Econosseur

Google Data

2010-03-12T01:34:07Z

A new Google product I just became aware of- Google's public data explorer. The number of datasets is still limited, but it's a great place to get a graphical depiction of data. Here are minimum wages around Europe from 1999 to present:

It'd be neat to overlay this with the unemployment data...

Google Datat

2010-03-12T01:34:07Z

Detective Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich

2010-02-23T03:29:17Z

From the archives of Conan O’Brien:

USD weathers blizzard

2010-02-06T19:24:59Z

The US Dollar has done well against the Euro with the impending bankruptcy of the PIIGS. It's also holding up against the Blizzard of 2010:

Keynes v. Hayek Rap

2010-02-01T00:59:49Z

Russ Robert's masterpiece:

Note the cameo by Mike Munger.

Creative Destruction in Song

2010-02-01T00:54:37Z

The Man in Black channels Schumpeter:

Great graphic: Sources of U.S. foreign born workers

2009-11-02T15:45:48Z

Jason sent me the great interactive graphic below from the folks at the New York Times (April 7, 2009). It shows the amount and countries of origin of foreign-born workers in the United States. Note that the top five sources of immigrant employment in the U.S., in descending order, are Mexico, Philippines, India, China, and El Salvador. We have over 5 million workers from Mexico, but the second-place country--the Philippines--was the source of only about 850,000. U.S. Immigration is truly only about Mexico.

The data come from the most recent survey of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey via the Minnesota Population Center. For a link to other great graphics see, "Perfecting the visual presentation of information."

One year and nearly 40,000 visits

2009-10-14T19:24:48Z

It was one year ago today, back on October 14, 2008, when Jason Debacker and I started this blog. The first post on Econosseur.com was entitled, "Who is to blame for the crisis? Supply and demand approach". As of the writing of this post today, we have had 39,069 visitors. Jason and I wanted to thank all of you who have read our commentary, suggested ideas, or given constructive criticism in the comments. We love the forum.

Below are some of the highlights from the last year.
]]> On Economic Debate--the ad hominem index" (June 30, 2009). This post was a simple analysis of the logical argument styles employed by the two main thought leaders in the blogosphere regarding the economic justification for the Administration's fiscal stimulus proposals--Greg Mankiw and Paul Krugman. I simply showed how Paul Krugman regularly employed ad hominem attacks in the arguments for his policy position, while Greg Mankiw would go out of his way to highlight the strengths in his opponents arguments in addition to precisely criticizing the points on which he disagreed. Mankiw posted a link to my post on his blog, and the debate seemed to move to the comments section of my post because Mankiw's blog does not allow comments. I would highly recommend reading the comments section of my post for many examples of ad hominem arguments. The irony.

2) The next most popular post was entitled, "NCAA Bowl FInance: Something Changed in 1995" (July 6, 2009). This post got picked up by a number of sources (e.g., ESPN.com and The Orlando Sentinel). This post touched on a sensitive topic for fans of both BCS and non-BCS football schools, which made the comments very fun.

3) The most popular page on Econosseur.com is our economic jokes page. Jason and I have been posting economic jokes on this blog since it began because economics is a subject that often takes itself too seriously. In a Google search of the term "economic jokes", our jokes page regularly comes up in the top five hits. Please send us any good economic jokes or funny economic happenings, and we'll probably post them.

4) Lastly, this blog was born out of the global financial crisis that started in the second half of 2008. The biggest topic that Jason and I have blogged about is still in the "business cycles, recessions, bubbles" category with 76 posts to date.

Thanks again to all of you who have followed, contributed, commented, and suggested. Economics is an interesting and far reaching field that provides a framework for trying to answer many of the world's important questions. Here's to another year of Econosseur.com.

Breaking the "separating hyperplane" ceiling

2009-10-13T04:04:41Z

The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded today to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson for their contributions to our understanding of the economics of institutions and their governance. It is noteworthy that Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Women in economics should be bursting with gratitude (or envy) that Prof. Ostrom has broken the "separating hyperplane" ceiling that has existed for the profession's highest award until today.
]]> Dan Hamermesh presented some work at BYU a couple of weeks ago showing that the percent of female authors of articles published in the top three economics journals (American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics) rose from 4.3% in 1963 to 10.0% in 2003.

Hamermesh also showed that for elected offices to the American Economics Association that, although the percent of the candidates that are women rose from 12% in the early 1970s to 20% in the early 2000s, the percent of winners who are female has risen from 13% to over 30% in the same period.

All in all, the women's place in the profession has become more and more solidified. Of the top 8 young economists profiled by The Economist magazine last December, two were women (Esther Duflo and Amy Finkelstein). The white collar world of economics is becoming more and more pink.

A "must read" from Mankiw: the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T16:53:33Z

You must read Greg Mankiw's post from today entitled, "First-year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics!" And please do it in the following order. First read what Mankiw wrote about young Quintus Pfuffnick winning the Nobel Prize in Economics (not really). Then click on the link to the AP story about the Nobel Peace Prize award. Well played, Greg.

Here is a fun little video parody from Reason.tv. (Thanks to Jason for the link.)

Overseer of the Federal Reserve: the bond market

2009-10-01T06:12:59Z

After getting a B.A. in economics from BYU in 1998, I went to work for Thredgold Economic Associates for two-and-a-half years. Jeff Thredgold took an unconventional route to becoming a Chief Economist for major banks. He came up as a bond portfolio manager. As such, I always felt like he had very good intuition for what was happening in markets on a day-to-day basis.

One of Jeff's most insightful arguments is one that he has been making for as long as I've known him. In this week's issue of his weekly economic newsletter, The TEA Leaf, Jeff drives the point home, yet again, in compelling fashion.

"What [Ron] Paul and other Fed critics don't understand is that the Federal Reserve has an overseer...something or someone IT has to answer to. That something is the American bond market."

]]> Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), and often Libertarian Presidential candidate, makes in his new book entitled, End the Fed. Jeff then takes you through a recent history of Federal Reserve performance since the 1970s.

Jeff's acknowledges that the Federal Reserve has tremendous freedom and independence to "create money out of thin air." However, his thesis is that this Fed freedom has a powerful check and balance in the U.S. bond market. I would add that U.S. monetary policy is also held in check by the international bond market.

So the next time you start feeling like the Federal Reserve nothing more than a big and powerful government institution that devalues your money at will, just remember that the policy makers at the Fed have to answer to arguably the most powerful market force in the world... the bond market.

If the periods of poor Federal Reserve monetary policy in the late 1970s can be characterized as the emperor not having any clothes, Jeff Thredgold concludes about the Fed today:

"...the emperor has clothes.... the bond market wouldn't have it any other way."

Perfecting the visual presentation of information

2009-09-30T19:06:08Z

Jason and I have always been fans of the great presentation of data and it is an important skill in communicating economics. Good examples that we have discussed on this blog include the Democrats health plan diagram, the averages from the American Time Use Dataset, and the breakdown of the Federal Reserve balance sheet. Jason sent me this link to one of the coolest blogs I have ever seen: InformationIsBeautiful.net. This is an entire blog dedicated to the artful and effective visual presentation of data. Below is a graphic from a post about disease case fatality rates if you wash your hands.

]]> The New York Times published an interactive graphic (screen shot below) that showed total box office revenues from 1986 to 2008 broken down by movie. You can scroll back and forth using the scroll bar along the bottom, and each individual movie gets highlighted and labeled as you pass your mouse arrow over it.

Here's to the great presentation of data. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Qcue and dynamic pricing: retaking the scalper's scoop

2009-09-29T04:11:02Z

Jason and I were PhD students in the economics program at the University of Texas at Austin for five years, and Barry Kahn was a classmate of ours. However, during the last two years of the program while Jason and I were working on dissertations, Barry was spending most of his time on a business idea. Using the tools of game theory, microeconomics, and industrial organization, he was developing a company that would attempt to take back to the original ticket seller some of the profits that scalpers always get on the secondary ticket market. The result is Qcue (pronounced kyoo-kyoo) and the product is called dynamic pricing.

]]> Qcue, has since been referenced in The New York Times and on the Marginal Revolution blog, and has signed such professional sports teams as the San Francisco Giants and the Dallas Stars.

Ticketmaster.com has felt some of the pressure and seems to be taking a different approach. Rather than capture some of the consumer surplus that gets left on the table by charging one price for tickets, Ticketmaster is forcing the surplus remain with the original consumers and not the scalpers.

It is interesting in the CNBC video above that the anchor says he would be frustrated to know that he was sitting next to someone in Yankee Stadium that paid less than he did for his ticket ONLY if they both bought their tickets from the front office. He wouldn't be angry if the person with the lower-priced ticket bought his ticket from a scalper. He seems to care who gets the benefits. My thought is that a true Yankees fan would want the Yankees to get any excess profits so they can buy better players and have a better chance to win the World Series. Why would I want some scalper to get the profits.

The fact is that tickets become a commodity once they are sold. There is an active and liquid secondary market for tickets anywhere they are sold whether it is legal or not. Tickets to entertainment events behave very similarly to a stock. In Utah, where scalping is legal, I sold my BYU vs. Florida State football tickets two weeks ago for $75 each. I bought them at the beginning of the season for about $22 from the BYU ticket office. My brother, who has season tickets with me, described the people who were sitting in my seats, and they were not the people I sold my tickets to. The guy I sold them to probably resold them for an even higher price.

The point is that there is probably a better way for entertainment and sporting events to sell tickets and capture the profits that scalpers have historically scooped up. I don't know if Qcue is the answer, but I think Barry has at least started the ball rolling in the right direction.

Unemployment duration: 60-year high

2009-09-25T05:58:17Z

Dan Hamermesh is currently visiting BYU as an invited seminar speaker. I was showing him my picture of the normalized peak plot of employment in the last 14 recessions, and he told me about another labor fact from this recession that astounded me. Look at the picture below of average duration of unemployment in the U.S. since 1947. The average unemployment duration for everyone who said they were unemployed in August 2009 was 25 weeks (nearly 6 months). Compare that to the average of about 15 weeks between 1976 and 1992. This is the 60-year record in the U.S.

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The chart above shows the unemployment rate in the U.S. up to August 2009. But look at the one below that shows the number of Americans unemployed for more than 27 weeks. This recession really stands apart for the last 60 years with about 5 million people unemployed for over 27 weeks in August 2009. Compare that to the next highest level of about 3 million unemployed for over 27 weeks in the early 1980s. If the U.S. is going to implement any unemployment policy, it should be targeted at these long-term unemployed that seem to be a direct result of the severity of this recession.

Dilbert: Not sugar coated

2009-09-21T04:06:57Z

My 9-year-old son showed me this today, and we laughed our heads off together.