Brad DeLong

Highlighted for Today: Mark Thoma and Stephanie Kelton on Weblogging and Standard Ivy-Covered Academia: Kauffman Foundation 2013 Economic Webloggers' Forum (Highlighted for April 25, 2013)

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/weblogging-and-standard-ivy-covered-academia-kauffman-foundation-2013-economic-webloggers-forum.html

Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging and Standard Ivy-Covered Academia (Speaker: Mark Thoma; Discussant Stephanie Kelton; Moderator: Bob Strom)

Public Intellectualism in Comparative Context: Different Countries, Different Disciplines

Public Intellectualism in Comparative Context: Different Countries, Different Disciplines

Schedule

Participate in "Public Intellectualism" Conference Sessions Remotely // News // Advanced Study // University of Notre Dame:

If you are unable to attend the "Public Intellectualism" conference this Monday through Wednesday, April 22-24, you can still take part in the conference sessions and engage the discussants over the web. To participate remotely, for FREE, check out our conference blog at http://blogs.nd.edu/ndias/ -- on the blog's Event pages you can watch the conference sessions LIVE via Web Simulcast and ask questions to the conference presenters and commentators in the Comment field at the bottom of the pages. We encourage all of our virtual participants to ask questions early and often.

Streaming live video by Ustream

This international conference, taking place April 22-24, 2013 in McKenna Hall's Notre Dame Conference Center at the University of Notre Dame, will focus on the roles played by public intellectuals—persons who exert a large influence in the contemporary society of their countries by virtue of their thought, writing, or speaking—in various countries around the world and in their different professional roles. Leading experts from multiple disciplines will come together to approach this elusive topic of public intellectualism from different perspectives.

Conference: Notre Dame: Public Intellectualism in Comparative Context

Sunday, April 21: Welcome Dinner

Monday, April 22: ​8:00 a.m.​Continental Breakfast

• 8:30 a.m. Welcome, Robert Bernhard, Vice President for Research, University of Notre Dame
• 8:45 a.m. ​“Caveat Lector: Intellectuals and the Public” Mark Lilla, Commentary: Michael Zuckert
• 10:45 a.m. “The Public Intellectual in China” Willy Lam, Commentary: Lionel Jensen ​​* 2:00 p.m. “The Public Intellectual in Latin America” Enrique Krauze, Commentary: Paolo Carozza ​​* 4:00 p.m. “The Artist as Public Intellectual” Maxim Kantor, Commentary: Peter Holland
• 5:45 p.m. Dinner
• 7:15 p.m.: Evening Presentation "The Religious Leader as Public Intellectual” Sr. Joan Chittister, Commentary: Ann Astell

The Future of the Euro: Lessons from History: U.C. Berkeley: Men's Faculty Club: Heyns Room: April 16, 2013

http://eurofuture2013.wordpress.com

Download 20130416 Brad DeLong "Future of the Euro" Eichengreen Conference Talk

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DRAFT: The 1919-1939 interwar period taught us four lessons:

1. In order for the world economy to be prosperous, adjustment to macroeconomic disequilibrium needs to be undertaken by both "surplus" and "deficit" economies--not by "deficit" economies alone.

2. If the world economy is to have any chance of avoiding or limiting crises, an integrated banking system requires an integrated bank regulator and supervisor.

3. In order for crises to be successfully managed, the lender of last resort must truly be a lender of last resort: it must create whatever asset the market thinks is the safest in the economy, and must be able to do so in whatever quantity the market demands.

4. In order for any monetary union or fixed exchange rate system larger than an optimum currency area to survive, it must be willing to undertake large-scale fiscal transfers to compensate for the exchange rate movements to rapidly shift inter-regional terms of trade that it prohibits.

I, at least, thought that everybody--or everybody who mattered in governing the world economy--had learned these four lessons that 1919-1939 had so cruelly taught us. Now it turns out that the dukes and duchesses of Eurovia had, in fact, learned none of them. History taught the lesson. But while history was teaching the lesson, the princes and princesses of Eurovia and their advisors were looking out the window and gossiping on Facebook.

Weblogging and New Modes and Orders in Education: Kauffman Foundation 2013 Economic Webloggers' Forum

Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging, and New Modes and Orders in Education (Speaker: Clay Shirky; Discussant Ben Wildavsky; Moderator: R. Crosby Kemper III)

Berkeley Economics...

The Future of the Euro: Lessons from History

The 1919-1939 interwar period taught us four lessons:

1. In order for the world economy to be prosperous, adjustment to macroeconomic disequilibrium needs to be undertaken by both "surplus" and "deficit" economies--not by "deficit" economies alone.

2. If the world economy is to have any chance of avoiding or limiting crises, an integrated banking system requires an integrated bank regulator and supervisor.

3. In order for crises to be successfully managed, the lender of last resort must truly be a lender of last resort: it must create whatever asset the market thinks is the safest in the economy, and must be able to do so in whatever quantity the market demands.

4. In order for any monetary union or fixed exchange rate system larger than an optimum currency area to survive, it must be willing to undertake large-scale fiscal transfers to compensate for the exchange rate movements to rapidly shift inter-regional terms of trade that it prohibits.

I, at least, thought that everybody--or everybody who mattered in governing the world economy--had learned these four lessons that 1919-1939 had so cruelly taught us. Now it turns out that the dukes and duchesses of Eurovia had, in fact, learned none of them. History taught the lesson. But while history was teaching the lesson, the princes and princesses of Eurovia and their advisors were looking out the window and gossiping on Facebook.

No, Most Law Students Will Not Become Law and Philosophy Professors, Appeals Court Justices of Appellate Pleading Specialists. Why Do You Ask?

Britan Leiter is a law and philosophy professor, yet he also claims to know how to "think like a lawyer". That raises a natural question: how does he know what it is to think like a typical lawyer?

His answer:

Brian Leiter:

We Get Mail: Thomas R. Grover, Esq. Edition: For criticizing Mr. Campos last week, I received the following insolent e-mail:

You’re a “Law and __” Professor, not a lawyer. How would you know how to ‘think like a lawyer’?

Thomas R. Grover, Esq.
Goodsell & Olsen, LLP

Mr. Grover is a law graduate of the University of Nebraska, one of those law schools that students should still be considering, even in the current market, and notwithstanding Mr. Grover. But it is odd that he thinks that being a lawyer and a philosopher involves a contraction, rather than an expansion, of knowledge and competence. In any case, I replied to Mr. Grover as follows:

Gary King and Maya Sen: How Social Science Research Can Improve Teaching

Gary King and Maya Sen: How Social Science Research Can Improve Teaching:

Principles: Principle 1: Social Connections Motivate. Coaxing individuals to take actions that benefit themselves…. is often extremely difficult. But getting them to take actions that involve social interaction…. is often far easier…. [O]r argument that they can also be applied to education and learning should be no surprise…. Principle 2: Teaching Teaches the Teacher. Social psychologists have demonstrated that under normal circumstances, we “mind wander”… half of all our waking hours…. [S]ocial interactions eliminate about half of this effect…. If we can turn the students into teachers… we can capture a great deal more of their attention than would otherwise be possible…. Principle 3: Instant Feedback Improves Learning.… Implementing this advice involves frequent evaluation… eliminating waiting periods before questions can be answered, understanding the limits of their knowledge, and encouraging students to ask questions….

A Very Brief Dialogue on Preparation...

Glaukon: Who did ultimately fill the Federal Reserve governors seat that had been reserved for Alicia Munnell?

Adeimantos: Let me check..,

Platon: Do you always carry with you a list of governors of the Federal Reserve from the beginning of the system in 1914 to the present?

Adeimantos: Doesn't everyone?

Finally I Am a Real Professor!

For the first time in my life, I have a tweed jacket with elbow patches!

Some say that elbow patches on one's tweed jacket is a sign not of professorhood but of penury. I say: "Feh!"

Higher Education: The Utility of Uselessness?

Timothy Burke:

The Usefulness of Uselessness, Redux : Faculty who believe in the liberal arts approach and who think this means that there ought to be some kind of firewall between what students study and what they do in their careers or anything else in their lives after graduation have a growing number of antagonists to contend against, most recently, several conservative governors who have announced that they will push their state’s public university system to eliminate or de-emphasize majors and departments that don’t have direct vocational objectives. I’m one of those faculty. I’m working now on a long essay about why I think a liberal arts approach is still the right thing for most of higher education…

But originally the "liberal arts" had the most direct vocational objectives of all:

I Really Should Learn About Udacity, Shouldn't I?

This means, I think:

1. Reading the Udacity Blog regularly…

2. Signing up for Udacity Statistics https://www.udacity.com/course/st095 to see how they are trying to do it…

James Simon, Director, Marketing Communications, The University of California, Speaks…

James Simon, Director, Marketing Communications, The University of California:

First and foremost, we are gratified to see so many people who care passionately about the University of California. Feedback, and dialogue, are essential in a university setting and we are paying attention. While doing so, it's important that we provide some more context to people who are coming to this issue completely cold. This is not an either/or situation — we are not trading in the seal for the new mark. The seal will continue to be used to represent the UC system. Additionally, this does not replace or take the place of any campus identities.

The new mark was created as a part of our broader efforts to build awareness and support for all the things that UC does to make California (and by extension the world) better. What we have tried to do is to create a mark that is iconic, flexible, and solid enough that it works to represent the UC system as a whole. The mark can be used in a combination of the various UC blues and golds as well as in a multitude of applications.

Seals are wonderful and carry a legacy and tradition. They also signify bureaucracy, staidness, and other not-so-great characteristics. Much of this was evident in the testing and discussion we did as part of the process.

Our challenge is to represent not only the work done on our campuses but also in UC medical centers, agriculture and natural resources efforts, research centers, K-12 preparation and outreach efforts, and even things such as overseeing the state’s 4H program or the University of California Press. And, of course, the longstanding impact of our alumni. People experience the results of these efforts every day but the University receives little recognition for them. This is the message of our Onward California campaign.

Much of that is visible if people want to visit http://www.onwardcalifornia.com. There are amazing examples of the ways that UC touches people’s lives every day and we are proud that so many people have visited the site or taken part in outreach efforts over the last several months.

Our students, alumni, faculty and staff have all done a terrific job in raising their voices in support of UC and higher education. We know that we share a common goal of ensuring that the great work UC does is valued by as many people as possible.

We sincerely intend to listen to this feedback and respect what we are hearing.

From my perspective, the biggest problem with the new logo is that it is not recognizable as the logo of a university. And there are three smaller problems:

• The "C" is not recognizable as a "C"--you see it as a "C" only after you have been told that it is a "C"
• The "U" is not recognizable at all as a "U"--even after being told that it is a "U", many people do not see it.
• The book/shield is not recognizable as either a book or a shield--it takes an effort of will to see it as either, and only after you have been told that's what it is.

Here, I think, is a clearly superior alternative--if you think the current shield-with-the-book is inadequate, that is:

Brad DeLong: The Ancient University and Distance Learning

CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, UC BERKELEY: INEQUALITY: DIALOGUES FOR THE AMERICAS, FALL 2012: OCTOBER 15, 2012 http://www.clas.berkeley.edu/Events/series/inequalityfall2012/index.html

• Full cleaned-up transcript
• Video

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Thank you very much for inviting me. I am always happy to be here at the Center for Latin American Studies. I am even happier to be part of tho intercontinental dialogue, if only because the slow creation of--call it a global intellectual space--is what ought to be the twenty-first century mission of Universities like this one.

A thousand years ago, when the university starts in the West--it had started earlier elsewhere--the basic problem was a need for more well-educated people. Emperors needed judges. Popes needed theologians. Theologians and judges need to have and read books. But back in 1100 or so books were expensive.

Come 1100 or so, when the University of Bologna is founded, your average book requires about six months of skilled-monk labor-time to produce--preparing the parchment, preparing the ink, writing out the book, illustrating the manuscript, binding and covering it, and so forth. It was then much much cheaper to get all the budding judges and theologians together in a room in Bologna, or Naples, or Paris, or Oxford--and have somebody read them from the single copy of the book that existed while they took their notes. It would have been prohibitively expensive to create and distribute, to people distributed all over western Europe, each their own copy of one of these hideously expensive books.

Well, books are much cheaper now. But we still have universities. They are places where people can come together and easily talk to each other about important intellectual issues and principles.

We could have a better world if we could generalize this to the globe. If the entire globe could become one global university, rather than a collation of small individual intellectual hotspots tenuously linked, and with the rest of the world glowing less brightly with intellectual light. Today too small a relative proportion of the world’s population has full intellectual access. Fixing that is the business we’re in for the twenty-first century. Fixing that is the business that this particular technology experiment is in aid of.

And with that commercial for interdisciplinary distance learning and engagement, let me note that I have already used up a third of my introductory-comment time.

John Holbo: The Year of the MOOC?

John Holbo:

The Year of the MOOC?: I ought at least to link to the NY Times piece on MOOCS - Massive Open Online Courses…. Clay Shirky asked in comments to my last post what I thought about this stuff and I said I was ignorant. Which I am. That said, I’m a big believer that this stuff will somehow work out for the best. The upside is just too way up…. I’ve always availed myself of webcast options whenever possible – especially when I was teaching a 500+ student intro module. Webcast kills live theater attendance but it’s just so damn convenient for students to be able to download an MP3 of the lecture to go with their copy of the PPT…. The book – the old-fashioned paper book – was the original MOOC app. Then again, no. A book is not a course. A library is not a university. And so a library of online learning resources is not an online university. MOOC’s are going to help people who are self-motivated and already know how to learn. They will help those who can already help themselves….

[T]his still requires the students to be mature and self-motivated, as learners, to start with. This is such a huge number of people – especially globally – that it’s great news, all in all. But it leaves a lot of people behind – students better served by a more traditional college experience…. [I]t’s paradoxical to say that MOOC’s are for advanced students, whereas meatspace college is more remedial, in a disciplinary sort of way. (Poor kid, he has to go to Harvard because he’s not ready for Coursera!)… In a world of MOOC’s, traditional college is ambiguous between remedial learning for those who haven’t yet learned how to learn, and a premium personal coaching service…. Oh, and credentialing…

KenL: "The wealthy do not and never will send their children to an online university. Funny how no one ever mentions that"

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/10/25/15381

Moving to a Better Higher Education System

Educational-technology skeptic Thoreau:

So, the institution is willing to spend money helping us videotape us giving lectures on basic content, so that students can watch them before class and then we spend class time doing examples and going over questions and whatnot…. They assimilate basic facts and definitions and whatnot on their own time, and they spend class time doing applications and discussing finer points.  One needn’t buy into any educrat buzzwords to think that’s a good idea.

Here’s the thing: They could just read the #*@&ing book before class.  Except they don’t.  Why should I believe that they’ll actually watch the video lecture and pay as much attention to it as they need to in order to assimilate the content?  I’m not opposed to doing this, but I don’t believe that it will be the big transformative world-saving thing that people think, because there’s absolutely no substitute for studying.  None.  Zero…. I want to do it as a way of getting them to study.  If I start going around… preaching… about how I have been transformed and redeemed, I want you to shoot me, and then dismember my remains, just to make sure I don’t come back….

[T]here’s no magic substitute for studying–if they don’t read and they don’t pay attention to the pre-class video and they don’t follow proper procedures for pre-class microchip brain uploads, nothing will save them…

Computer Science | Khan Academy

http://www.khanacademy.org/cs

12:00 Noon PDT: Politics of Inequality

12pm today @clasberkeley "Politics of Inequality" with Cal Econ Prof @delong & Chilean scholar @olanderretche on.fb.me/TdVesd

— CLAS Berkeley(@clasberkeley) October 15, 2012

Audio

Monday: Inequality in the Americas

UPDATE: Video

Monday: Inequality in the Americas: Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley:

Economic and social inequality is critical throughout the Americas. CLAS has organized a path-breaking real-time dialogue across the hemisphere. Using the web, we are connecting Berkeley professors and audiences to colleagues and audiences throughout Latin America.

MONDAY

Oscar Landerretche and Brad DeLong: The Politics of Inequality

Oscar Landerretche is the director of the School of Economics and Business at Universidad de Chile. Previously, he worked as the Chilean consultant for Global Source Partners’ Consulting Network in New York (2006-2011) and was the Executive Secretary of the first phase of Michelle Bachelet’s presidential campaign. He is an editorial columnist for La Tercera.

Brad DeLong is a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, chair of the Political Economy of Industrial Societies major, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy from 1993 to 1995.  

Monday, October 15, 12:00 PM Room 370, Dwinelle Hall

Brad DeLong Resmackdown Watch: Cosma Shalizi Argues That Brad DeLong Is an Atypical Economist

Hoisted from Comments: Cosma Shalizi:

1. The practice of one member of the discipline isn't enough. If it was, I could point to Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis and say that being an economist means a profound engagement with traditions of social thought broadly inspired by Marx and emphasizing the contingency of social roles and institutions, but corrected by evolutionary game theory. Or I could point to Mark Blaug to say that being an economist means according basically no normative weight to the two fundamental theorems of welfare economics whatsoever. Or I could point to Edward Prescott and say that being an economist means re-inventing statistical wheels, and deciding that they should be hexagons. Or I could point to D. McCloskey and whatever it is they're into this decade.

2. I don't think "Berkeley economist" will do. There was a reason I specifically mentioned Varian's micro textbook, and Varian and Shapiro's business book about profiting by exploiting customers and manipulating standards-setting.

3. I think that, as the discipline has developed, the thought of The Theory of the Moral Sentiments and even much (most?) of The Wealth of Nations has, in fact, become profoundly alien to what most of the profession sees as the core ideas of economics. This could change; I hope it does change; if it changes, I expect that the practitioners' histories will edit out the fact that it was a change.

4. If I had to put it in a slogan, I would say that it's not so much that you're not an economist, as that you (like Sam and Herb) are a harbinger of a different and better economics.

I think my response has to follow three tracks: what your standard economist does, what I do, and what the canonical political scientist does.

Teaching the Macro History of 2005-2012: "Long Run" and "Short Run"

While procrastinating this morning--delaying sending in the data points for Figures 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 to my editor Mike Treadway (yes, it's done now)--I ran across Evan Soltas commenting on Matthew Yglesias commenting on me.

Evan Soltas writes:

The Recession and Its Causes: In a post today, Matt Yglesias borrows Brad deLong's graph to show that[:]

the back-and-forth swing of business investment has been the main motor of the recession...But the chart also shows us that contrary to a lot of myth-making, the recession is not identical to the downturn in housing.

Nevertheless, Yglesias says, the lack of recovery in housing has kept the level of real output below what would be consistent with full employment.

This is a very important point… economists, journalists, and other observers assign excessive blame to the housing bubble as the cause of the recession. The "housing story" seems, at face value, to work. But the support in the data is weaker than the proponents of the housing story admit….

1. Private residential fixed investment peaked in 2006, whereas the rate of growth in real output did not begin to decline sharply until 2008…. Why did macroeconomic conditions seem able to withstand significant contraction in residential investment for two years, and then suddenly it could not?… Structural problems "lurking" under the surface make for a good movie or novel -- but no so much for cogent economic reasoning….

2. The direct contribution of residential construction to the rate of real output growth never exceeded +/- 1 percent from 2000 to 2012….

To make housing their sufficient cause of the recession, they often end up incorporating in other causes through the back door… transmission mechanisms -- the financial system, wealth effects, expectations for nominal income growth, unemployment, etc. -- and though they are not incorrect in doing so, they fail to appreciate that they've diluted their own argument…

"edX"?

Robert J. Birgeneau Chancellor

Dear colleagues:

We are writing to inform you, in advance of a public announcement to be released tomorrow morning, that UC Berkeley will be joining edX, the Harvard and MIT not-for-profit online learning collaborative. We have successfully negotiated a partnership with edX which is very favorable for Berkeley.

We have spent considerable time deciding the best direction for Berkeley for open courseware. I (Chancellor Robert Birgeneau) have been in conversation for the last year with former Provost and now President of MIT, Rafael Reif, as well as more recently with Harvard President Drew Faust. Our own faculty, especially in EECS, have been actively engaged with their colleagues at MIT and Harvard. We share edX commitment to a not-for-profit and open-platform model and are excited at the possibility of providing courses and new open source software to the partnership.

Two Berkeley classes will be offered on edX this fall and we will collaborate on the development of the technology platform. Participation by our faculty in edX is totally voluntary, and while we encourage faculty who want to have courses on-line on edX, this will be completely up to them. edX is open to anyone and free, and online learners who demonstrate mastery of the subject can earn a certificate of completion for which initially there will be no charge.

Participation in mass open online courses (MOOCs) is only one of many initiatives in on-line education that we are - or expect to be- undertaking as we continue to develop our aspirations and strategies for on-line education at Berkeley. Our partnership with edX is fully aligned with the Principles of UC Berkeley's Online Education Strategy and our commitment to access and excellence. It is exemplary of how our relatively new process for advancing on-line education can work. The initial impetus came from faculty working on open-source technology and developing courses. The central administration worked quickly and in consultation with Academic Senate leadership, taking into account important broader campus-wide issues, to bring this partnership to fruition. The edX partnership serves our public mission of distributing higher education more broadly, while at the same time enriching the quality of campus-based education by helping us improve research on how students learn and how technology can transform learning.

This announcement is embargoed until 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, July 24, 2012 Pacific Time. Please do not share it until the embargo lifts. A press announcement will take place at 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time. The press release and FAQ will be made available on the NewsCenter tomorrow.

Berkeley ACA SCOTUS Panel

Cathy Cockrell:

As ‘Obamacare’ survives, campus experts diagnose prospects for healthcare reform: On the first Monday after the Supreme Court’s decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a half-dozen UC Berkeley experts in constitutional law, public policy, economics, and health law and policy rendered their judgments on the ruling during a panel discussion at Berkeley Law. Healthcare economics, the challenges of implementing a complex law about which the public is deeply divided and the powerful role of politics were all put under the X-ray.

Calling Republican outrage over the ruling “all about politics,” moderator John Ellwood, a professor of public policy, noted that challenges to the ACA were raised “within a nanosecond” of its signing by President Obama in March 2010. For starters, numerous states challenged provisions on expanding healthcare coverage under Medicaid, the program that covers vulnerable individuals of limited means and is funded jointly by the federal government and the states. (The high-court justices, by a 7-2 vote, nullified the federal government’s ability to withhold all Medicaid funding for states that fail to expand Medicaid coverage under the reform.)… Constitutional-law expert Jesse Choper said that one of the most significant implications of the high-court ruling is in limiting Congress’s power to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper” for executing its enumerated powers. “It’s the first time in 100 years that the court has put an important limitation on the ‘necessary and proper’ clause,” he said.

Several panelists gave a nod to the law’s potential to significantly expand access to healthcare. But “whether or not the expanded coverage is going to be affordable in the long run, that is the central question now,” said Stephen Shortell, dean of public health. The U.S. spends 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare, Shortell noted, “twice as much other countries that have better health statistics than we do.” And given our aging population and our technology-laden healthcare system, “this legislation will not reduce costs.” It could, however, help to slow the rate of growth for healthcare spending, he said. Topping Shortell’s list of ways to bend the cost curve: changing our payment model for healthcare. “Fee-for-service,” he declared, “is toxic.”

“‘Obamacare’ is ‘Romneycare,’ ” said Brad DeLong, a political economist and influential blogger. As such, the federal law and the Massachusetts law share the same weaknesses, he said — including the absence of a public option and “handing a lot of market power to near monopolies,” in remote areas especially. DeLong noted that when Romneycare was the signature policy of a Republican governor, not a single Republican office-holder objected — “yet every Republican officeholder objects to Obamacare.”

Health law expert Ann O’Leary said the Supreme Court, in last week’s 5-4 decision, may have found the law, in the main, constitutional, but wondered about the “political will” to implement it vigorously, even in blue states like California feeling the strain of healthcare costs. Proponents of the reform law intended it to provide healthcare coverage for 32 million of the 50 million medically uninsured, she noted — 17 million of them (largely low-income single men) via expansion of Medicaid coverage. Now the Medicaid expansion has been declared optional, and many states — including Texas and Florida — are threatening not to participate.

W>hy, asked health-law specialist Ann Marie Marciarille, did the court “take a whack at Medicaid? It’s always easy to take a whack at Medicaid.” Unlike pregnant women or the blind, who already qualify for assistance under the program, “poor single men are not in the classical sense the worthy poor,” she said. “We tinker with Medicaid for our own reasons relentlessly.”

Monday’s forum was sponsored by the School of Public Policy and the Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research Program. Video of the event will be posted shortly on the UC Berkeley YouTube channel, as well as on UCTV Prime. Audio of the forum can be found on Brad DeLong’s blog.

Monday 10 AM: U.C. Berkeley: Panel on the Supreme Court's Health Care Decision: What Next for Health Care Reform?

Come one, come all… Monday July 2nd, 10 AM to Noon, Berkeley Law School at Boalt Hall, Room 132:

Ann Marie Marcarille's Powerpoint:

20120702 ann marie marciarille ac aat sct

View more PowerPoint from Brad DeLong

Ann Marie Marciarille's Powerpoints: Download 20120702 Ann Marie Marciarille ACAatSCt | key | ppt

J. Bradford DeLong's Powerpoint:

20120702 berkeley obama care event

View more PowerPoint from Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong's Powerpoints: Download 20120702 Berkeley ObamaCare Event (pdf) | key | ppt

Panel Audio: Berkeley ACA SCOTUS Panel

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Panelists:

• Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, U.C. Berkeley, quondam Secretary of Labor
• Moderator: John Ellwood, Professor of Public Policy and Program Director of the Berkeley/UCSF Branch of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Research Scholars in Health Policy Program, U.C. Berkeley
• Jesse Choper, Earl Warren Professor of Public Law, U.C. Berkeley
• Steve Shortell, Dean of the School of Public Health, U.C. Berkeley
• J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley
• Ann O'Leary, Director, Children and Families Program, Center for the Next Generation
• Ann Marie Marciarille, Associate Professor of Law, University of Missouri at Kansas City

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What I am going to say: first draft:

One piece of background is all-important in assessing last Thursday's decision.

ObamaCare is RomneyCare.

The health-care reform plan that Mitt Romney proposed when he was Governor of Massachusetts, and shepherded through the Massachusetts legislature is the health-care reform plan that Barack Obama proposed and shepherded through the U.S. Congress.

RomneyCare made it through the Massachusetts legislature with only two dissenting votes. RomneyCare made it through the Congress with not a single Republican vote in favor. No Republican made audible complaint that RomneyCare was bad policy, or would destroy the economy, or would be unconstitutional at the federal level, or whatnot--not as long as it was the signature policy initiative of a Republican governor who might well become president someday.

But when the same policy became the signature policy initiative of a Democratic president, every single Republican in office changed their mind.

Some Republican officeholders claimed that they had always been opposed to RomneyCare--but had just kept quiet because of Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican".

For the most part, however, Republican officeholders claimed that they had not changed their minds. When a state government requires people to buy insurance, they said, that is Gan assertion of the Conservative Principle of Personal Responsibility. But when a federal government requires that people to buy insurance, they said, that is Bad Big Government, the Liberal Nanny State, and unconstitutional. Never mind that the centerpiece of the Bush 2005 Social Security privatization proposal was an individual mandate to regulate "inactivity": to require that people who had not established their own private individual retirement accounts do so.

Go figure.

Of all the justices who claimed that the individual mandate exceeded Congress's Commerce Clause powers last Thursday, only Justice Thomas would have reached the same conclusion had the issue reached them in the form of a challenge to a Republican president's policy mandating the purchase of retirement accounts rather than a Democratic president's policy mandating the purchase of health insurance: Kennedy jointed and Alito and Roberts endorsed Scalia's opinion in Gonzales v. Raich holding that the Commerce Clause allows Congress to take away from cancer patients pain-relieving marijuana that they have grown themselves. Larry Lessig had a piece a couple of months ago about how his patron Scalia's Commerce Clause jurisprudence was principled, and he would uphold the law. Larry Lessig has a lot of explaining to do. Akhil Reed Amar said a couple of weeks ago that if the Court did not uphold the ACA under the Commerce Clause that his career had been a waste--that he ought to have been doing constitutional law not as an autonomous discipline but as a subbranch of political science.

Both Lessig and Amar really ought to have taken as their model not Alex Bickel but Fred Rodell.

Indeed, that ultimate legal realist Fred Rodell would have been shocked and astonished by last Thursday. In past Constitutional Moments--Miranda, Brown, Jones and Laughlin, Lochner, Dred Scott, McCulloch vs. Maryland, Marbury vs. Madison--the stakes had been partisan, yes, but they also had been moral, and properly political: decisions on deep questions about what kind of country America is going to become are made when the Court rules that the law is different today from what it was yesterday. When the original Four Horsemen--never mind that McReynolds, van Devanter, and Butler begged Herbert Hoover not to appoint Cardozo because Brandeis was already one kike too many on the court--struck down New Deal legislation, it was because they thought America should not become a social-democratic country.

But this time it is our New Four Horsemen--supposedly market-oriented Republican justices who have struck down RomneyCare: an approach supported by the market-oriented Republican presidents who appointed them--an approach thought up by market-oriented Republican ideologues and developed by market-oriented Republican health care experts to be the market-oriented Republican minimal state intervention to make the health-insurance market work and thus preserve its market-oriented character. Fred Rodell understood that supreme court justices were for the most part moral and political actors first and text- and precedent-oriented legal technicians second. Fred Rodell would have been astonished by judges who were for the most part neither precedent- and text-oriented legal technicians nor moral and political actors but mere partisans.

One piece of background is all-important in assessing what will happen to healthcare reform in the future.

ObamaCare is RomneyCare.

It thus has all the weaknesses of RomneyCare. It does not allow us to conduct the experiment of whether people under 65 would find a Medicare-like public option better on price and quality grounds than bargaining with private insurance companies under the exchange framework: the public option has been excised. It hands a great deal of market power to near-monopoly insurance companies in thinly-populated states--it removes the curb on their ability to raise rates provided by the existence of the option for individuals to exit the insurance system, go naked, and rely on emergency rooms. It requires that state-level bureaucracies be functional and effective when many states' politicians have laid down political markers that the reforms will fail. It relies on a bet that Medicaid can grow by 2/3 and still attract enough doctors and nurses and technicians to service its population even with its low and sub-market reimbursement rates. A substantial hole has just been blown in its structure by the other lawless piece of the decision--the Court's granting of states some kind of entitlement to past levels of Medicaid funding. And its long-run cost-saving and efficiency-increasing provisions rely on six largely untested bets:

1. That Congress will stick to its guns and actually implement the tax on high-cost health plans--which is, over the next two decades, a slow repeal of the much-loved tax preference for employer-sponsored health benefits.

2. That Congress will stick to its guns and allow the IPAB to recover the reimbursement system for doctors from the groups of specialist who have currently captured it.

3. That the bet on evidence-based medicine and comparative-effectiveness and electronic medical records will bring cost and quality in the U.S. as a whole within shouting distance of best-practice found in the Mayo Clinic.

4. That large for-profit providers and sociological groups of practitioners will not find additional ways to game the system and acquire large amounts of unconstrained market power.

5. That demand will create its own supply--that we can double the amount of health care currently received by 40 million of our presently-uninsured without demand for care outstripping the ability of our doctors, nurses, and technicians to provide it.

6. That the insurance market reforms will work--that the exchanges will function as, effectively, one large benefits department for those who do not work for large bureaucracies, and deliver high-quality insurance options at an affordable price.

Bets (1) and (2) are bets on us: on what kind of future congresses we are going to elect. The preliminary evidence from RomneyCare in Massachusetts on (3) through (6) is very hopeful--but the dive was less difficult in Massachusetts, and the success of RomneyCare in Massachusetts is only preliminary.

I am hopeful but worried.

I really wish there were a public option in the mix.

I still don't understand why they didn't simply do FEHBP for all: allow everybody to buy in to the federal employees' health-benefit program if they wished.

Berkeley Panel Next Monday: What Next for Health Care Reform?

Panelists:

• Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, U.C. Berkeley, quondam Secretary of Labor
• Jesse Choper, Earl Warren Professor of Public Law, U.C. Berkeley
• J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley
• Steve Shortell, Dean of the School of Public Health, U.C. Berkeley
• Ann O'Leary, Director, Children and Families Program, Center for the Next Generation
• Ann Marie Marciarille, Associate Professor of Law, University of Missouri at Kansas City
• Maryanne McCormick, Executive Director, Blum Center for Developing Economies, U.C. Berkeley

Moderator:

• John Ellwood, Professor of Public Policy and Program Director of the Berkeley/UCSF Branch of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program, U.C. Berkeley

Date: Monday July 2nd
Time: 10 AM to Noon
Place: Room 132, Berkeley Law School at Boalt Hall

Hoisted from the Archives: "Lord, Enlighten Thou Our Enemies"

Lord, Enlighten Thou Our Enemies: 12/13/2006:

Where Oh Where Are the Smart Conservatives?

Let us start with John Stuart Mill's prayer: "Lord, enlighten thou our enemies," prayed nineteenth-century British economist and moral philosopher John Stuarrt MIll: http://olldownload.libertyfund.org/Texts/MillJS0172/Works/Vol10/PDFs/Mill_1277.pdf:

Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers: we are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength...

In economics, John Stuart Mill's prayer have been answered. We neoliberal types are, I think, a bare plurality, but the Chicago School is powerful, articulate, brilliant, and energetic. On our left thing are less healthy, but improving: the left has escaped its destructive embrace of Marxism. And there are signs of a fundamental rethinking of economics in embryo as the borderland between economics, sociology, and psychology becomes more active.

Outside economics, however, things are much less healthy. John Stuart Mill's prayer has not been answered. Witness Mark Bauerline in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which leads me to beg: Can we please ask the Chronicle of Higher Education to print the works of a smarter class of conservatives? Calls for a diversified intellectual portfolio fall flat when the conservative assets on offer are intellectual shell corporations. The benefits of a Millian clash of views to stimulate and deepen our thoughts are nonexistent when one side in the battle of wits is unarmed.

I mean, what can one make of Mark Bauerlein's charge that liberals--like The Baffler's Thomas Frank--are biased against Friedrich Hayek because they talk about what Hayek actually said in his 1956 preface to The Road to Serfdom?

The Chronicle: 12/15/2006: "How Academe Shortchanges Conservative Thinking": Public intellectuals are less parochial, and even some of those on the left do acknowledge Hayek's eminence -- but too often with just a dismissive tack.... Thomas Frank, the editor of The Baffler, briefly summarizes Hayek's legacy with a run of high-handed jibes. He mentions Hayek's seminal The Road to Serfdom, but only to disparage it for equating "British-style socialism with the Nazi obscenity."...

But, Mark, Thomas Frank is right. I am a Hayek fan, or at least somebody who thinks it is important to wrestle with Hayek at least once once a month. Nevertheless, here is Hayek, in the 1956 preface to The Road to Serfdom:

Of course, six years of socialist government in England have not produced anything resembling a totalitarian state. But those who argue that this has disproved the thesis of The Road to Serfdom have really missed one of its main points: that "the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people." This is necessarily a slow affair... attitude[s] toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of... political institutions under which it lives.... [T]he change undergone... not merely under its Labour government but in the course of the much longer period during which it has been enjoying the blessings of a paternalistic welfare state, can hardly be mistaken.... Certainly [Weimar Germany's] Social Democrats... never approached as closely to totalitarian planning as the British Labour government has done.... The most serious development is the growth of a measure of arbitrary administrative coercion and the progressive destruction of the cherished foundation of British liberty, the Rule of Law... [E]conomic planning under the Labour government [has] carried it to a point which makes it doubtful whether it can be said that the Rule of Law still prevails in Britain...

In other circumstances, I might cavil at Thomas Frank--I would say that Hayek draws a line connecting Britain's Labour Party and Germany's Nazi Party, but that he does not quite equate them: In Hayek's view, the Labour Party has not established Nazi-like serfdom, but only placed Britain on the road to Nazi-like serfdom. However, not here: the Road to Serfdom that the Labour Party placed Britain on leads, in Hayek's estimation, to serfdom and nowhere else. And I cannot read Bauerlein's complaint as anything other than saying that it is rude and biased for Thomas Frank to, you know, talk about things Hayek actually believed and cite things Hayek actually wrote.

Bauerline is similarly irate at Michael Berube for "bias." What is the bias? It is pointing out that George Will, Michelle Malkin, and David Horowitz self-identify as conservatives. An unbiased writer, Bauerline claims, would pretend that Will, Malkin, and Horowitz do not exist at all. To note their existence is "stigmatizing" and unfair to conservatives:

In What's Liberal… ?, conservatism suffers similarly from stigmatizing references. [Michael] Bérubé focuses on the anti-academic conservatives and fills his descriptions with diagnostic asides. Gay-rights debates "transform otherwise reasonable cultural conservatives into fumbling, conspiracy-mongering fanatics." The columnist George Will is "furious," and the columnist Michelle Malkin writes "shameful" books pressing "'interpretations' that no sane person countenances," while Horowitz exaggerates "hysterically." Such psychic wants explain why, according to Bérubé, "we just don't trust cultural conservatives' track record over the long term, to be honest. We think they're the heirs of the people who spent decades dehumanizing African-Americans and immigrants, arguing chapter and verse that the Bible endorses slavery and the subjection of women"...

Note the lineage: Not a line of reasoning, but a swell of mad wrath. Not Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, T.S. Eliot, and Leo Strauss, but slaveholders, nativists, and sexists. Nothing from Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, E.D. Hirsch Jr., Harvey C. Mansfield, and the late Philip Rieff, to cite more-recent writers who may be termed "educational conservatives." The scholarly conservative case against higher education is overlooked, while Bérubé devotes too many words to the claims of discrimination by a conservative student on television's Hannity & Colmes, to a worry by a state legislator about "leftist totalitarianism," and so on...

I truly don't get Bauerlein here. First, by what warrant does Bauerline call Alexis de Tocqueville a "conservative"? Why not call John Maynard Keynes, Max Weber, and Oliver Cromwell "conservatives" as well? Burke, too, has conservative moods but is only a conservative thinker in a modern American sense if you take a chainsaw and reduce him to selected passages from Reflections on the Revolution in France. In Reflections Burke does make the argument that we should respect the traditions and institutions we have inherited because they incorporate the Wisdom of the Ancestors, but he only makes that argument because he thinks that in this case the Ancestors--not his personal ancestors, note--were wise. The argument that it was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that they would conquer, torture, and rob wogs cut no ice with Edmund Burke when he was trying to prosecute Warren Hastings. The argument that it was one of the traditions and institutions of England that power flowed to Westminster cut no ice with Burke when he was arguing for conciliation with and a devolution of power to the American colonists. To Burke, conservative arguments based on respect for the Wisdom of the Ancestors are to be deployed in support of traditions, institutions, and practices that he approves of--they are not trumps. Burke is no more a conservative than Adam Smith is a Thatcherite. And anyone who classifies Burke as a conservative has not read much beyond scattered selections from Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Second, does Bauerline really think that Berube's take on Leo "The Text Means What I Say It Means" Strauss or Harvey C. Mansfield--a man who regards the admission of Blacks to Harvard as the cause of the baneful curse of grade inflation--would be significantly different than his take on Will, Malkin, Horowitz? I agree that we should get Michael to write on Mansfield as soon as possible. But I guarantee you that it won't lead to a more favorable view of modern American conservatism.

And I truly don't get what Bauerlein means when he says "the scholarly conservative case against higher education is overlooked." Does he mean that Michael Berube overlooks the scholarly conservative case against higher education? If so, then why not say so: what is Bauerlein's purpose in removing the active subject from his sentence by placing it in the passive voice? And what is "the scholarly conservative case against higher education" anyway? Is it that people shouldn't learn about science because it will undermine their trust in throne and altar? Is it that only a small, narrow elite should go to college because the masses will get bad ideas if they read Voltaire? Bauerline never says.

Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers: we are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength...

U.S. Republican Party: "It's Even Worse than It Looks": Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein at U.C. Berkeley on May 18, 2012

Cleaned-Up Transcript

Eric Schickler: Welcome everybody to the Institute of Governmental Studies. I will say, as my first point, that a couple of weeks ago when we were scheduling this for several days after graduation, some people commented:

Do you think a lot of people will come? You know it might be a little problem.

Well, this is clearly the biggest crowd I have ever seen at IGS. We have had some great events in the past, but this one promises to be really special. I want to note there are some extra seats in the side room where you will be able to hear, for Tom and Norman will have microphones. You should be able to hear them in there. You might be more comfortable in there than standing in the back.

Brad DeLong: But no closed-circuit TV.

Eric Schickler: We did not arrange CCTV unfortunately.

Unfortunately, we can’t bring any more chairs into the room. There are fire code concerns that we have been warned about.

Looks to Me as If U.C. Davis May Need Some Different Deans, as Well as a Different Chancellor...

Deans Pomeroy and Meyers. Who is the health system counsel?

If Pomeroy and Meyers have a side of the story, they need to document it now, not say that it is "inappropriate" for them to comment on "personnel matters".

Kaustuv Basu:

Academic freedom committee at UC Davis blames administrators: At 7:02 a.m. on Sept. 30, 2010, scant hours after an op-ed he had written for the San Francisco Chronicle criticizing his university appeared in print, Michael Wilkes received an e-mail from an administrator at the University of California at Davis. Wilkes, a professor at the medical school, was told that he would no longer lead a program sequence that taught better patient care, and support for a Hungarian student exchange program he headed would be withdrawn.

Within weeks, Wilkes was told that he would be removed as director of global health for the UC Davis Health System. He also received letters from the university’s health system counsel suggesting that the university could potentially sue him for defamation over the op-ed. 

Now, a committee on academic freedom at the university that investigated allegations of intimidation and harassment against Wilkes has found them to be true. The faculty committee said in its report, a copy of which was obtained by Inside Higher Ed, that the actions of the university administrators cast doubt on its ability to be a “truthful and accountable purveyor of knowledge and services."

The group has asked the dean and other top officials at the university’s school of medicine to write letters of apology to the professor, admit to errors of judgment, stop proposed disciplinary actions against him and take steps to prevent future violations of academic freedom. This week, representatives of the university’s Academic Senate are expected to vote on similar resolutions against the administrators.

The investigation came about after Wilkes filed a written complaint to the committee in late 2010, alleging that there had been a “blatant breach of my academic freedom.” The fracas started after Wilkes, an expert on prostate cancer, co-wrote the op-ed (along with a University of Southern California professor) questioning the efficacy of the prostate-specific antigen screening test, often referred to as the PSA, only days after some faculty members at the school were part of an event that promoted  the test, according to documents. The other groups associated with the event were the American Urological Association Foundation and the National Football League.

The event "doesn’t even acknowledge a problem with prostate cancer screening,” the op-ed said. “Contrast this to the comments of Dr. Richard Ablin, the inventor of the PSA test, who has publicly called it ‘a hugely expensive public health disaster,’ with accuracy ‘hardly better than a coin toss.’ ” In his op-ed, Wilkes (and his co-author) asked why the university had supported the event and wondered “whether it just might have to do with money.”

"Testing for and treating PSA-identified cancer is a large part of the practice of many urologists so it may not be surprising that urology groups take a far more positive stance on the test than almost any other doctors," Wilkes said in the article.

The report from the university’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility does not identify the medical school’s administrators by name, only by their titles. The School of Medicine’s executive associate dean, who is referenced several times in the report, is Fred Meyers; Claire Pomeroy is the school's dean.

Meyers and Pomeroy said in an e-mail to Inside Higher Ed that it would be inappropriate to comment on personnel matters and findings that are being reviewed by the university’s Academic Senate. “We deeply regret that our actions in handling this particular personnel matter are perceived by some as a violation of academic freedom. Academic freedom is fundamental to the discovery and dissemination of knowledge, and we are personally and professionally committed to upholding that freedom within our institution,” they said. “We respect and protect the rights of our faculty to pursue their research and teaching as they wish, so long as it is in a manner that is consistent with professional standards.”

Wilkes, who is in Tanzania, could not be reached for comment.

According to the report, Meyers received several faculty complaints about the article after it appeared online and he was upset that the debate over the PSA test was playing out in the media, rather than in a scientific journals or forums. He told the committee that the timing of the actions against Wilkes were coincidental. For example, he alleged that the Hungarian student exchange program was being run poorly and Wilkes had been warned numerous times.

However, Meyers acknowledged to the committee that the e-mail sent to Wilkes “has an appearance of impropriety, based upon its close proximity to the timing of the article, even though he denies that the timing is connected,” the report said.

And although none of the threatened actions against Wilkes have been carried out, committee members felt that his academic freedom had been compromised.

James Beaumont, an emeritus professor of public health at Davis who serves on the academic freedom committee, said that the university had not retracted its threat of disciplinary actions even though it hadn’t pursued them.

Gregory Pasternack, a professor of hydrology at the university who also serves on the committee, said the threats against Wilkes were a very serious problem. “There is no question that he has had to adjust his behavior and it has affected his ability to teach, write commentary or interact with his students,” he said.

Pasternack pointed out that when a faculty committee at the University of California at San Diego criticized a dean’s decision to order a professor not to talk about and evaluate another professor’s research, the university accepted the committee’s findings and said that they regretted the administrator's statements.

“There have been egregious actions by the administrators at the medical school,” Pasternack said. “I am hoping that the university will take a contrite approach and recognize the mistakes they have made.”

Mann-Ornstein and Their "It's Even Worse than It Looks" Draw a No-Standing-Room-Left Crowd at Berkeley's Jack Citrin-Led IGS in the Days After Graduation

Glaukon: "Wow. What a crowd. And after graduation too!"

Adeimantos: "It's a lot cheaper than seeing them at the Commonwealth Club."

Glaukon: "And all this time you have claimed to be a political scientist! I always new you were an economist…"

Adeimantos: "I am no economist. I have just spent too much of my life around you horrible people…"

Summer Open Office Hours...

…will be (most) Mondays, 9-11, Espresso Roma, Ashby and College.

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: Sample Final Exam Problem Answers

201200505 Sample Final Exam FINAL Problem Answers.pdf

Berkeley Faculty Club: Does American Democracy Still Work?

Does American Democracy Still Work? Thursday, May 3, 2012:

Join us at the Faculty Club for the second panel symposium on American politics and democracy. This panel will offer three deeply informed perspectives on the origins and evolution of the economic and political angst that seem to afflict the nation. The panel will feature J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research; David Hollinger, Professor of American History; and Paul Pierson, Professor of Political Science.

---

Is American Democracy Broken?

I am here somewhat under false pretences.

I am not a political scientist.

I am an economist.

And, with this topic, I feel myself outside my comfort zone.

What I have to say is made up of two parts: The first part is an economist’s not theories or analyses but rather prejudices about how modern democracy should work. The second part is my reflection on both my experience of serving as a deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury for economic policy in the Clinton administration and from watching as my friends went to Washington in the Obama administration, in what seemed to me to be at times a bizarre surrealistic remix of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".

An economist is going to start thinking about democracy with Tony Downs’s economic theory of same. First-past-the-post electoral systems and office-seeking politicians should produce a two-party system. Office-seeking candidates simply won't join any third party because their chances of election will be too small. Only those who want to make some ideological or demonstrative point rather than to actually win office and then make policy--cough, Ralph Nader, cough--will do so. Hence the stable configuration has two parties. And then the two parties hug the center and follow policies attractive to the median voter.

Ideology will matter--politicians do not run purely for love of office but rather to then make the country into what they regard as a better place. There will be swings to the left, to the right, to the up, to the down, to the forward, to the back. But the policy views of the median voter ought, according to Tony Downs, function as a strong attractor and we should not expect the policies implemented by the politicians who get elected to deviate far from them.

Now there are qualifications. It is the median voter, not the median citizen.George W. Bush became president not because his policies came closer to the preferences of the median person who voted on that Tuesday in November but because his policies came closer to the preferences of the median Supreme Court justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor. Gerrymandering and misapportionment--cough, the Senate, cough--matter a lot. But these are qualifications. Tony Downs made a very strong case that first-past-the-post electoral systems will produce policies that the median voter likes. Thus in this sense the electorate gets the government it deserves. If there are problems, the problems are in the minds of the voters rather than in the Democratic system.

That is the economist's not theory, not analysis, but rather prejudice. theory. Political scientists will scorn it as hopelessly naïve. But it is the benchmark from which I start.

Now let me shift and talk about our experience here in America since I got to Washington in early 1993, carrying spears for Alicia Munnell in Lloyd Bentsen’s Treasury Department in the Clinton administration.

Clinton was a centrist Democrat. The Clinton administration's priorities were by and large, with exceptions--gays in the military--what you might call "Eisenhower Republican" priorities. Expand healthcare coverage so there were fewer uninsured and fewer people dumped by ambulances on the corners of the Tenderloin. But also control government healthcare costs, which were then ballooning out of control--even though we didn’t know what "ballooning out of control" really meant back then. Balance the budget. End welfare as we know it--thus buying into the Republican critique of the Depression-era belief that raising children was real work and a socially-valuable task, even if you were not married to a rich husband who was the chief executive of Bain Capital. Passing NAFTA. Creating the World Trade Organization. Strenthening Social Security through a combination of tax increases, benefit cuts, retirement-age increases, mandated private accounts requiring individuals to contribute their own money over and above Social Security (as an add-on but not a carve-out, as a supplement to and not a substitute for Roosevelt's New Deal's Social Security), etc.

All of these seemed to us in the early 1990s to be bang-on the median voter’s preferences. Eisenhower Republicans. Clinton Democratics. We in the Bentsen Treasury at the start of 1993 looked forward to doing an awful lot of technocratic work--cranking out centrist legislation approved by large bipartisan majorities.

We found Republicans cooperative on NAFTA.

We found Republicans pushing for welfare reform--but only to the extent of passing things that were so highly punitive that they could not believe any Democratic president could in good conscience sign them. But Clinton fooled them. He signed welfare reform--and then spent some time in 1996 campaigning on the message: "re-elect me because only I can undo some of the damage that I have done to the welfare system". Which was true. And which he did.

Otherwise...

Otherwise the Republicans when I got to Washington at the start of 1993 decided that they were going to adopt the Gingrich strategy: oppose everything the Democratic president proposes, especially if it had previously been a Republican proposal and priority.

That is not a strategy that would ever be adopted by anybody who wants to see their name written in the Book of Life.

But Gingrich found followers.

And so things that we in the Bentsen Treasury all expected to happen, did not happen. We had expected that sometime between January and June 1994 Lloyd Bentsen’s chief healthcare aide would sit down with Bob Dole's chief healthcare aide. We had expected that they would hammer out a deal, so that people in the future would never be as dependent on on charity for their healthcare as Bob Dole was when he returned injured from World War II.

That meeting never happened. Bob Dole decided he would rather join Gingrich to try to portray Clinton as a failure. So Bob Dole never got a legislative accomplishment. Instead, he got to lose a presidential election. And I today remember Bob Dole not as the co-architect of health care reform in 1994, but as somebody who denounced Roosevelt and Truman for getting us into those Democrat wars that saved Europe from the Nazis, China and the rest of Asia from Imperial Japan (and that have allowed South Koreans to grow five inches taller than their North Korean cousins).

As my friend Mark Schmitt wrote in his review of Geoffrey Kabaservice's book about the moderate Republicans, Rule and Ruin, the moderate Republicans were partisan Republicans first and Americans second. And so they erased their names from the Book of Life.

And in all of this back in 1993-4, it really didn’t help that various Democratic barons--Boren, Kerrey from Nebraska, Moynihan, a bunch of others who are not spoken of for their names are Unwritten--thought at the time that their principle task was to teach the Hick from Arkansas that he was not boss.

Then came Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Then came George W. Bush--installed, as I said before, by the mandate of the median voters Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. Bush's priorities were: (i) tax cuts for the rich (which attracted the support of "centrist" Democrats); (ii) an unfunded Medicare drug benefit, Part D, that also busted the budget and seemed designed more for drug companies than for Medicare beneficiaries (partisan); (iii) to casually and thoughtlessly bust the budget and undo all the budget-balancing work we in the Clinton administration had accomplished (partisan); (iv) o child left behind (bipartisan), (v) the war on Iraq (bipartisan); (vi) the deregulation of finance (which attracted the support of "centrist" Democrats; and (vii) a big right wing push for social security privatization that was purely republican, but that never passed because the Republicans shied at the jump.

We seemed to have returned to normal politics.

Certainly there was no lockstep Democratic opposition to all Bush initiatives in the hope of portraying him as a wimp and winning the next election. The policies were, all in all, very lousy--but I blamed that on (i) the voters who elected Bush--cough, Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, Kennedy--(ii) a media that refused to tell the citizens when and how Bush was lying to them, and (iii).

Then came George W. Bush in 2007 and 2008. Things seemed to be heating up again: Bush seemed not terribly interested in centrist policies. But the Democrats seemed not terribly interested either. Everybody seemed to be interested in "heightening the contradictions" and waiting for November 2008.

Then came Obama in 2009 and 2010. My friends--Christina Romer, Lawrence Summers, Peter Orszag, and company--headed off to Washington to plan a Recovery Act. A bipartisan Recovery Act. They thought it would get 25 Republican votes in the Senate easy, for itt was a squarely bipartisan fiscal stimulus: this tax cut to make the Republicans stand up and applaud, this infrastructure increase to make the Democrats applaud, this increase in aid to the states to make the governors and state legislators applaud.

It didn’t get 25 Republican votes in the Senate.

It got 3.

On healthcare reform, Barrack Obama's opening bid was the highly-Republican Heritage Foundation plan, the plan that George Romney had chosen for Massachusetts.

RomneyCare got zero Republican votes.

On budget balance, Obama’s proposals have not been the one-to-one equal amounts of tax increases and spending cuts to balance the budget of Clinton 1993 or Bush 1990. Obama’s proposals have been more along the lines of $1 of tax increases for every $5 of spending cuts.

And the Republicans rejected them.

Controlling global warming? Doing something to deal something to deal with our increasingly unequal and outsized income distribution? Strengthening financial regulation so tht things like the 2008-9 financial crisis do not happen again? No republican votes for any proposals on any of these issue areas under any circumstances--not even when the proposals Obama makes were baked in Republican think tanks even five years ago.

What’s going on?

I look around and I see a number of things:

• I see a press corps that is unconcerned with policy substance and the future of America and devotes itself to calling politics like a basketball game: "who wins the week?" "who wins the day?" Lately it’s been: "who wins the morning?"

• An electorate that in my fears appears to want to be led by a strong or a competent leader--or rather by a leader whom the press corps tells it wins lots of mornings--and that does not want to see its policy preferences actually enacted and satisfied, or that does not know what its policy preferences are.

• Multiple blockage points in our outdated eighteenth-century orrery of a political system that froze the distribution of power between President, Senate, and House where the distribution of power between King George III, Lords, and Commons had been in 1776--and thus that makes it easy to block things, and hence very easy to portray a president of the other party as a hapless failure.

• A recognition that if you make blocking everything the president of the other party does your highest priority, you do have a good chance of portraying him as a weakling and doing well in the next election cycle.

• 1994 and 2010 demonstrate that this nihilistic, anti-patriotic, un-American strategy works.

• Democratic barons--cough, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson, cough--who remind me of Wile E. Coyote standing in the desert after the Roadrunner has dropped a 500 ton weight from above: frozen and watching in place as the shadow covering him grows larger. Simply put, they do not understand that when they face the electorates of Nebraska and Arkansas, saying "but I helped block Obama from doing liberal things!" is not a strategy that wins them reelection. But "I backed the president, and the president did X, Y and Z, and look at how much better things are" might well be.

• On top of all these, everybody below the top 5% of the American income distribution today is not living any better than their predecessors did a generation ago. We all have lots of cheap electronic toys (I love mine). But offsetting that we have more congestion, longer commutes, and more expensive houses. For the top 5% things are better. For the rest of America, it looks as though they may well not be.

• Right now, for every 13 workers in America, we have one person who would be working in normal times--who was working back in 2007--and who now is not working. That means that two-thirds of American households today have one or more people in their or their parents' or their siblings' or their childrens' households who would be working in normal times and is not working now. At the moment more people still think that this is George W. Bush’s fault than think that it is Barack Obama’s. But everyone agrees it is the governments fault somehow--although they are not sure how.

Is this broken democracy? Does our politics still work?

I am just an economist.

I am not sure what the definition of broken politics is.

I am looking for enlightenment from my other two panelists.

Most Berkeley Students Do Not Know That 2^5=32 and 2^10≈1000

How can they expect to survive in the modern world without knowing these things?

And why haven't they learned them?

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: Problem Set 9 Answers

20120502 ps9 solutions.pdf

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: Final Review

20120430 Econ 1.pdf

Hoisted from the Archives: Brad DeLong: Econ 1: U.C. Berkeley: Spring 2012: Partha Dasgupta: Prologue to "Economics: A Very Short Introduction"

Brad DeLong: Econ 1: U.C. Berkeley: Spring 2012: Partha Dasgupta: Prologue to "Economics: A Very Short Introduction":

Becky's world

Becky, who is 10 years old, lives with her parents and an older brother Sam in a suburban town in America's Midwest. Becky's father works in a firm specializing in property law. Depending on the firm's profits, his annual income varies somewhat, but is rarely below 145,000 US dollars ($145,000). Becky's parents met at college. For a few years her mother worked in publishing, but when Sam was born she decided to concentrate on raising a family. Now that both Becky and Sam attend school, she does voluntary work in local education. The family live in a two-storey house. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms upstairs and a toilet downstairs, a large drawing-cum-dining room, a modern kitchen, and a family room in the basement. There is a plot of land at the rear - the backyard - which the family use for leisure activities.

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: Problem Set 8 Solutions

Econ 1 - PS8 Solutions Draft.pdf

The U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Search

Bob Jacobsen, Academic Senate Chair- Berkeley Div:

Dear Colleagues,

The process for selecting Chancellor Birgeneau's successor is moving forward… the selection committee has been (mostly) formed…. The more central part is five faculty members, plus President Yudof and Regent Chair Lansing serving ex-officio… Fiona Doyle… Marjorie Shapiro… Donald McQuade… Robert Powell… Judith Stepan-Norris….

Why Do 51B Buses Travel in Packs?

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: There Will Be Wheeler Auditorium "Office Hours" Friday 11-12

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: Remember the Rule of72!

For the purposes of this course, you cannot go wrong if you assume:

• At a growth rate of g percent per year, a quantity will accomplish d doublings in 72d/g years.

Remember this: carry it with you always (or at least until the final exam is over…)

Final Exam: Introduction to Economics: MONDAY, MAY 7, 2012: 3-6P: 100 HAAS PAVIL

Course:  ECONOMICS 1 P 001 LEC:

Course Title:  Introduction to Economics
Date/Time:  MONDAY, MAY 7, 2012   3-6P
Location:  100 HAAS PAVIL
Instructor:  DELONG, J B
Course Control Number:  22303
Final Exam Group:  3

Academics to the Barricades!: Long Past Time to Stop Publishing in High-Cost Journals...

Henry Farrell writes:

Harvard Library pushes open access: This looks like a bombshell announcement to me (I’m not aware of the internal politics behind the announcement, but I’m presuming that Robert Darnton’s fingerprints are all over it). Discuss.

We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library.… [M]ajor periodical subscriptions, especially to electronic journals published by historically key providers, cannot be sustained.… It is untenable for contracts with at least two major providers to continue on the basis identical with past agreements. Costs are now prohibitive…. [P]lease consider the following options open to faculty and students (F) and the Library (L), state other options you think viable, and communicate your views: Make sure that all of your own papers are accessible by submitting them to DASH in accordance with the faculty-initiated open-access policies (F). Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access (F). If on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be published as open access material, or independently from publishers that practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning (F).

Some of this may be hardball bargaining, with the two unnamed providers (one of which, I presume, has a name starting with E[lsevier-North Holland]). But not very much – to state the problem so bluntly, and to encourage faculty to stop publishing in, and resign from the boards of non-open access journals sounds more like pushing for system-change than for a better deal within the current system. This may be the beginning of the end.

It ought to be not just the beginning of the end, but the end itself.

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley; Sample Final Exam

Note that this sample final exam is much longer than the real final exam could possibly be…

20120417 Sample Final Exam.pdf

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: Files for April 23, 2012: Budget Economics

• Slides
• Audio

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: Files for April 25, 2012: Growth Economics

• Slides
• Audio

Econ 1: Spring 2012: U.C. Berkeley: Files for April 18, 2012: Inflation Economics

• Slides
• Audio

Econ 191: April 17, 2011: Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy

Download 20120417 econ 191 fiscal policy in a depressed economy

Five years ago, there was a near-complete consensus that aggregate demand management was the exclusive province of central banks and their conventional open-market operations. Problems of legislative process of implementation meant that fiscal policy worked more slowly than conventional monetary policy. Even should an economy find itself in a liquidity trap, whatever that means, credible commitments by central banks to hit future nominal spending and nominal exchange rate targets still seemed to dominate fiscal policy.

Today because we are in a depressed economy we think differently. Or do we? How differently do we think, and why?

Suggestions that we should move away from exclusive reliance on central banks and conventional open-market operations in a liquidity trap have three possible justifications:

• Our uncertainty about what is the right model of the economy.
• Our belief that conventional open-market operation monetary policy tools weaken in situations like the depressed economy of the present--that in a depressed economy there is a lack of power on the part of central banks.
• A possible lack of will on the part of central banks: a belief on the part of central bankers that while spending flows ought to be higher, it ought to be elected governments that take steps to make it so.