Evergreen

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/28/evergreen-state-colleges-unusual-take-assessment

This sounds like a good idea, but I think the article might be exaggerating how large a change this is. I graduated from Evergreen in 1984. For each interdisciplinary program you had to write a self-evaluation and an evaluation of the program and faculty, and the faculty member that you worked with wrote an evaluation of you. Each of these evaluations was 2-4 pages. Written evaluations and serious reflection have always been the norm at Evergreen. I do, however, think this is a nice addition. It sounds like it asks students to keep the big picture in mind. It also reminds me a bit of the plans that my daughter had to do while she was at Bennington.

 

P.S. I looked at the Evergreen webpage, and it is great to see that Greeners still have the opportunity to work with Tom Rainey and Jeanne Hahn.

HT to Steve Greenlaw

Problems with Bitcoin

The New York Times reports that "On Monday night, a number of leading Bitcoin companies jointly announced that Mt. Gox, the largest exchange for most of Bitcoin’s existence, was planning to file for bankruptcy after months of technological problems and what appeared to have been a major theft. A document circulating widely in the Bitcoin world said the company had lost 744,000 Bitcoins in a theft that had gone unnoticed for years. That would be about 6 percent of the 12.4 million Bitcoins in circulation."

Economic History in the News

Gregory Clark of UC Davis describes the results of his recent research in the Sunday New York Times. He uses a large amount of evidence on family names and economic status o show that reversion to the mean takes place, but it takes a long time. I thought his story seemed pretty persuasive. On the other hand, at the end he concludes that adoption studies, "along with studies of correlations across various types of siblings (identical twins, fraternal twins, half siblings) suggest that genetics is the main carrier of social status." I don't find this conclusion nearly as persuasive. The problem with adoption studies is that adoptable children are not selected at random from the population, making it difficult to say how for results can be generalized. I would like to see more direct evidence that people do not treat people with high status names differently.

Business Women

The Washington Post ran a story this morning about a company called FlexProfessionals. The business helps professionals who have been out of the labor force return to the labor force. The founder has an MBA from Harvard. the business generated over $1 million in revenue last year. This is the photograph that went with the story. I did not find the photo online; consequently, this is a picture of the photograph I took with the camera attached to my computer. It struck me as odd that they would be portrayed sitting on the floor. I do not believe that I have ever seen articles about business men that show them sitting next to each on the floor.

Bitcoin

One of my students asked what I thought about bitcoin the other day in class. I told him that I thought Tyler Cowen had made an interesting case for an eventual decrease in the value of bitcoin. Consequently, I am reposting a link to Marginal Revolution here.

Minimum Wages

This is from the Economist, suggesting, in response to Noah Smith, that micro is not the good economics. the author offers up the minimum wage as his example.

There are three things that both me about the article.

First, the author states that if you "ask any two economists – macro, micro, whatever – whether raising the minimum wage will reduce employment for the low skilled, and odds are you will get two answers." The link is to a survey of well known economists. Click on the link. The survey asked the economists to respond to this
"Question A: Raising the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour would make it noticeably harder for low-skilled workers to find employment." I have seen this survey cited several times. The actual question is almost never stated. To an economist the questions are actually quite different. The economists question is about the direction of change will it reduce employment or not? The actuial question was about the size of the change will it be "noticeably harder?" To an economist that is a question about the elasticity of demand not the sloe of the demand curve. Microeconomic theory alone does not make a prediction about the size of the change, whether it will be noticeably harder. That is an empirical question. with that in mind, look at the results of the survey.  The most significant ting to note about the results is that none of the economists said that they strongly agree or strongly disagree, and about one quarter simply said they were uncertain. the rest were split between agree and disagree. In other words, when asked an empricial question which most of them had probably not conducted first hand research on, economists either replied "I don't know" or "my best guess is ...."

Second, it is not clear that this is a micro question. The survey and the Economist article seem to be talking about the aggregate amount of employment of low skilled workers. Not the employment in a particular market. I tell students the difference between micro and macro is that micro deals with particular markets and macro deals with aggregates.

Third, the time series data on the effects of the minimum wage on the employment of low skill workers (the direction of change) seems to be pretty consistent. The size of the change, whther it is noticeable, is not, however, very consistent.

Consider this graph from http://idiosyncraticwhisk.blogspot.com/2014/01/teen-employment-and-minimum-wage-60.html via Marginal Revolution

ASSA in Philadelphia

 

 

I got back from the ASSA meetings in Philadelphia last night. I had some excellent food. We'll have to go back to Alma de Cuba when its warmer and try their ceviche sampler. We took Mary's students Leanne Roncolato and Megan Fasules out to Serpico, which had a really nice tasting menu. And Pumpkin cemented its position as my favorite place to eat in Phildelphia. Also went to Saint John the Evangelist Friday night.

 

I also attended some great sessions. The economic history sesions (organized by the Cliometric Society and the Economic History Association) were all excellent and very well attended. The one in which my wife, Mary Eschelbach Hansen and her student, Megan Fasules, presented was packed and both Paul Solman and Matt Yglesias were there. Yglesias even tweeted one of the slides from Mary and Megan's presentation.

 

Cliometric Society Sessions

Spatial Allocation of Conflict, Individuals, and Economic Activity

January 3, 2014, 12:30 – 2:15 pm, Philadelphia Marriott, Meeting Room 406

Organizer: John Murray (Rhodes College)

Chair: Mary Hansen (American University)

Discussants: John Brown (Clark University), Allison Shertzer (University of Pittsburgh), Hugh Rockoff (Rutgers), Chris Vickers (Northwestern)

“Railroads and the Regional Concentration of Industry in Germany 1846 to 1882,” Theresa Gutberlet (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

“Segregation (Forever?): Measuring the Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Segregation,” John Parman (College of William and Mary) and Trevon Logan (Ohio State University and NBER)

“Military Conflict and the Economic Rise of Urban Europe,” Mark Dincecco (University of Michigan) and Massimiliano Onorato (IMT Institute for Advanced Studies)

“Murder and the Black Market: Prohibition’s Impact on Homicide Rates in American Cities,” Brendan Livingston (???)

Enterprising America: Businesses, Banks, and Credit Markets in Historical Perspective

January 3, 2014, 2:30 – 4:30 pm, Philadelphia Marriott, Meeting Room 406

Organizer: John Murray (Rhodes College)

Chair: William Collins (Vanderbilt and NBER)

Discussants: Carola Frydman (Boston University and NBER), William Collins (Vanderbilt and NBER), Matt Jaremski (Colgate University and NBER)

“Corporate Governance and the Establishment of Manufacturing Enterprises in New England,” Eric Hilt, (Wellesley College and NBER)

“Economies of Scale in Nineteenth Century American Manufacturing Revisited: A Resolution of the Entrepreneurial Labor Input Problem,” Robert A. Margo (Boston University and NBER)

“How Does Governance Matter? An Examination of the Long-Term Evolution of Bank Boards in the United States, 1800-1933,” Howard Bodenhorn (Clemson University and NBER) and Eugene White (Rutgers University and NBER)

Technology and Property Rights

January 4, 2014, 2:30 – 4:30 pm, Philadelphia Marriott, Meeting Room 406

Organizer: John Murray (Rhodes College)

Chair: David Mitch (University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

Discussants: Lisa Cook (Michigan State), Carol Shiue (University of Colorado), Ahmed Rahman (U.S. Naval Academy), Susan Wolcott (Binghamton University)

“Copyright and the Diffusion of Classical Music,” Petra Moser (Stanford University) and Jerry Lao (Stanford University)

“The Great Divergence and the Economics of Printing,” Luis Angeles (University of Glasgow)

“Turning Points in Leadership: Shipping Technology in the Portuguese and Dutch Merchant Empires,” Claudia Rei (Vanderbilt University)

“Industrial development and technology adoption in late nineteenth century Japan,” John Tang (Australia National University)

Economic History Association Sessions

Poverty from a Historical Viewpoint

January 4, 2014, 12:30 – 2:15 pm, Philadelphia Marriott, Meeting Room 307

Organizer: Martha Bailey (University of Michigan)

Chair: Robert Margo (Boston University)

Discussants: Tom Vogl (Princeton), Robert Margo (Boston University), Melissa Thomasson (Miami University – Ohio), Rob Gillezeau (New Democratic Party, Ontario Canada)

“Up from Poverty? The 1832 Cherokee Land Lottery and the Long-run Distribution of Wealth,” Joseph Ferrie (Northwestern University) and Hoyt Bleakley (University of Chicago)

“The Effects of Childhood Means-tested Cash Transfers on Mortality: Evidence from the Mother’s Pension Programs,” Shari Eli (University of Toronto), Anna Aizer (Brown University), Adriana Lleras-Muney (UCLA), and Joseph Ferrie (Northwestern University)

“Interactions between Social Insurance Programs: The Impact of Medicare on the Characteristics of Petitioners for Bankruptcy,” Megan Lynn Fasules (American University) and Mary Eschelbach Hansen (American University)

“Poverty and Progress among Canadian Immigrants, 1911-1931,” Chris Minns (London School of Economics), Kris Inwood (University of Guelph) and Fraser Summerfield (University of Guelph)

Reception hosted by the Cliometric Society

Saturday, January 4th, 6:00-8:00 pm

Philadelphia Marriott Downtown - Meeting Room 403

Banking

January 5, 2014, 10:15 am – 12:15 pm, Philadelphia Marriott, Meeting Room 307

Organizer: Martha Bailey (University of Michigan)

Chair: Hugh Rockoff (Rutgers)

Discussants: Dominick Bartelme (UC Berkeley), Joshua Hausman (University of Michigan), Jonathan Rose (Federal Reserve Board)

“American Banking and the Transportation Revolution Before the Civil War,” Matthew Jaremski (Colgate University), Jeremy Atack (Vanderbilt University), and Peter Rousseau (Vanderbilt University)

“Central Bank Credibility and Reputation: An Historical Exploration,” Pierre Siklos (Wilfrid Laurier University) and Michael Bordo (Rutgers University)

“Financial Liberalization and Bank Failures: The United States Free Banking Experience," Philipp Ager (University of Southern Denmark) and Fabrizio Spargoli (Erasmus University)

More open access

I just received an email from the British Journal of Economics, Management and Trade. They are currently offering to publish papers for only $100. Maybe I've missed the boat in the online journal business; competition appears to be heating up.
This journal claims that


In order to maintain highest level of transparency and high standard of review, this journal presently follows highly respected and toughest Advanced OPEN peer-review system (ExampleLink1, Link2, Link3, Link4, Link5, Link6, Link7, Link8, Link9, Link10, etc.). We hope that you will appreciate this Advanced OPEN peer-review system, which is expected to give doubtless scholarly benefit and impact to the authors in long run. Additionally we strongly encourage and promote “Post-publication Peer review” by our comment section.





Doubtless scholarly benefit and impact in long run for only $100. Sounds like a great deal.