What are /r/badeconomics' favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/womens-march-abortion.html?rref=us&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&pgtype=Multimedia

Between this and the Berner leader of the march that excluded Hillary and people tied to her campaign, it doesn't look like that party unity in the face of Trump thing is going well.

Honestly, read your comment again, and really try to understand the nuance of this R1. Because it does address fundemental assumptions in your ~~prax~~ model.

Edit: I highly recommend The Accidental Theorist, which is a shortish slate piece by Krugman.

All I want for Christmas is for media outlets to stop calling Ben Stein an economist.

Of course he is right that Trump doesn't know anything about economics. Lucky guess.

> "Since the 1970s technology advance has been arguably more marginal in nature". WTF!? I lost any respect I had for this post at that line. Moving to the digital age is not some marginal improvement.

I'm paraphrasing Robert Gordon; internet is marginal relative to electricity, MRIs are marginal relative to antibiotics, etc. But feel free to respect whoever you want.

Here's the economics guide I typically recommend for newcomers:

Pirate a intermediate micro and macro textbook and do the math problems. Mankiw's macro and Krugman's micro are good for basic stuff. For intermediate+ macro textbooks we used blanchard and Sanjay Chugh's for advanced stuff. I forget what textbooks we used for intermediate and advanced micro but any textbook that has math for the models listed below should be good.

The recommended model order I would say is:

• Supply and demand, PPF's
• Utility, derive supply and demand curves from them
• Basic neoclassical macro(the supply and demand macro). Fractional reserve banking, how interest works, savings=investment. Basic Keynesian stuff like keynesian crosses, multiplier effect.
• Game theory+utility and risk for micro practice, Monopolistic competition and monopoly power
• Intermediate Keynesian stuff like ISLM, phillips curve for different expectations of inflation.
• Solow Swan immediately afterwards.
• Trade theory: Ricardian, HO(HO is kinda crappy but you need it in the event of DRS industries), Krugman
• More micro stuff but with lagrangians and more utility.
• Advanced macro models. In my Uni we did RBC and New Keynesian stuff with inter-temporal euler equations.

Unreal.

Actual passage from The Armchair Economist, 2012 updated edition.

"Should we, as a society, give up an hour of The Donald in order to see an hour of campaign ads?"

I GUESS WE DON'T HAVE TO MAKE THAT CHOICE ANY LONGER HUH

I'm in the middle of argument with some libertarians on local discussion forum explaining global demand driven recessions and how quantative easing can help ease out negative effects, what supply shock is and why inflation is not theft, pasting some graphs and all, and all I get in return is "explain this with logical sequence of implications" and "look at our debt it's in TRILLIONS, next crisis will sweep us from the face of the earth". I like those dudes, but hate talking economics with them. Every time someone in economics discussion ask about what to read they, obviously, point him to Rothbard's "Man, Economy and State" or Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson".

Why there's so many of them? Why are they so vocal?

/rant

What the fuck did you just fucking say about Milton Friedman, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the University of Chicago, and I’ve been involved in economic advice to Chile, and I have over 300 confirmed helicopter drops. I am trained in cessation of government intervention in currency markets and I’m the top floater in the entire field of US academics. You are nothing to me but just another peg. I will price you the fuck out with precision the likes of which have never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit about Friedman over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of neoliberal shills across the Reddit Economics Network and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the market, maggot. The market that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your socialism. You’re fucking dead in the long run, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can recount Capitalism and Freedom in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my invisible hand. Not only am I extensively trained in sequential sampling, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the NBER and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the market price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit the fractional reserve monetary system all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

See my replies to Homeboy_Jesus and themcattacker above!

As for pop econ book recommendations, here's a quick list I made for a friend the other day:

1. Finance: The Myth of the Rational Market
2. Platforms and Auctions: The Inner Lives of Markets
3. Econ of labor and automation: The Wealth of Humans
4. History of technology and productivity: The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Economism, which you've already read)
5. Alternative big ideas: Concrete Economics
6. Yet more libertarian-bashing: Phishing for Phools
7. Behavioral Econ: Misbehaving
8. Inequality: Capital in the Twenty-First Century
9. International Econ: The Globalization Paradox
10. General Econ: The Undercover Economist (and the sequel)

So I just learned that there is this little website called Sci-hub that seems to be like a Piratebay for academic papers. I am drawing your attention to it because having trivially easy ungated access to it seems every paper I can imagine is mortifying. I hope all of the other users here agree and will not abuse this information.

ngl kinda hyped for Caplan's open borders manga thing.

> The article makes the general point that the only reason poor countries are poor is because of a lack of property rights (or enforcement thereof). They use a bunch of anecdotes and talking points from a think tank to convince us of this.

FWIW, one of the authors (an economist) also has a pretty well regarded book on this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CW0MA1S/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

What the fuck did you just fucking say about Milton Friedman, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the University of Chicago, and I’ve been involved in much economic advice to Chile, and I have over 300 confirmed helicopter drops. I am trained in cessation of government intervention in currency markets and I’m the top floater in the entire field of US academics. You are nothing to me but just another peg. I will price you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit about Friedman over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of shills across the /r/badeconomics network and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your socialism. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can recount Capitalism and Freedom in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my invisible hand. Not only am I extensively trained in sequential sampling, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the NBER and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

My advice is scattered everywhere.

As a high school student, I would suggest:

1. Read some sort of pop-econ intro book. I read Landsburg's The Armchair Economist but some are put off by his conservative style; I understand that Harford's The Undercover Economist is the current go-to favorite. Harford's The Undercover Economist Strikes Back is an excellent pop-macro book.

2. Read some classics! Try Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom or Free to Choose, and Galbraith's The New Industrial State or The Affluent Society. Read both Friedman and Galbraith. That will get you a feel for "big picture" stuff before you get into the weeds of models and math. Krugman's books from the 1990s -- The Accidental Theorist and Pop Internationalism -- are also good for you at this stage.

3. Pick up an intro book and start working through it. I taught intro courses out of Cowen and Tabarrok's Modern Principles book for several years. Another good book is Acemoglu, Laibson, and List's intro book. There is also an intro book by Mankiw, and yet another by Krugman. They all say similar things; one is enough.

4. Read the financial/econ news. Good dailies are the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. A good weekly is The Economist.

5. Read the "easy" blogs: Krugman, Mankiw, Cowen, Thoma. Later you'll delve into the technical and nerdy blogs: Sumner, Rowe, Cochrane, Williamson, Wren-Lewis...but learn to walk before you try to run.

6. Participate on /r/badeconomics, ask questions, receive answers.

>Actually there is some good evidence for low corporate tax rates. It's actually one of the No-Brainer ideas Planet Money did a segment on. (Really good show, btw. Worth a listen.) The basic reason is that corporate taxes are taxing profits that could be reinvested in the company. That's good for the economy. The good thing about corporate taxes is that they tax the rich. But they do it in this clumsy indirect way. Instead, we should just tax the rich directly.

>That's the real reason this bill is so bad. It lessens the load on corporations and on the rich. So the wealthy are winning twice.

+18 to this though. Pretty good.

What is the consensus on optimal labor union regulation? What I'm thinking of:

• Is there any consensus on whether strikebreaking (as in hiring scabs) should be allowed?

• Is there any consensus on whether yellow-dog contracts should be allowed? Or contracts forcing the employee to belong to a union?

• What kind of union practices should be allowed by law? Should sit-down strikes be allowed? Solidarity strikes?

Basically: have the economics on labor unions evolved from what there is in Capitalism and Freedom? Are there any books or papers I could read on this?

Currently reading:

Undercover Economist Strikes Back

The Road To Serfdom

The Wealth of Nations

The Elements of Eloquence

Chiang's Fundamental Mathematics

Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics

A Short Introduction to Global Economic History

All this to try and drive out the panic over impending exam results and a response to my inflation paper, which as time goes on seems more and more like complete rubbish.

Dylann Roof has been sentenced to death.

>Each victim was hit repeatedly, with the eldest, Susie Jackson, an 87-year-old grandmother and church matriarch, struck at least 10 times.

You know when you read something atrocious and just get that twinge of pure rage?

Trump nooo

Though it sounds like he has saner views on monetary policy than most of the other Republicans.

I do have a few other thoughts.

A common first-year core is important, in my view. I would not start field courses early. Here's one possible program:

• Economic Theory: Fall-Spring. MWG in the fall, game theory in the spring
• Econometrics: Fall-Spring. Work through Hayashi or whatever, using Greene as a reference. Integrate software throughout. I have my preferences.
• Math: Fall. A gap-filling course. Tailored to taste.
• Programming: Spring. Use Stachurski's Python book as a base. Yes, that means that students would have to learn two software packages; this is good. Economists should be familiar with one statistical software language and one general-purpose language, the latter of which should probably be Python.

So I replace macro with a math course and a programming course. First year would culminate in theory and econometrics comps.

In the second year, everyone would take a yearlong econometrics sequence; there would be one for micros and another for macros. Second-years would also take field courses in their area of interest. Since macro would no longer show up in the first year, I would propose at least four macro courses. In the fall, standard growth and business cycle courses. In the spring, two additional courses tailored to the strengths of the department.

In the second year, I would also strongly recommend that there be standalone one-semester courses in computational methods, again one for micros and the other for macros.

Edit: Oh, and just to add a massive waste of time to the schedule, I would force everyone to take a history-of-thought course in the first year.

What you need is a dot pad.

The dots help you write in straight lines, and make quick graph sketches that look good, but because they have low contrast with the page compared to ink there isnt the visual clutter of lined or graph paper.

I'm really enjoying Economic Ideas You Should Forget.

/u/Kelsig has posted the opening essay - Daron Acemoglu saying capitalism is not a useful concept here.

A good nyt article highlighting why I called Puzder virtually the worst pick imaginable for someone to be in charge of enforcing federal labor laws.

> During Mr. Puzder’s tenure, the company has paid millions of dollars to settle class-action lawsuits alleging that it failed to pay managers fairly, by misclassifying them in a way that skirted overtime rules. CKE has also faced other class-action lawsuits, some settled and others ongoing, alleging that it routinely forced workers to skip breaks, altered its time records in a way that left workers paid less, or placed caps on what managers could make, meaning they worked for more hours than they were compensated for.

Are any of these claims...wrong?

For example, take:

> Anti-conservative sentence of the oped: " the reality of American politics is asymmetric polarization: extremism on the right is a powerful political force, while extremism on the left isn’t." Hmm.

This isn't a hot take from Krugman. It's conventional wisdom in political science. See https://voteviewblog.com/2015/06/10/more-on-assymmetric-polarization-yes-the-republicans-did-it/ or https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465031331

> Nearly every ~~Democrat's~~ politicians policy platform has some horrifically bad economics

FTFY

In any case in recent history the CEA and NEC have been much more powerful/effective within Democratic White Houses than the Republican White House. The major Clinton/Obama domestic policies (NAFTA/TANF/ARRA/ACA/RTTT) have all been straight out of the "This is what the economists told us to do" handbook.

Republican policy tends to led more by industry. DOn't take my word for it - read Paul O'Neill: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC0ZSU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I finally dusted Thinking, Fast and Slow last night. Parting thought is that it was an interesting read. The econ section of it really illustrated why Kahneman picked up the Nobel and it certainly helped me appreciate behavioural economics more than I had previously.

10/10 would recommend to anyone who holds onto the neoclassical model of human behaviour without compromise.

The Undercover Economist, by Tim Harford

The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, by Tim Harford

These two are the best micro and macro pop books for non-economics people. They properly discuss the intuition of economics.

The guy who wrote Capitalism and Freedom is an enemy of capitalism.

The guy who was instrumental in ending the draft is an enemy of capitalism.

The guy who re-oriented public policy away from discretionary fiscal solutions to the business cycle, towards rule-based, transparent monetary solutions, is an enemy of capitalism.

The guy who made re-introduced competition and price theory as respectable tenants of microeconomics is an enemy of capitalism.

The guy who introduced the idea of school choice, who vigorously opposed the AMA's cartel, who supported flexible exchange rates twenty years before it was popular to do so, and who fought archaic price controls, is an enemy of capitalism.

Okay, buddy.

Between 1955 and 1985, Milton Friedman did more for capitalism than any twenty Objectivists.

Republicans think that if they believe hard enough, tax cuts will start to pay for themselves

> INSKEEP: Why is it OK to increase the deficit, as this tax bill will do?

> RYAN: Actually, I don't think it will increase the deficit. That's my entire point. There's two things you've got to do to get the deficit. You've got to grow the economy, you've got to control spending. We need - we have far more work to do to control spending, believe you me. But if we don't pass this tax law, we will not get the kind of economic growth we can get in this country. This grows the economy.

> INSKEEP: If you'll forgive me, Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, has also said that this will spur so much economic growth, it'll pay for itself. It'll bring in more tax revenue.

> RYAN: I think that's quite possible. I can't speak to...

> INSKEEP: He said that, but the Treasury Department has been unable to produce an analysis proving that.

> RYAN: Yeah, I really think we're at a global economic focal point, which is if we do not modernize our tax laws and put American businesses on a level playing field with the rest of the world, we'll lose more jobs and we will see economic damage occur as a result of it.

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/01/567688875/paul-ryan-defends-gop-tax-plans

It's a real thing. It's become a more visible topic due to the crisis in Flint.

But it's nothing new and has been talked out for years.

EDIT: So you replied saying its class that results in these outcomes and that "it's not a race thing" (but then deleted the comment). So I'm just going to respond to that anyway:

Saying that race is a factor does not mean class isn't also a factor. I'm not sure why it can't be a little of both. It sounds like your just making a blanket statement, founded in no basis, just priors, that race has nothing to do with it. Why is that so hard to imagine that it could possibly play a role in our society?

Anyway, there are multiple, credible studies showing how race, on its own, can have negative effects where blacks face some disadvantages across a variety of context, including environmental protection.

> federal funding

> Libertarian Party

MFW

>Rational, self-interested and completely non-benevolent individuals will also attempt to fund public goods if the (transaction) costs to do so are low enough

CONSULT CALCUTRON TO DETERMINE WHETHER WE NEED ROADS. BUT MAKE SURE CALCUTRON IS NOT SHARED BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE CENTRAL PLANNING. MAKE SURE EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN CALCUTRON THAT COMES TO A RATIONAL DECISION, WHICH WILL BE NECESSARILY UNIFORM UNLESS THEY'RE ACTUALLY SELF INTERESTED OR SOMETHING. Seriously, though.. wtf is "low enough"? We get all the public goods that can be purchased with spare change?

>There's a third possibility: you realize your contribution would likely be pivotal to the provision of the good and decide to pledge.

This sounds like a terrifically inefficient direct democracy! I, for one, am excited just thinking about all the important issues I might receive in the mail (if and when we kickstart the letter carrying service). I guess, If the letter carrying kickstarter fails I can look forward with only moderately diminished zeal to endless hours spent in the public square yelling out proposals or raising our hand or some shit.

Has anyone hear read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman? (I'd guess my best bet would be u/besttrousers)

I'd kind of like to throw it on my list of stuff to read, but I'm concerned it's gonna be another one of those books where the author has one or two points they could get get across in a couple of paragraphs, but somehow manage to ramble on about it for 400 pages instead.

Anyone that has read the book, is it sort of similar to what I just described, or is it worth reading?

Commenter cited this Stiglitz piece.

So, I understand that free trade agreements are a result of a political process, and may not actually result in free trade when all is said and done. So I have no problem with economists opposing a particular free trade agreement, while still supporting free trade worldwide. That seems like a consistent position to me.

But this piece by Stiglitz... I don't mind that he's opposing the TPP, I mind that he's lending his name and credibility to just awful arguments. All of the "corporations evil, secret tribunals, ignoring local regulations" bullshit gets instant credibility when Stiglitz attaches his name.

Like this quote > The question is whether we should allow rich corporations to use provisions hidden in so-called trade agreements to dictate how we will live in the twenty-first century.

Jesus. I'd expect to see that in Bernie Sanders promotional material.

r/economics sidebar

Specifically,

• Landsburg, The Armchair Economist. This book will make you uncomfortable. That is the intended effect.

• Harford, The Undercover Economist. Similar topics as Landsburg, but will make you less uncomfortable.

• Harford, The Undercover Economist Strikes Back. Basic macro. Should be good for you.

• Then maybe some Friedman and Galbraith.

Reading the article more, it looks like he only did this for freeway driving, which is WAY easier. All you have to do is identify the cars around you and your lane markers; no pedestrians, traffic signals, or intersections. And I doubt his stuff can deal with things like flat tires, potholes, construction, or things that fall onto the road given the rhetoric he's using. It's not competing with Google's fully autonomous prototypes, it's competing with Telsa's autopilot (if you read the article, it mentions that he supposedly had a contract with Tesla to write their autopilot software, although he broke it off).

That said, he is using sensors he attaches to the car and running his own vision analysis. He's arrogant as fuck, but he's not a total fraud.

See the discussion on /r/MachineLearning for more.

Because the poll itself is always fun to read.

Iowa latest poll: https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/297250334?access_key=key-uWmcat1lsH6FsPjcnNEB&allow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll

Some interesting things on the Dems' side:

• Clinton winning would generate more enthusiasm amongst caucus goers (73%, as opposed to 69% for Sanders), although there are more people not OK with her as nominee (12%) in comparison to Sanders (8%)

• Sanders is seen as someone who cares more for the voters (51-37 lead).

• Obama (90 fav) and Bill Clinton (86 fav) are viewed more favourably than any of the current frontrunners (Clinton 81, Sanders 82). Poor O'Malley (46 fav) can't even beat out Warren (47 fav). Also, Bloomberg wouldn't do well at the moment (17 fav), though it's more that no one gives a fuck about him (57% uncertain).

And as for the Republicans:

• The combined/lean/second choice has Cruz first (40%), and Trump/Rubio at 35%.

• Trump supporters are certain to vote for him (71% decided), as opposed to the average (55% decided) for the otehr candidates.

• More people are unfavorable to Bush (53 unf) than Trump (47 unf). Somehow, Carson leads the favorability category at 72% fav.

• The idea of a GOP led by Trump is less of a turn-off than one led by Bush, Christie and...Rand Paul. Also, 21% are unsure what would feel if Kasich gets selected.

• 50% of the GOP thinks Trump as president would "Be most feared by U.S. enemies". Second closest is Cruz at 21%.

• More people start to describe themselves as "mainstream Republicans (+3%) or "evangelical conservatives" (+1%) as opposed to "Tea Party", in comparison to December 2015. Although I personally think that it's because people keep moving the goalposts.

I would be happy with an "Economic Systems FAQ" that spent a few hundred words talking about the history of the terms "capitalism," "socialism," and "communism," then spent a few hundred more words on the status of those terms in today's political-economic environment.

Just something as background so that we aren't leaving people empty-handed when we say, "we don't talk about socialism anymore, that's a bad question."

Maybe a good place to start for putting together that FAQ would be chapter 3 of this book. (90% unironically.)

A couple things:

• Austrian economics claims to be axiom + deduction based, but it really isn't. If you've read HA, you may have noticed that there's not actually any deductions, he just jumps from one claim to another.

• Road to Serfdom and Capitalism and Freedom are really more of a political philosophy book than economics.

• The "Chicago school" is, methodologically, not substantially different than the rest of economics. They are very far from Austrian methods, especially in how they approach the use of data- Chicago school is extremely empirical.

Man, Economy and State

Human Action

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism

End The Fed

The Road to Serfdom

Free to Choose

Capitalism and Freedom

Atlas Shrugged

Praxeology and Understanding

A Genuine Gold Dollar vs. the Federal Reserve

Currently reading The Armchair Economist and I particularly enjoyed this passage:

>Me, I collect bad economic reasoning. I scan the Internet for snippets of extraordinary ignorance, and I keep them in a file that I've labeled "Sound and Fury," partly because people who are flat-out wrong are often simultaneously flat-out angry, and partly because, while not all these tales are told by idiots, they are at least told by people who (as happens to all of us on occasion) have succumbed to a moment of idiocy.

I think Landsburg would fit in very well here, either that or one of you is hiding something about their identity, I'm looking at you, Integralds.

> What do you think drove western values and culture?

I don't know.

> If there's shit going on in Uganda, then it needs to be stopped too. But that's an incredibly weak argument without actually showing it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/12/uganda-anti-gay-law-rise-attacks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Lively

I'll happily continue to list off horrible things done with ostensibly Christian motivation if you need me to. Them lot ain't too fond of abortion doctors or Norwegian schoolchildren, I hear.

> It's fine if you're not a fan of Christianity, but seriously you're bringing your priors about that into a conversation about ISIS.

I couldn't care less about Christianity. Most Christians are upstanding, perfectly normal individuals who I have absolutely no problem with, and the remainder aren't problematic to me as a result of their Christianity.

This is the point I feel like I've been very clearly making all along. If I should have a problem with Islam, then I should have a problem with Christianity. If I should have a problem with Muslims, then I should have a problem with Christians. I'm asking you what absolves Christians of their violence and intolerance that doesn't absolve Muslims.

Forgive me, BA, for I have sinned.

I can't help but notice that everyone yelling about how tech companies are exploiting immigrants like me, never bother to ask us if we feel exploited. Because we really, really don't

i will never understand why people think econ is a set of truths handed down to us by GreatMen* in holy texts.

I've had undergrads act shocked that I got a phd without reading The Wealth of Nations. Its not exactly cutting edge...

Read yer textbook shakes cane

Harford, The Undercover Economist (haven't read it myself; gets good reviews)

Harford, The Undercover Economist Strikes Back (startlingly deep discussion of macro, all without equations)

Deaton, The Great Escape (you may skip the nerdy bits on measurement issues on the first pass)

Dixit and Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically (there may be a new edition with a different title?)

Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior

Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street

As a beginner, read Mankiw's blog, Calculated Risk, Marginal Revolution, and one of Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, and Mark Thoma.

As you grow older and wiser you'll find specialist blogs that interest you more.

I've heard that IMF policy recommendations for developing countries might have caused famines (sources here and here warning the second one gets rather normative) is there any truth to this statement?

Is it true that countries that listened to the IMF have performed worse in terms of growth than those who didn't?

Hey guys, just a heads up this guy has figured out our masterplan to collapse the dollar in June. We have to make Yellen hike rates now or we risk exposure.

R users keep saying that the R/python wage gap is due to discrimination, but that's based on R user's statistics, which we obviously can't trust

So long story short, I need 34 copies of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, but I don't want to buy new editions on account of me being poor so I'm going to get older editions. What's the earliest version I can buy that's not outdated for the layman?

I have an honours B.A. in economics but I got The Undercover Economist Strikes Back as a gift and I'm loving it so far.

Other econ books received are Nudge, The Accidental Theorist, and the classic WoN.

source: am wall street. the whole thing. i am the thing.

I actually have no idea why they have technical analysis people. The literature is not good on their performance, but banks keep them around. I suspect it's because the technical analysts can sell their quackery to unsuspecting clients. If you're rich enough to have an account and have an interest in astrology, they'll hire a palm reader. It's really easy - walk around Manhattan and you'll pass multiple palm readers it's ridiculous.

Fundamental analysis is actually seeing how much a thing is worth. Cash flows, present value, assets and liabilities. This is not quackery. This is not quackery, this is seeing if a business is worthwhile. That has to be the nature of finance or there is no value in it.

The efficient markets hypothesis says that a monkey throwing darts at a board picking stocks can do as well as a mutual fund trader. This is true. The thing is that the reason that that's possible is through the exhaustive and obsessive work of those Wall Street banskters (actually, they're largely in midtown, which is convenient for my commute. The hedge funders in Greenwich, not so much)

My rule for stock trading is based on A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Mankiel. I read that before I moved here and my view has only been hardened experiencing it.

Unless you're sitting in front of a Bloomberg terminal that costs close to $2,000 a month with a whole trading floor next to you feeding you private information about all the mergers and acquisitions and rumors and fundamentals you don't really have a chance to compete.

Just buy an index fund. You can't beat them. So join them. Tag along for the ride.

Popping in to say I've "finished" Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, and here is what I'm currently reading:

• Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations, by Warsh

• New Ideas from Dead Economists, by Buchholz^1

• Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Intro, by Okasha

• Price Theory, by Milton Friedman^2

• Essays in Positive Economics, by Milton Friedman^3

• MWG, various chapters for quals

• The textbook I chose for my intermediate macro course

• The Great Divergence, by Pomeranz^4

• An Economic History of Medieval Europe, by some guy

I recommend all of them, except "Essays". Don't give me shit about how I dare to read things when quals are in June. I get enough of that from my classmates.

1 - I highly recommend this as a substitute or complement for The Worldly Philosophers by Heilbroner; a substitute if you're a layman, a complement if you're an advanced student who likes econ thought a lot.

2 - A recc from my former professor. Any thoughts on this one? I might pick up David Friedman's intermediate version and compare them to each other, intermediate and advanced Varian, and Nicholson and Snider for the inevitable day when I have to teach Intermediate Micro in the future. Also, quals.

3 - I've read this before, and have criticized it on here, but want to reread the entire book from a critical point of view after reading more methodology since then.

4 - I'm finding that more people should take this guy seriously when they publish Deep econ history today. I won't name names.

So hypothetically let's say someone got drunk and ordered a bunch of books off the /r/economics reading list. Should he/she start with:

• Why Nations Fail
  
• The Accidental Theorist
  
• Nudge
  

or wait a week or two and start with:

• The Armchair Economist
  

or

• The Undercover Economist Strikes Back
  

which weren't Prime-eligible.

Books

Papers

Micro books:

• Landsburg, The Armchair Economist
• Dixit and Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically
• Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior

Macro books:

• Deaton, The Great Escape (growth, income, and health)
• Harford, The Undercover Economist Strikes Back (business cycles)
• Knoop, Recessions and Depressions: Understanding Business Cycles (it's a mix of macro theory and macro history)

History:

• Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (History of thought)
• Friedman and Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States (monetary history and business cycles)
• Snowdon and Vane, Modern Macro: Its Origins, Development, and Current State (macro history of thought)
• Maddisson, Contours of the World Economy (general economic history)

I don't think I made any egregious, 101-type errors this year.

When I was younger and more foolish, I was a pretty hardcore, Capitalism and Freedom type libertarian. Think (8,-3) on the Political Compass scale. Now I'm more of a bleeding-heart libertarian who paradoxically wouldn't mind a job as a government statistician.

I made a lot of bad arguments against the FairTax in a previous life. (Not that FairTax is a good idea, but I made bad arguments against it.)

(I recall the following exchange among friends: "You're a libertarian and a government employee. How do you sleep at night?" "Lots of scotch, paid for by my lucrative government salary.")

That has been misquoted. The full sentence is:

Ensuring that SOEs and monopolies act on the basis of commercial considerations and accord non-discriminatory treatment in purchases and sales;

The full leak is here if you're interested. My interpretation of that statement is that it aims to prevent SOE's from preferring domestic producers over foreign companies in situations where a company that is solely trying to profit maximise would source from the foreign company. Not to do so would effectively be a domestic subsidy.

I don't imagine this would preclude SOE's from implementing directives to take carbon emissions into account when making purchasing decisions or other similar policies for example.

On an aside, the quality of reporting on the TPP has been shocking. You will find very little balanced information on reddit about it. But let's face it, no one should really get their news from reddit... Until the agreement is actually finalised and released the best thing you can do is read the leaks your self and try to understand what you can.

Money is a store of value and a unit of exchange but has no inherent value except what societies or groups of people ascribe to it. A famous historical example is an island that used large immovable stones as currency, and merely kept accounting of who "owned" them at a given time. Keynes has a good description of the social construct formed by money in his work, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" which is oft cited by Austrians to attack fiat money:

>But while these currencies enjoy a precarious value abroad, they have never entirely lost, not even in Russia, their purchasing power at home. A sentiment of trust in the legal money of the State is so deeply implanted in the citizens of all countries that they cannot but believe that some day this money must recover a part at least of its former value. To their minds it appears that value is inherent in money as such, and they do not apprehend that the real wealth, which this money might have stood for, has been dissipated once and for all. This sentiment is supported by the various legal regulations with which the Governments endeavor to control internal prices, and so to preserve some purchasing power for their legal tender. Thus the force of law preserves a measure of immediate purchasing power over some commodities and the force of sentiment and custom maintains, especially amongst peasants, a willingness to hoard paper which is really worthless.

emphasis added

I can't recall if it was Keynes or Galbraith who liked to remark that India despite being rich in gold reserves was quite poor as a country. Keynes has many great remarks about the foolish use of precious metals to back money because of their inherent value.

>"Since late last year, the People's Bank of China has purposely tried to make it harder for investors to figure out its intentions on the yuan, changing the way it sets the currency's price and interspersing periods of depreciation with surprise bouts of strengthening through market guidance or intervention..."

http://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/TDJNDN_201601148900/confused-by-chinas-yuan-its-intentional.html

lol this sounds like an Onion article.

The flight from Dubai to Auckland (which happens to be the world's longest direct flight, fun fact!) travels over the southern tip of India and across Australia (see here). If the world were that disc shape that flight wouldn't even come near the Indian subcontinent, much less Australia. People look out the window on flights so they know they're flying over the Indian Ocean and Straya, not Russia & the Japan. Explain that!

inb4 "global multinational conspiracy" because they're trying to minimize costs so they wouldn't want a longer flight for no reason

I know this is really tangential but I use org-mode for note taking and I can export my notes to PDF of markdown or text or whatever format and I can run block of code in it and insert them in my notes. It's so nice. I wish more people knew about it because I had been looking for the something like this for the longest time before I finally came upon it.

I know that /u/robthorpe is using emacs (the tool behind org-mode) as well but I didn't see it discussed here ever so that's that.

Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago:

>We present the results of three large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) carried out in Chicago, testing interventions to reduce crime and dropout by changing the decision-making of economically disadvantaged youth. We study a program called Becoming a Man (BAM), developed by the non-profit Youth Guidance, in two RCTs implemented in 2009–10 and 2013–15. In the two studies participation in the program reduced total arrests during the intervention period by 28–35%, reduced violent-crime arrests by 45–50%, improved school engagement, and in the first study where we have follow-up data, increased graduation rates by 12–19%. The third RCT tested a program with partially overlapping components carried out in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC), which reduced readmission rates to the facility by 21%. These large behavioral responses combined with modest program costs imply benefit-cost ratios for these interventions from 5-to-1 up to 30-to-1 or more. Our data on mechanisms are not ideal, but we find no positive evidence that these effects are due to changes in emotional intelligence or social skills, self-control or “grit,” or a generic mentoring effect. We find suggestive support for the hypothesis that the programs work by helping youth slow down and reflect on whether their automatic thoughts and behaviors are well suited to the situation they are in, or whether the situation could be construed differently.

Doesn't Galbraith actually have a similar model in 'The Affluent Society'?

Anyways, advertising certainly has multiple functions. Some of those are informational, but it's not unreasonable to treat it as being inefficient. For example, you can model the interactions between two firms as a Hawk-Dove game, where the Pareto optimal point is for both not to advertise. I think that's sort of what the person is getting at.

An interesting excerpt from Landsburg's The Armchair Economist, the 2012 version: "When a presidential candidate preempts an episode of 'Celebrity Apprentice', the social cost is a forgone episode of 'Celebrity Apprentice'... 'Should we, as a society, give up one hour of the Donald in order to see an hour of campaign ads?'"

Well. I guess that now we don't have to make that decision.

>what undergraduate offers the most rigorous "How to be funny" courses?

It's called the bar. Classes meet every day after work.

Of course you can always pick up my personal favourite, Get Thee to a Punnery, and try to work through that.

There's a bunch of exceptions to avoiding the tax penalty and it's a function of your income, the market price of healthcare coverage, or per person.

This isn't what you're looking for but since no one has replied yet, there was a Macro Musing podcast about Argentina a while back. I don't remember what it talked about much but I remember having enjoyed it. I hope that you do too.

I also feel I should point out that the statement

>Contrary to popular belief, we do not pay wages based on how useful or skilful the work is, but based on how much power (social, financial, political, etc) the employee has

isn't entirely wrong, especially for professions like corporate executives. Papers like this have observed that it is difficult to determine the productivity of a CEO, and thus pay becomes much more dependent on industry norms than anything else. The problem with this, as noted in the paper, is that no firm wants to be perceived as "below average" and so always sets a CEO's compensation at least at the average level, often higher, leading to a cycle of increasing pay without any grounding in reality.

This is, of course, ignoring that CEOs have a lot of say on who sits on the board of directors, who in turn set the compensation package. In this example at least, the linked comment is correct.

EDIT: Added source.

To be fair the great famines of the British Empire (Ireland, India) are uncomfortably linked to both capitalism and classical British political economy. Both societies were integrated in the Imperial free trade system, but instead of mitigating the risk of local famine this market integration resulted in the export of cash crops from starving areas. Markets allocated resources in a way that made the local crop failures worse. For a free market solution to famine you need the affected region to not be very unequal; if you can't afford to buy food from an unaffected region it doesn't matter how integrated your market is. Yes, this inequality was the consequence of the politics of imperialism, but Government inaction was justified with at least the rhetoric of lassiez-faire classical British political economy.

Here is a Sen review that is relevant.

I don't know if the idea's been proposed, but can we put a goodeconomics library in the sidebar (or at least a link to it)? A lot of good papers are brought up in the comments, and I often forget to bookmark them. Categorized by subject matter, the links to the papers would work as a one-stop-shop to debunking bad econ.

Also, get it while it's hot.

> Scala

I looked here and it all reads like buzzwords. I know these words mean something, but I'm the kind that just looks up documentation and StackExchange threads while coding instead of actually knowing Python. What does Scala actually offer that Python doesn't to someone like me?

The support of classical economists from two centuries ago who didn't know better (and didn't know why water cost less than diamonds) is not terribly indicative, any more than Newtonian physics is a rebuttal to relativity and quantum mechanics. While Ricardo and Smith are excellent pedagogical tools, no self respecting economist would actually cite The Wealth of Nations in a series discussion, certainly not to rebut later advances in the field.

So a winter reading list for less technical (non-textbook) economics books?

I'll suggest Rodrik (Economics Rules), Glaeser (Triumph of the City), Roth (Who gets what - I know its pretty weak, but its on mechanism design), Ariely (Predictably Irrational), and just to piss off people here Acemoglu (Why Nations Fail).

I don't think there's much value in reading original texts like Keynes if you're just starting out with economics. The field has moved on since then, and it'll be more complicated to read than more modern books. You should try The Undercover Economist and The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, by Tim Harford - those give you a good fooundation in microeconomics and macroeconomics respectively. You might also want to just try a textbook - Mankiw's Principles of Economics is popular.

Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations". Chapters 1-3 talk about the division of labor and how larger markets give rise to more specialized professions and efficiency gains that benefit the whole market.

Not exactly what you asked for but I couldn't help myself.

Hawking was talking about the hypothetical future in which AI/automation are doing all these wonderful things and we'd have to worry about redistribution. That's fine. I don't care about that comment other than that it might make those who believe socialism is the only answer to that problem think that they have been proven right. One commenter has that view. Nothing has been proven IMO.

But productivity improvements now, which is what I took the other user as referring to, is it really leading to greater unemployment that isn't just temporary? Is the model described in Krugman's "The Accidental Theorist" not taking something into account? Are there any benefits from greater productivity that the user isn't considering?

It's eh, interesting, but it does come across as one big Godwin's law. If'd he just written a book on the virtues of individualism choice (..or "Capitalism and Freedom") then it'd be great, but the whole "socialism=state control, Nazism=state control, Nazism=socialism" shtick starts to wear thin.

That's completely and utterly untrue, the term is far older than Reagan and has never been uttered by Reagan, not even once. It has only ever been a piece of political rhetoric with no basis in reality.

Supply-side economic theory has not been invented by Reagan, because Reagan was not an economist. It was 'invented' by economists, and it's probably not what you think it is.

I've been using CB function on my every micro, macro and even econometrics courses. Or these people have some sacred knowledge that invalidate CB function or they are pulling this shit out of their asses. Hmmm.... 🤔

​

How do they even come up with this? There is some source, book, YT channel with this nonsense? Or they just randomly point to part of text and say "this is not real".

It would be an Amazon cloud server running rstudio-server, which gives you (slightly dumbed down) persistent R Studio sessions in a web browser. We could share scripts and data etc.

I think a few of your quote tags are broken.

Unless the below and the other paragrpah that mentions it are your words?

> As I said before, legalizing drug imports (one of the free market solutions proposed) would end up destroying innovation in the US, so a free market would not be any better than a universal healthcare system

I mean, this isn't true. It's an absurd statement, partly as there is a ton of medical research going on elsewhere, partly as the reason that the america has a lot of reasearch is there has not been shown (in this post) to be driven by your complicate healthcare paying system. Could it instead of the presence of universities, the lack of 'old' diseases taking up healthcare focus (say compared to malnutrition or malaria in India) or the US approval being worth more as huge market (including some aligned countires), or just the sheer number of ill people+doctors who are risk tolerant and sign up to trials. If the trial needs 500 people to participate, it's easier to find that number in USA then UK, based purely on size.

There is an interesting argument, described systematically in https://www.amazon.com/Malignant-Policy-Evidence-People-Cancer/dp/1421437635 that the return rate on dodgy cancer drugs that have marginal improvements might be distorting research efforts into low research risk, low medical benefit, profitable drugs.

To assume that changing the system in the USA would result in global levels of research being destroyed, rather than relocated or redirected seems unproven here.

Which is why goodreads should let people weight books towards their goal.

Made it halfway through Thinking, Fast and Slow? Five books counted.

Art of The Deal? Half a book.

Finished EconomixComix? Make up for it with Manikw and you'll break even.

Maybe 60's Friedman?

50s Friedman - Is "Positive Science" and "Theory of the Consumption Function" (Serious economic work - parallel with 80s Krugman on trade)

60s Friedman is "Monetary History of the United States" and "Capitalism and Freedom" (Good work, some political leanings coming through - parallel with 90s Krugman in Slate and "Peddling Prosperity")

70s/80s Friedman is "Freedom to Choose", "Why Government is the Problem" and "Tyranny of the Status Quo" (policy and politics intended for a wide audience, economics only in the background. Parallel with 2000s-2010s Krugman of "End this Depression Now!" and "Conscience of a Liberal")

Macro:

• Harford's The Undercover Economist Strikes Back. Business cycles in a conversational, easygoing style. I was pleasantly surprised by his ability to present the ideas of key papers at the completely introductory level.

• Deaton, The Great Escape. Growth empirics for a popular audience, focusing on material consumption and life expectancy. The intro can be a bit technical, but feel free to skip the measurement issues on a first pass.

• Knoop, Recessions and Depressions. This is really two books in one. The first half is a history-of-thought book that traces out the main lines of macroeconomic thought since 1900. The second half is a detailed examination of American business cycles and financial crises, with a focus on raw empirics.

New books on my shelf:

• Cormen et al, Introduction to Algorithms.
• Chong and Zak, An Introduction to Optimization.
• Nocedal and Wright, Numerical Optimization.
• Burden and Faires, Numerical Analysis.
• Demmel, Applied Numerical Linear Algebra.
• Ruud, Introduction to Classical Econometric Theory.
• White, Asymptotic Theory for Econometricians.

No economics is required. It may help motivate why we are doing things, and give a bigger picture for the purpose, but none required to understand the material.

The math is not too intense, mostly just algebra, although a little calculus and linear algebra used (but not necessary). Probability and statistics are vastly more important. But even that does not go much beyond hypothesis testing. I wrote a quick survey that lists the type of skills that are needed to get the full benefit. Take the survey and depending on how people respond I can write up a review of the math side of things.

During a GOP debate, Trump said that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the audience booed. I started to question myself... wasn't this common knowledge? Had I fallen and hit my head and forgotten about it?

But really, Trump was pretty much right, as anyone who was alive and conscious during the decade would remember. During a townhall debate, (edit, see below) ~~CNN even tried to get him to recant about his earlier statements, as though Trump's words were heresy~~. It's like the Party is off in another dimension!

It's at this point that I really understood how much truth there is to "establishment politics". The politicians aren't "conservative", they're Republican. To them, the Party comes first, not reality.

edit: it was not CNN but the questioner who asked Trump whether he would be willing to "rethink his position"

> Inflation is an increase in overall prices. Not increasing the supply of money. If these two are the same, then you would have quite a hard time figuring out why prices haven't changed in the last 5 years.

I've seen a lot of people, Austrians and other badeconomists included, deal with this by dismissing official inflation statistics out of hand.

It's easy to ignore statistics that completely contradict your theory by simply claiming that all contradictory data is false.

Hey, org-mode and Emacs gang, and everyone else. How do you take notes for technical stuff like textbooks and technical books. Do you use something like <code>org-roam</code> ? If yes, what's your workflow to create notes that you can get back to without reading all the textbook again ?

Also, the book I'm referencing is any reasonably modern edition of Intermediate Micro by Varian.

I used the seventh edition which you can pick up for $10 used on Amazon and it's probably no worse than the $200+ ninth edition.

I'll note that there are phenomena that change at the micro/macro level. Schellings "Micromotives and Macrobehavior" might be more useful to you. I'd love to see Austrians tackle the Schedlling discrimination model...

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics by Yoram Bauman

The Undercover Economist/The Undercover Economist Strikes Back by Tim Harford

Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist by Paul Krugman

Or grab an intro textbook and dive in.

So I've noticed that Democracy in chains has come 10 years after a similar conspiracy book titled The Shock Doctrine, so my prax predicts that 10 years from now, we'll see another book with some silly title spout conspiracy theories about Ronald Coarse.

Over the course of the semester my game theory prof wants us to read 2-3 of: Nudge, Misbehaving, Phishing for Phools, Who Gets What and Why, Thinking Fast and Slow, Predictably Irrational, Honest Truth about Dishonesty, The Why Axis, and any of the Levitt & Dubner books.

I'll now take recommendations and reviews for any. Almost all of them have long been on my Amazon wishlist titled "[/u/seeellayewhy]'s Books", I just haven't gotten around to them. He gave extra credence to Phishing for Phools, so I was thinking that plus Nudge (has been on my list the longest) and Who Gets What (newfound interest in mechanism design).

Thots?

I'm really interested in Behavioral Economics and want to dedicate my free month of summer to learning about it - what are some good papers and books to read? I've read Thaler's Misbehaving (what got me interested) and Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory paper and have Thinking, Fast and Slow coming in the mail. I've also reached out to a couple professors on campus for reading lists but have yet to get a response

> Just trying to understand this culture.

Which explains why you're so consistently willing to engage with us on good faith term rather than just erect strawmen.

> things like EMH and Li's Gaussian copula models

Can't comment on the use or reception of Gaussian copula, but nobody except Fama himself (and maybe Scott Sumner) actually believes that the EMH is true. It's just close enough to being true that it makes for a good rule of thumb, especially if you aren't doing economics but are instead advising the public on how to invest (e.g. Malkiel with A Random Walk Down Wall Street).

> I think /u/besttrousers is a good example of the typical economist. Intelligent but completely out of touch and a slave to the models.

Yup. Nothing like doing experiments for a living to make you out of touch with reality. He has yet to see the light, unlike you of course.

What do you guys think of the ~~economic history~~ history of economic thought book The Worldly Philosophers. I like it so far although it discusses the personal lives of these figures a lot which is not particularly useful but it makes it more fun I guess.

Clinton said something rather similar recently but it's not getting anywhere near the same order of magnitude of play.

I know TTIP and TISA aren't likely to be as bad as commonly thought, but would is the first thing TISA says in the financial services annex saying it should declassified

>Five years from entry into force of the TISA agreement or, if no agreement enters into force, five years from the close of the negotiations.

I can't really see the benefit of that; either it doesn't need ratified by the parties, and then organisations in each country can't possibly comply with it, as they don't know what's it in, or it sits doing nothing for five years. We won't know how the agreement is ever finished until 5 years after.

> While a lot of people are on board with her on a "not Bernie" basis I haven't seen where her promises have been discussed in any detail.

My understanding is that Stiglitz Rewrite the Rules memo is effectively the first draft of Clinton's plan. He's advising the campagn, and her economic speech is using the same language.

Eichengreen's <em>Globalizing Capital</em> is a book-length treatment of the gold standard and its end, written for a mix of history and economics majors. It's about international finance in general, but historically "international finance" and "the gold standard" were basically the same subject, at least from 1871 to 1971.