government programs.' So, not only is this pure Keynesian analysis, but the Senator is recognizing both the direct and indirect effects of the cuts of jobs. In other words, he’s got a multiplier, and it’s a big one! I can’t say how long will it be until these guys go back to saying 'the government doesn’t create jobs!' but until then we need to add to our working definition of a Keynesian. It used to be 'a Republican in a recession.' Now it’s also 'a Republican facing defense cuts.'"
Chris Giles: Print money to fund spending – Turner: "Lord Turner, the departing chairman of the Financial Services Authority has defended financing government spending by printing money arguing that, within limits, it 'absolutely, definitively [does] not' lead to inflation… called for “intellectual clarity” in economic policy…. 'I accept entirely that this is a very dangerous thing to let out of the bag, that this is a medicine in small quantities but a poison in large quantities but that there exist some circumstances, in which it is appropriate to take that risk', he told the Financial Times. The tool should have been used in 1930s Germany and 1990s Japan, he said. It should be considered across the world, he added, at a time when banks, companies and households are trying to pay down debts and seeking to return to growth by borrowing more is seen as perverse."
Steve M.: No More Mister Nice Blog: Policy Suggestion for George P. Bush: "Um, maybe one thing we can do is not encourage returning vets with severe PTSD to shoot guns?"
Whimsley | …where Tom Slee writes about technology and politics
Duncan Black: Eschaton: Retirement Crisis: "The crisis is that a bunch of people in and nearing retirement just don't have enough in retirement savings to supplement their meager Social Security benefits…. The failed experiment is that I cannot see plausibly how we can expect the situation to be any better for the current young…. Over the past few decades, employees fortunate enough to have employer-based retirement benefits have been shifted from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. We are now seeing the results of that grand experiment, and they are frightening. Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles…. According to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the median household retirement account balance in 2010 for workers between the ages of 55-64 was just $120,000. For people expecting to retire at around age 65, and to live for another 15 years or more, this will provide for only a trivial supplement to Social Security benefits. And that's for people who actually have a retirement account of some kind. A third of households do not. For these people, their sole retirement income, aside from potential aid from friends and family, comes from Social Security, for which the current average monthly benefit is $1,230."