Via Lars Christensen, here is a combination of my favourite things: Sprint finishes in professional cycling are fast, furious, and dangerous. A “red flag rule” seeks to moderate the chaos of these finishes, but may induce moral hazard by removing the time penalty associated with crashing. To test for moral hazard, the authors use a […]
Communication is an essential part of a central banker’s job. Particularly with the increasing use of forward guidance, markets are becoming exceptionally sensitive to the nuances of bankers’ words. With Larry Summers one of two candidates believed to be in contention to succeed Ben Bernanke as Fed Chair, it is worth reminding ourselves of his […]
An interesting post by the Economic Logician that bears on our recent discussion: Physicists believe that social sciences can only be described as true sciences if on can figure out some laws that always apply, without exceptions, and if there some invariant constants that would be good, too. Social scientists do not believe this is […]
Matt has written a long post discussing Rosenberg and Curtain’s NYT article about the science of economics. Their basic point is that economics has a poor forecasting record so it’s not a science and we should just treat it as a useful art. Matt’s response engages directly with the philosophy of science but I think […]
Anyone who’s followed TVHE for a while will enjoy Gillian Tett’s discussion of the skills needed by central bankers: Rather than operating the controls, moreover, central bankers also try to control economic outcomes by using words, not merely to influence price and interest rate expectations but to shape the mood. Thus the seemingly dry ritualistic […]
For all those who’ve accused university lecturers of having it easy with only a few teaching hours a week: This study analyzes self-reported faculty workload in a Canadian research intensive university. …Results show an average weekly workload of 56.97 hours of which 44.1% is allocated to teaching, 35.2% to research, 5.8% to administrative tasks and […]