Selling a kidney: would the option necessarily be beneficial? Posted: 24 Mar 2014 01:00 PM PDT This is the question asked by Timothy Taylor at this blog Conversable Economist. Important here is the claim, popular among economists, that offering people an additional option--in this case to sell a kidney--must make the people better off, because they dont need to choose the option, but if they wish to do so, they can. That is to say, the basic idea that trade is voluntary. Taylor is responding to an argument by Simon Rippon against this idea, [...] that when an option is available, at least some people will find themselves under social pressure to select that option, or will be held... [Click on the headline above for the full story] Monday Micro – Ebola outbreak in Guinea Posted: 24 Mar 2014 03:01 AM PDT The news is full of reports of an outbreak of Ebola in the west African country of Guinea. Ebola is one of a group of related viruses which cause viral haemorrhagic fever. There is no vaccine or treatment for these viruses. So far reports are that there have been at least 80 cases with 59 [...] [Click on the headline above for the full story] Don’t moan about it if you haven’t actually taught it. Posted: 23 Mar 2014 08:25 PM PDT At a recent staff meeting here, the topic of students writing ability came up (yet again)! Why are our engineering students and physics students just so bad at writing in whole sentences, using correction punctuation and using consistent tenses? Why cant they string four relevant sentences together to make a paragraph that actually makes a point? In short, why cant they make themselves clearly understood in written form? We have lots of stories of despair, and much of it is directed at the secondary school system, or lecturers in other departments not doing their job properly, or the... [Click on the headline above for the full story] Economics, theory, and data Posted: 23 Mar 2014 05:00 PM PDT This post was titled “Why data alone is not enough for economic inference”. I was all prepared to write a post on the fact we need data and theory in order to do economic inference and create knowledge. I had links (*,*,*,*,*). Then Noah Smith wrote this like really good post on the issue, so […] [Click on the headline above for the full story] Dental fluorosis: badly misrepresented by FANNZ Posted: 23 Mar 2014 02:02 PM PDT Ideologically motivated political activists often make extreme claims. Perhaps they feel their claims will never be challenged because they are aimed at their own supporters. Sometimes I think it is because they just don’t get challenged enough by reasonable people. … Continue reading → [Click on the headline above for the full story] Dental fluorosis: badly misrepresented by FANNZ Posted: 23 Mar 2014 02:02 PM PDT Ideologically motivated political activists often make extreme claims. Perhaps they feel their claims will never be challenged because they are aimed at their own supporters. Sometimes I think it is because they just don’t get challenged enough by reasonable people. … Continue reading → [Click on the headline above for the full story] It appears Alfred Marshall is not guilty after all Posted: 23 Mar 2014 02:00 PM PDT One of the strangest things about basic microeconomics is that we write demand curves in the form,q=D(p)that is, quantity demanded is a function of price,but we draw them in the form,The diagram is wrong, as any mathematician will tell you, since given... [Click on the headline above for the full story] World Water Day, 22 March Posted: 20 Mar 2014 06:43 PM PDT By Daniel Collins Since 1993, March 22 has been World Water Day. Its purpose is to raise awareness of the importance of water to society and of the challenges people face in securing sufficient and safe water. Like many efforts run by the United Nations, it fosters collaboration between the economic and hydrologic haves and [...] [Click on the headline above for the full story] Genter on cost-benefit Posted: 20 Mar 2014 05:00 PM PDT The Greens Julie Anne Genter provides some helpful comments on the cost-benefit assessment cited in their cycling proposal.This is going to be an incomplete answer and I cant promise to get fully immersed in a lengthy debate. Short answer: we used th... [Click on the headline above for the full story] Soda taxes revisited Posted: 20 Mar 2014 01:00 PM PDT Soda taxes dont do much to affect obesity. A new paper by Fletcher et al in Health Economics looks at effects of American soda taxes across U.S. states. While soda taxes arent common, differential sales taxes on soda arent uncommon; soda is o... [Click on the headline above for the full story]
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 07:24:07 +0000