A digital reconstruction of Washington, D.C. in 1814
The Junto is doing a week long roundtable review of Richard S. Dunn's A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia
And here is the website that goes with the book
This is a blog about economics, history, law and other things that interest me.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Monday, January 19, 2015
New Books in Business History
From the Exchange
If you are working on a book you might want to think about how to put capitalism in the title.
In his keynote address to the Economic and Business History Society when it met in Baltimore Lou Galambos discussed the success of history of capitalism as a brand.
If you are working on a book you might want to think about how to put capitalism in the title.
In his keynote address to the Economic and Business History Society when it met in Baltimore Lou Galambos discussed the success of history of capitalism as a brand.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
New Stuff on the History of Bankruptcy
Mary O’Sullivan “A Fine Failure: Relationship Lending, Moses
Taylor, and the Joliet Iron and Steel Company, 1860-1888,” Business History Review (Winter 2014) examines how one industrial failure
actually played out under the 1867 Bankruptcy Act. I found particularly
interesting the discussion of conflicts over jurisdiction and the attempts of
local courts to protect local interests, including employees and local
merchants.
M. Susan Murnane, Bankruptcy in an Industrial Society: A History of the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio. (University of Akron Press) provides a detailed study of
how bankruptcy courts actually operated over a long period of time. I learned a
lot about how referees were selected and how they operated.
Forecasting Recessions
Robert Shiller recently wrote about on the value of
economics. I agree with most of what he says, but he also seems to perpetuate a
myth about the inability of economists to forecast downturns in the economy.
Shiiler states that “Indeed, economists failed to forecast most of the major
crises in the last century, including the severe 1920-21 slump, the 1980-82
back-to-back recessions, and the worst of them all, the Great Depression after
the 1929 stock-market crash.”
Read
more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/are-economists-good-by-robert-j--shiller-2015-01#IvJFopWQS6EmSZ2Z.99
I am
not going to address all of these recessions, but it is relatively easy to look
back to 1980. In the New York Times I find this
“the
April decline in the composite index was the fourth in the last six months and
comes at a time when many private economists are predicting a mild recession
during the last half of 1979.” New York Times
June 1, 1979 pg. D1.
And this
“Summarizing the latest Data Resources forecast, Miss Mosser
said that “the economy will at best slow down and at worst we’ll see a double
dip come the first of this year.” New
York Times Dec. 2 1980 pg. A1.
Not all economists agreed, but it is certainly not the case
that no one saw it coming.
Forecasting recessions with a reasonable degree of accuracy
is actually one of the easier things to do in economics. The yield curve, for
instance, is an easy to use and pretty reliable tool. If it is upward sloping the
chances of a recession in the near future are small. If it flattens out or
slopes downward the chances of a recession are pretty good. Anyone paying
attention to the yield curve should not have been surprised by our most recent
recession.
It is harder to forecast the severity of recession, but Shiller was one of a number of economists that
expressed concerns about the underlying strength of the economy in the time
leading up to the most recent financial crisis, suggesting that next recession
could be severe because of problems in financial markets.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Economics needs better critics
The Washington Post describes protests at the ASSA.
They suggest that students ask their economics professors
How does climate change factor into our study of economics?
Why is there nothing about Islamic economics in our curriculum?
Should we slow down fast money with a Robin Hood Tax?
The first question is odd because the discussion of market failures, such as degradation of the environment, is a prominent part of mainstream economics. Austrian economists think that mainstream economists talk about almost nothing but market failures. One of the people they targeted was Greg Mankiw. Mankiw is one of the most prominent supporters of increased taxes on negative externalities.
Why are they concerned about Islamic economics but not Catholic social theory? Are they also concerned that natural scientists teach theories based on religious beliefs?
I have no idea what it means to slow down fast money.
I am not what most people would regard as a traditional mainstream economist. I would like to see less attention to formal mathemtical models, and more attention to institutions, to history, and to narrative forms of explanation. But these people do not appear to have even a basic understanding of economics.
They suggest that students ask their economics professors
How does climate change factor into our study of economics?
Why is there nothing about Islamic economics in our curriculum?
Should we slow down fast money with a Robin Hood Tax?
The first question is odd because the discussion of market failures, such as degradation of the environment, is a prominent part of mainstream economics. Austrian economists think that mainstream economists talk about almost nothing but market failures. One of the people they targeted was Greg Mankiw. Mankiw is one of the most prominent supporters of increased taxes on negative externalities.
Why are they concerned about Islamic economics but not Catholic social theory? Are they also concerned that natural scientists teach theories based on religious beliefs?
I have no idea what it means to slow down fast money.
I am not what most people would regard as a traditional mainstream economist. I would like to see less attention to formal mathemtical models, and more attention to institutions, to history, and to narrative forms of explanation. But these people do not appear to have even a basic understanding of economics.
The Benefits of Doing Historical Research
Anthony Grafton and James Grossman in The American Scholar
"The best defense for research, however, is that it’s in the archive where one forms a scholarly self—a self that, when all goes well, is intolerant of weak arguments and loose citation and all other forms of shoddy craftsmanship; a self that doesn’t accept a thesis without asking what assumptions and evidence it rests on; a self that doesn’t have a lot of patience with simpleminded formulas and knows an observation from an opinion and an opinion from an argument."
In other words, doing history develops skills that all college graduates need.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Is Economics Already Open Access?
We just got the December 2014 issue of The American Economics Review. It took me about 10 minutes to find ungated versions of all the papers.
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