Durham's Bull

Links for the Past Couple of Months

Is Private Equity going the way of the buffalo?  It's been a rough couple of months, but when finance is slow, cost-cutting is in high-demand.  The masters of the universe are a hard bunch to keep down.

The genius of Larry Summers.

A nice profile in today's Times of the oligopoly in credit rating that is under-cited as a primary cause of the financial crisis.

This guy is good.  Check out The Beatles' instrumentals.

The insidious MBA.

Would a market for organs be hard on the poor?  Relative to what?

Do smoking bans save lives? Maybe.

How could increasing trade barriers increase the multiplier effect of a Keynesian stimulus? Dani Rodrik examines the issue here.

An incredible visual representation of path dependence.  Correlation isn't causation, but this is pretty striking.

What would a depression look like in 2009?  The lines won't be for bread and soup.

How should you optimally give?  Diversification is no free lunch.

How do we reconcile the short term and the long term?  Economists weigh the options.

Just how big are these bailouts?  They are unprecedented.

So you want to be an entrepreneur?  Good luck. 

Why doesn't Detroit look like Silicon Valley?

Complexity and catastrophic impossibilities aren't limited to finance.

How credit cards became asset-backed bonds - the most recent video lesson from Marketplace.

A fascinating new project on cities.

Links for the Week

Yet one more reason why bailouts are a bad idea - the AIG Story. 

Social network analysis, Facebook and Steroids.

Complex math and the nightmare on Wall St.

Misleading chart porn from the Times.

I'm still Bullish on Durham, and I'm not the only one.

International wealth in historical context.

Cowen on Greenspan's concession.

Growth without growth - one scary chart.

Goolsbee and Furman make Holtz-Eakin look awful.  This one is all over but the crying.

Malcolm Gladwell on "Late Bloomers" in the most recent edition of The New Yorker.

The "Brokers with Hands on Their Faces Blog."  Quality.

McArdle responds to Jacob Weisberg's proclamation of the death of Libertarianism.

A couple pieces on the history of the Virginia School of Political Economy.

More Links

Do good grades predict success?

Would you rather get $50 or give $100 to charity?  SunTrust wants to know.

T-minus ten days until Google's android phone is released.

DC Cupcake Wars

A new econ blog on growth with big name contributors.

NC's Libertarian candidate for Governor "carves" a pumpkin with his son

One of the more interesting possibilities over at War or Car?

Bi-Weekly Links

This is getting worse and worse.  No, not the market - that's looking pretty bad too - I just meant my negligence of my devoted readers.

Here are a few links to whet your taste-buds:

Behavioral economists are coming out of the woodworks.  Here's a diavlog on the topic entitled "The Mind and the Market."

The Walker Percy collection in Chapel Hill.

The problem with government funding for scientific research. 

The Third Sector.

Stoners and oranges.

Heavy handed government = informal economies

Does the free market corrode moral character?

The end of evolution? Doubtful.

What are all of the old iBankers doing? You guessed it.

Where's F. Scott Fitzgerald when you need him?

An interview with Howard Zinn

Water: The Oil of the 22nd century

Sarah Palin is getting shelled

Tyler Cowen is interviewed on his renowned ethnic dining guide.

How much should you be making? Find out.

Beer google goggles.

So ethnic cleansing is rational too?

Take the long view.  Yes, this is getting a little Chris Blattman heavy, but he's got some great posts.

What could a development economist do with $700B?

Dean Baker suggests that the media gave Wall Street a pass.  I would concur. Capture theory doesn't just apply to government.

How realistic is another depression? 

The economic meaning of high and low stock prices.

Who's growing, and who's receeding?  Geographic chart porn from the NY Times.  Looks like I've still got good reason to be bullish on Durham.

I purchase, therefore I am.

Catching Up

Yes, it's been a while.  Work's been crazy, and I've been lazy.

Volvo is using locusts to "see if cars can imitate the insects’ ability to avoid colliding with each other as they swarm."  HT: The Times' Ideas Blog

An alternative explanation for the apparent success of the Surge.  Yet again, correlation does not equal causation.

The future of search, from Google.

JetBlue's use of eBay to price discriminate.

The management deficit in public service.

Secularism > Atheism.

Small-Town America? Not anymore.

Politics and international business, from the Wharton School, and their impact on "stateless multinationals."

WASPy world.

A pretty sweet job description.

Links of the Week

Why McArdle can't pull the lever for McCain.  I can sympathize.

Is North Korea on the verge of implosion?

Is GE Wall Street Bound?

Chart of the day.  HT: Ezra Klein

Drezner on the value of financial interdependence.

Wisdom on solving our carbon problem in this month's The American.

Cowen on why the bailout was necessary, evil as it was.

An excellent looking brunch recipe from DCFoodies.

A first hand account of the transformation of Kim-Jong-Il from boy to monster.  (FP Subscription Required)

What's all of the fuss about behavioral economics?  Two economists debate.

Links Galore

So I've been meaning to blog on these all week, but I had trouble doing so on Chrome, and was too lazy to go back to Firefox.  (Yes, that's lazy).

Wealth and its discontents.  Comments here and here.

The effect of Congress being in session on stock prices. 

A different take on news and markets.

Postrel explains one of life's age-old mysteries. 

Feldstein and Taylor weigh in on McCain's tax plan.

Tyler Cowen posts a typical Hansonian question.

PK and the quest for the holy grail.

Revisiting anarchy.

A roof with a view.

Heal the sick.

What don't you know that you don't know?  Futurism from The Economist.

How should you choose a college football coach?

How to swat a fly.  From the Times' Ideas Blog.

Harvard copycats.

Does shared capitalism work?

Martin Wolf declares, "We are all Americans now."

Readings in entrepreneurship with an Austrian- bent.

The "virtues" of vegetarian co-op's.

The distribution of power in the post-Georgian world.

According to the SSA's actuarial tables, "there is between a 14.2 and 15.1 percent chance of dying before Inauguration Day 2013."  HT: Sullivan

Is monetary policy really too loose? 

The cost of protecting your near abroad.

Pete Peterson chats with Charlie Rose on economic policy.

The economics of secession.

Links of the Day

Natural Gas is only 87 cents per gallon.  It's all the rage in Utah.

Capitalism will break India's caste system.

Business etiquette in Russia.

The Times interviews Bobby Jindal.

Africa is huge.

Democracy and peace. This reminds me of an old Tocqueville quote.

 Cowenian logic on the drinking age.

Body parts in song.  HT: Tyler Cowen.

Links of the Day

Malcolm Gladwell has a new book.

Low-gravity brews.

Supper-clubbing from the Times. 

The knowledge problem rears its ugly head.  FAA edition.

Trade and development blogging from a Columbia PhD student.

Brooks brings back the lost art of satire.

Yglesias calls out the teachers' unions.

McArdle on the substitution effect in Cambodia.

The oft-lamented imprecision of government statistics.

Decatur, GA needs some school choice.

The most well-written account of the olympics you're likely to lay eyes on.

Millman on the calculus of Palin.

Catching Up = Blogging These Days

I apologize for the lackadaisical approach to blogging lately.  Last week was filled with house-sitting, and a wedding in Coronado over the weekend.  It was my first trip to California.  It is beautiful, and the weather is amazing, but I'm not ready to move just yet.  Good times, but I'm glad to have a low key night.  The stack of dirty clothes is getting a little ridiculous.

Here are the links for the day.  I'll try to do a better job this week.

Felix Salmon on the microeconomics of market volatility. 

My favorite journalist, Charlie Rose, interviews Obama's Economic Advisor Austan Goolsbee.

Jagdish Bhagwati calls out trade policymakers in the developed world.

David Leonhardt profiles Obamanomics for the Times.

Sullivan suggests Obama give Bob Rubin a prominent role in his Cabinet.  I concur.

More ridicule for the notion of education.  This time from Wharton.

Following up on de Soto's The Mystery of Capital.

McArdle on auctioning landing spots at airports. 

Nobel Laureate Jim Heckman's new paper, entitled "The Effect of Prayer on God’'s Attitude Toward Mankind," is an interesting application of Bayesian analysis.  His conclusion: Bimodal.  "The empirical conclusion from this analysis is important. A little prayer does no good and may make
things worse. Much prayer helps a lot." 

Tragedy of the anti-commons.

Contrary to popular belief, creative destruction is at least as hard on the rich as it is on the poor.

Usain Bolt is just not normal.  HT: Philip Tester

More Jim Heckman.  This time on investing in disadvantaged youth.  Don't just do it financially - do it personally.

Does money undermine community?  So they say.  I have an inkling as to why this might be.  The proper question seems to be whether or not it does more harm than good.  From a transaction costs perspective, the answer seems pretty obvious.  If you don't believe me, go ask someone in Zimbabwe about the utility of sound money.

Bob Frank meets Google.

Patrick Deneen on Wendell Berry.

Cowen on rational dogmatism.

I'm always amazed at the value of advertising.

Update: War or Car.

The state of macroeconomics.

Russ Roberts on teaching Hayekian insights.

The most interesting blog I had yet to add to my reader until today: Richard Florida's.  Hands down.

Kling on the 4 most important drivers of the past three decades.

Freakonomics collects the most famous econ quotes.

Save $100 on a Kindle.

Blogging through the abortive process.

Buiter gives the Feds a hard time, and gets treated like a child.  These are the veritable masters of the universe.  It's a hard time for those who care about sound money.

The Googlization of Everything hits Free Will.

Detroit has been bleeding people for decades.  Some people never learn.

Virginia Postrel has a new site.

Ideas matter, but that's one hell of a lag.