TGI Friday – let’s see, what have economist bloggers and blogging economists prepared for us!
1. Interesting examples of perverse incentives from Mark Perry. Can you think of other examples?
2. How companies are replacing oil – from LA Times and Startribune. Again, examples from our reader would be appreciated.
3. Not exactly a blog post but an ingenuous business idea. Shall South Caucasus offer its united forces for sale too? J
4. What happens, when policymakers don’t know their Econ 101, from EclectEcon.
5. Pros and cons of austerity. Mostly basic stuff but nice to have it compiled in one post.
6. What determines bond yields – from the same blog.
7. The Economist Free Exchange blog talks about the knowledge burden.
8. Posts by Gary Becker and Richard Posner from their common blog discuss capitalism. Insightful.
9. Two interesting posts from Worthwhile Canadian Initiative – first one about the main questions in monetary economics.
10. … and second one, about the distributional consequences of monetary policy.
11. A primer in balance sheet monetary policy – from Miles Kimball.
12. And finally, several posts from my favourite blogger Noah Smith:
1. Economic theory that really works (with a question in the very end that our friend Zac will certainly like).
2. Fake GDP and whether there does exist one in reality.
3. Libertarians and public goods. I like the last sentence in this one J
4. Will carbon taxes work? No, I didn’t think so either.
That's all folks!
Comments
The collection about perverse incentives is very interesting. You may add the famous one – The Cobra Effect -which is even to be found in Wikipedia:
The term 'Cobra effect' stems from an anecdote set at the time of British rule of colonial India. The British government was concerned about the number of venomous cobra snakes. The Government therefore offered a reward for every dead snake. Initially this was a successful strategy as large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually however the Indians began to breed cobras for the income. When this was realized the reward was canceled, but the cobra breeders set the snakes free and the wild cobras consequently multiplied. The apparent solution for the problem made the situation even worse. A similar incident occurred in Hanoi, under French colonial rule, where a program paying people a bounty for each rat pelt handed in was intended to exterminate rats. Instead, it led to the farming of rats.