An Interview with Ed Conard

Click here to watch me interview Ed Conard about his new book, The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class for C-SPAN Book TV’s “After Words.”

The Triumph of the Less Educated

In a Times column back in July, I noted that the Brexit vote was strongly correlated with education. The recent presidential election shows the same pattern: "College graduates backed Clinton by a 9-point margin (52%-43%), while those without a college degree backed Trump 52%-44%."  The graph below shows that it is unusual for the more educated and less educated to be in such substantial disagreement.

Source.

The podcast is live

You can hear my interview with Frank Conway over at the Economic Rockstar website.

On the Election Results

I did not support Mr. Trump, but now that he is our President-elect, I wish him well.

To my many friends who are now freaking out, I encourage you to take a deep breath and calm down. Our political and economic system is more robust than you sometimes give it credit for being.

Earlier this year, I wrote:

People often ask me whether it is frustrating to work in Washington, noting how hard it is to get anything done. Yes, in some ways, it is. This episode is only one example where our good policy (as my White House colleagues and I saw it) was subverted by an uncooperative legislature.

            Yet, over time, I have come to appreciate that frustration for those in policy jobs is not a bug in the system but rather a feature. The founding fathers, in their great wisdom, built this tension into the system. In high school civics classes, it goes by the name “checks and balances.” 

A common lament is that there is too much gridlock in Washington, and maybe there is. But imagine that your least favorite candidate wins the next presidential election. Might you be grateful when the new President and his or her CEA chair become frustrated while trying to implement their new ideas for economic policy?

What is it like to win a Nobel Prize?

Before the Flood

A movie, approximately 1 1/2 hours, on climate change, with yours truly making a brief appearance at around 59:40.  (Update: Sorry, it seems no longer to be freely available.)

Coming soon

If you teach introductory economics, you might be interested to know that my publisher is hosting a number of webinars in the coming weeks to show some of the changes and enhancements to the 8th edition of my favorite textbook and to demonstrate the digital technology that supports the text. You can sign up here.  (The new edition will be coming off the presses in about a month, ready for spring classes.)

Worst of Both Worlds

Alan D. Viard and Sita Nataraj Slavov say the U.S. tax system is the wrong compromise between Republican and Democratic ideals.

Update on Carbon Washington

An Upcoming Interview

This coming Friday, I will be interviewed by Frank Conway at an Economics Teaching Conference.  You can hear a live broadcast of the interview by registering here.

In Praise of High Prices

Click here to read my column in Sunday's New York Times.

Normative Ethics and Welfare Economics

For the next couple days, I will be hanging out at this conference.  Various papers available at the link.

Why Are Interest Rates So Low? Causes and Implications

A new talk by my erstwhile dissertation adviser, Stanley Fischer.

What I've been doing

Today and tomorrow, I am attending this conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Papers and some videos available at the link.

Trump's Economist

A profile in The New Yorker.

The Nobel

Congratulations to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström.

New Videos from the NBER

1. "The Dramatic Economics of the U.S. Market for Higher Education," Caroline Hoxby's Martin Feldstein Lecture.

2. "Matching Markets and Market Design," the 2016 Methods Lectures, which were presented by Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Parag Pathak, and Al Roth.

3. "The Economic Consequences of Brexit," a panel discussion with presentations by Richard Baldwin, Jeffrey Frankel, Anil Kashyap, Helene Rey, and Thomas Sampson.

How Trump paid so little in taxes.

Josh Barro explains one theory of the case.

Harvard Scholars on President Obama

The Harvard Gazette surveys a bunch of faculty.

Fight for Fifteen?

My friend Allen Sanderson, from the University of Chicago, questions the idea of a $15 minimum wage.