Summertime Rolls: Flipping Out, Going Bananas, and Finally Tying the Knot

June 13th, 2013 by David Gerard

It’s been a while since we updated the blog here, so let’s kick off the summer by getting back to the basics.

First, the Food Lab grills us on our grilling knowledge.  Do you think you should only flip your steak once?  Perhaps you are cooking your steaks wrong.   Wouldn’t surprise me.

Next up, Radius Foundation director Terry Moore gets up at a TED conference and tells us we are tying our shoes wrong. Who knew?

Finally, an oldie but goodie, Steven Landsburg wonders whether we are peeling our bananas from the wrong end.  Bananas have been a hot topic in both my Econ 300 course and Econ 100 courses.  On the one hand, they are both delicious and nutritious.  On the other hand, one of our “Economic Naturalists” wonders why they are such a scarce resource on Warch first.

Who says a liberal education isn’t transformative?

 

Tags: , ,
Posted in In Case You Were Wondering, Though You Probably Weren't | No Comments »

Econ Dept Picnic, Friday at 4 p.m., Hiett Patio

May 29th, 2013 by David Gerard

The Department Picnic is an annual ritual at Lawrence, but one where we in the Economics Department haven’t quite mastered.  This is partly because many of the faculty are relatively new, and partly because we just aren’t that into rituals.

That said, we will be communing as a Department this Friday, May 31, from 4:00 to 5:30ish on and around the Hiett first floor patio (Location subject to change).

If you plan to attend, please indicate your intention here

Your affirmation on the Doodle poll will allow us to procure appropriate levels of pizza and SuperChill® (the empirically validated cola choice of the Economics Department), and will also help us to ration in the event that supplies run short.

We  look forward to seeing you there.

Posted in Event | Comments Off

Enterprise Proposals by Students in Entrepreneurship and Finance

May 27th, 2013 by Merton Finkler

Come one, come all to hear budding entrepreneurs present their proposals to a group of “sharks”, as in the venture capitalists who review business proposals on the ABC program Shark Tank.

The presentations will take place Tuesday, May 28th and Thursday, May 30th from 2:30 – 4:00 in Cinema.  See details below.

Tuesday, May 28th

 

Time             Enterprise                                Entrepreneurs

2:30pm            ReactSTART                                       Pat Vincent & Luke Barthelmess

3:00pm            Café Crossfit                                      Tanner DeBettencourt & Alex Brewer

3:30pm            4.0: The Place to Be At                   Aimen Khan, Minh Nguyen, James Maverick &  Nathan Nichols-Weliky-Fearing

Thursday, May 30th                                     

 Time                  Enterprise                                          Entrepreneurs

2:30pm            Kefir Mania                                        Max Randolph, Tony Darling & Carl Byers

3:00pm            Ivory Conscience Gaming            Babajide Ademola, Yuto Sawaki &  Will Evans

3:30pm            Care for Caregivers                         Jake Zimmerman & Kabindra Dhakal

 

Posted in General Interest | Comments Off

No, Really, It’s Hard to Predict Stock Prices

May 16th, 2013 by David Gerard

The Economist and Vox each have nice pieces up on what economists do and do not agree upon.   To take the second part first, the piece from Vox shows that there is a pretty large degree of consensus on this issues.

What this shows is that out of about 80 questions, economists completely agree on just over 30 (about 40%) and agree between 90 and 99% of the time on about three of four questions.   There are very few things that economists don’t generally agree upon, and those appear to be issues where “little” research has been done by anyone.  Where research has been done, economists seem to agree on pretty much everything.

Next, we find out some of the central issues where not only do we do agree, we adamantly disagree with the conventional public view.  For example, we all seem to agree that it’s hard to predict stock prices!  (Who knew?!?).  I think we are disabused of the notion early on when we sit down with our pet scheme and lose our shirts. My “investments” tutorials typically go something like this — “put your money in an index fund.”

We also agree that price instruments are better than fuel economy standards (I’ve been saying that for years), that supply & demand factors drive oil prices, and “buy local” policies don’t save jobs, among other things.  It’s interesting to me that when it comes to net benefits of the stimulus, our views dovetail with the public views (i.e., who knows).  

We previously posted about this important topic right here.

Tags: ,
Posted in General Interest | Comments Off

Economics Colloquium, Tuesday at 4:30

May 14th, 2013 by David Gerard

On the Desirability of Unemployment Accounts

Christian Zimmerman

Assistant Vice President

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Unemployment insurance programs are often criticized because they encourage various forms of shirking: the unemployed may not try hard enough to look for a new job or may turn down reasonable job offers. Also, the taxes that finance such programs are thought to decrease the labor supply.  This talk will look at an alternative way of insuring against unemployment events through personalized unemployment accounts. We will discuss their advantages but also warn against potential pitfalls. The discussion will be backed up by simulations performed on the labor markets of Oregon, Austria and France.

Tuesday May 14

Steitz Hall 102

4:30 p.m.

Tags: ,
Posted in Event | Comments Off

That’s Why We Have the Q Requirement

May 10th, 2013 by David Gerard

The New York Times reports on a fascinating new exercise regimen: The Scientific 7-Minute Workout.

How can you get all that done in just seven minutes?  Well, first, the routine consists of twelve intense 30-second exercises (12 exercises x 30 seconds/exercise = six minutes).  Then we have to add a 10-second rest period between each exercise (11 rest periods x 10 seconds / period = 1 minute, 50 seconds).

Let’s see, so the 7-minute workout consists of six minutes of exercise and 1:50 worth of breaks…  Don’t mess with science, I guess. 

Tags: , ,
Posted in General Interest | Comments Off

Summers v. Hubbard

May 9th, 2013 by David Gerard

The Sunday New York Times has a contrast of Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard on our collective economic future.

Summers is a past president of Harvard and economic-adviser extraordinaire to President Obama.   Hubbard is the dean of the NYU Business School, and star of this ‘stinging’ sendup of Ben Bernanke.

Neither lacks confidence, that’s for sure.

Tags: , ,
Posted in General Interest | Comments Off

Hayek on the Price System

May 9th, 2013 by David Gerard

It’s hard for me to give a better example for the 300 students than Hayek talking about tin.  This is from the 1945 AER piece, “The Use of Knowledge in Society“:

It is worth contemplating for a moment a very simple and commonplace instance of the action of the price system to see what precisely it accomplishes. Assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say, tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated. It does not matter for our purpose—and it is very significant that it does not matter—which of these two causes has made tin more scarce. All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere and that, in consequence, they must economize tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favor of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin, and their substitutes, and so on; and all this without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity—or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.—brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process.

Tags: ,
Posted in Class Notes | Comments Off

TEDx Lawrence

May 1st, 2013 by David Gerard

Professor Ádám Galambos spearheaded bringing a TEDx event to the Lawrence University campus this Friday, and I have been along for the ride.   The theme is Reimagining the Liberal Education, and we have some impressive people from around the country coming in to re-imagine things with us.  The university’s TEDx Lawrence site will contain the live web feed.  The Appleton Post Crescent posted a story Wednesday, and here’s what Ádám had to say:

Liberal education has a great deal to contribute to society. It’s up to us to figure out how we’re going to be a part of creating our future.

I hope this will result not just in intellectual exchange, although that’s really important, but also action, taking those new ideas to change in the world.

Professor Scott Corry will be featured on a Post-Crescent webcast tomorrow as well! (Link here)

Incoming Randolph College President, Bradley W. Bateman, will be on hand talk about the role of advising at liberal arts colleges.   This is a timely piece given that advising at large universities came under fire earlier this week.  Also, coincidentally enough, President Bateman was my undergraduate advisor once upon a time, though I don’t recall him ever suggesting that I should go to graduate school and become a professor (?).

One of the marquee speakers is Jeff Selingo of the Chronicle of Higher Education and author of the about-to-be-released College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What it Means for Students.  That talk is set for 9:35 a.m. Friday.  We are also very excited to have Andy Chan from Wake Forest coming in to talk about links between education and career development.  And, one of the co-founders of Coursera, Daphne Koller from Stanford, will join us via video feed to tell us about the MOOCs.

Wow!

LU has a strong presence as well, with President Beck and Dean Pertl sharing their visions of the future. The tireless Bob Perille (’80), founder and champion of of the Lawrence Scholars programs, will be on hand to talk about (you guessed it) the Lawrence Scholars programs. Rick Davis (’90) from George Mason will invoke the role of the liberal arts in fomenting collaboration and Jennifer Herek (’90) will be on hand to talk about spreading the liberal arts to technical education in Europe.

In addition, Jenny Kehl from UW-Milwaukee will be on hand to talk about how central collaboration and interdisciplinary work will be to tackling some of our toughest environmental issues.

All TEDx events showcase videos from TED events, and as part of that we will be watching the Erik Brynjolfsson video that Professor Finkler discussed in a previous post.

The full schedule is here. 

It should be a good one.  Professor Brandenberger and I were co-organizers, and fortunately John handled some of the more delicate interpersonal matters.  We’re interested in seeing how this goes over.  If you have a few minutes, tune in to the webcast and let us know what you think.  Here is that link.  

  

 

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Event | Comments Off

Will the US Economy Continue to Grow at 20th Century Rates? Robert Gordon and Eric Brynjolffson Square Off in a Lively Debate

April 27th, 2013 by Merton Finkler

This week Lawrence will be hosting a TEDx conference on re-imagining liberal education.  Thanks to Professors Galambos and Gerard, and a few other colleagues from other departments, this live discussion will be video streamed for all of us to watch.

Earlier this month, another TED conference took place.  This one featured economist Robert Gordon (Northwestern) and Eric Brynjolffson (MIT).  Some of you will be familiar with the arguments.  Those who took Capital and Growth last year read Gordon’s paper on the headwinds that will drive economic growth back to the level experienced prior to the first industrial revolution in the 18th century in England.   Gordon believes that our most productive innovations are behind us and innovation will be insufficient to enable us to sustain the 2% per capita real growth of the 20th century.

Some of you may recall the discussion we had in one of our reading groups of Brynjolffson and McAfee’s book, Race Against the Machine. In his TED talk, Brynjolffson explains why innovation is far from over and that we have the potential to continue the rate of growth of economic prosperity that we experienced in the 20th century.  Of course, the challenge, as he puts it is: “can we race with the machine?”

View both talks as well as a follow-up debate between these two economists here.

Tags: ,
Posted in Entrepreneurship, General Interest, Innovation | Comments Off

In Which The Atlantic Monthly Sees the Light

April 25th, 2013 by David Gerard

The cover of the May Atlantic Monthly states flatly that  ”We Will Never Run Out of Oil.”

In its typically exhaustive style, The Atlantic takes a few thousand words to come to this conclusion.

This, of course, is what pretty much any off-the-shelf economist has been saying for years, though we didn’t need a series of enormous technologically driven supply shocks to lead us down the path to that conclusion.  Here’s Tim Haab on why Peak Oil doesn’t matter if markets are at all functional.  Here’s a peek at oil futures.

Oh, and by the way, Peak Oil?

Tags: ,
Posted in General Interest | Comments Off

Colorado College Economics

April 25th, 2013 by David Gerard

Prof. Dan Johnson sans Safari Hat

We’ve received late notice that the Colorado College is hosting its 2nd Annual Research Symposium, and we are invited.

Can’t get out to CC in an expeditious fashion?  Well, come join me in Briggs 223 where I will stream a few of the presentations LIVE.    There are a couple of presentations on innovation, capped off with the big kahuna himself, Dan Johnson, talking about some sort of esoteric bidding system.

All times are CDT.

  • 3:40 p.m. Bryce Daniels.  “Drilling for innovation:  examining induced innovation in the oil and gas industry.”
  • 4:00 p.m.  Rafael A. Arenas.  “The value of social networks on innovation.”
  • 4:20 p.m. Dan Johnson.  “Bidding for Classes: Course Allocation using the Colorado College Auction System”

Tags: ,
Posted in Event | Comments Off

Economics Colloquium

April 16th, 2013 by David Gerard

Mark Montgomery and Irene “Tinker” Powell will be on campus this week to deliver the next Economics Colloquium address, “Baby Markets: Thinking the Unthinkable in International Adoption.” The talk is Thursday at 4:30 in Steitz 102.  This is quite a topic, where the rules of the game have pretty significant distributional consequences, and it will be interesting to see how this sorts out.

Montgomery and Powell are professors at Grinnell College, and are well known for lighter work, including “Should Economists Marry Economists?” and their economics murder mystery, Theoretically Dead.*

 

Baby Markets: Thinking the Unthinkable in International Adoption

Mark Montgomery and Irene Powell

Grinnell College

Adoption laws, national and international, outlaw payments to families for relinquishing their children. This does not stop “baby selling,” but rather moves it into the hands of criminals. History suggests that restricting mutually beneficial exchanges can make worse the problems it is supposed to solve. Is it time to think the unthinkable in international adoption?

The talk examines how current adoption laws create incentives for fraud and other forms of abuse, identifies “moral hazards” abuse created by the legal structure of adoption, and explores how relaxing restrictions on compensating birth mothers would change incentives and behavior of birth parents, adoptive parents and adoption facilitators.

 

 

*As far as I know, they are both economics professors, though the Publisher’s blurb says one is a philosophy professor.  I suppose teaching labor economics long enough can turn anyone somewhat philosophical.

Tags: ,
Posted in Event | Comments Off

‘The Benefits are the Costs’ and Other Links

April 15th, 2013 by David Gerard

I’m just going through a backlog of interesting stories to share with my Econ 280 class.  First up, Jonathan Adler points us to a short story on a residential subdivision’s successful legal challenge to the construction of a home windmill.  The residents of a the Forest Hills subdivision just outside of Carson City, Nevada, argued that the proposed windmill would sully their sight-lines and provide interminable noise from the turning of the rotors. This is a solid example of what Shavell would call an ex ante property rule, and you can read all about it in the Las Vegas Sun.  

Speaking of benefits, the fall Journal of Economic Perspectives has another symposium on contingent valuation.  Twenty years ago, Peter Diamond and Jerry Hausman famously asked, “Is Some Number Better than No Number?”   Although Hausman seems to have found some clarity on the issue, I’d say for the profession the question remains unresolved.

Next up in the news, we have a consortium  of cities and businesses is looking at a $200 million reservoir project to satisfy all its water needs, but it is contemplating paying rice farmers $100 million not to farm instead.

Is this Coasean bargaining inevitable? I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Finally, we have Thomas Kinnaman offering the classic economist’s take down of two benefit-cost analyses of shale gas production (i.e., fracking):

The costs of natural gas extraction include, paradoxically, all of the items listed as “benefits” in the two reports discussed above. Natural gas extraction requires labor, capital equipment, pipelines, and raw materials. These economic resources, in a fully employed economy, could have been allocated to other uses. The price paid to secure these resources from these other industries indicates the value of these resources to these other industries (had their value been higher, the market price would have been higher). Thus, the quantity of each economic resource times its market price – in fact 13 the total expenses by the industry as gathered in the surveys – represent the cost of utilizing scarce economic resources to gas extraction.

This block quote is a battle we economists will probably never win.  When I tell my students “jobs” are a cost not a benefit, they look at me as if I suddenly began speaking Swahili.   The paper is from Ecological Economics, and an ungated version is available here.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Class Notes | Comments Off

Entrepreneurial Lawrentians in the Con

April 10th, 2013 by Adam Galambos

I encourage all who have any interest in entrepreneurship to hear about arts entrepreneurship from these two Lawrentians. This is of interest not only to musicians, but to anyone who has an interest in arts or in entrepreneurialism.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Arts, Entrepreneurship, Event, Life after Lawrence | Comments Off

« Older Entries