Monthly Archives: March 2013

Reactions to Mankiw on the Long Run Budget Path

I agree with most of Greg Mankiw’s NYTimes piece on long-term debt to GDP but can’t overlook a glaring omission –  he seems to ignore the fact that we are currently experiencing a major economic catastrophe. Here’s how Mankiw concludes: Military … Continue reading

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Do Physicians’ Financial Incentives Affect Medical Treatment and Patient Health?

Here’s an interesting paper from Jeffrey Clemens and Joshua Gottlieb. We investigate whether physicians’ financial incentives influence health care supply, technology diffusion, and resulting patient outcomes. In 1997, Medicare consolidated the geographic regions across which it adjusts physician payments, generating … Continue reading

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The Effect of U.S. Health Insurance Expansions on Medical Innovation

Here’s an interesting recent paper by Jeff Clemens on the effect of health insurance expansions on medical innovation. Abstract: I study the effect of health insurance expansions on medical innovation. Innovation by practitioners creates important roles for local patient flows and payment … Continue reading

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Krugman on UST Debt, Fed Purchases, & Interest Rates

Paul Krugman has a nice post challenging the sometimes accepted wisdom that the fed “gobbling up” massive amounts of UST is the primary reason for low rates. He makes three points: “As Bernanke stressed, long-term interest rates have moved very … Continue reading

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On Disability Insurance and Labor Force Participation

There’s some disagreement in the literature on the effects of disability insurance on labor force participation that I thought I’d post about given this recent NPR Unfit for Work feature. Till von Wachter, Jae Song, and Joyce Manchester have a nice paper that uses … Continue reading

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Krugman & Bernanke on Capital Flows

Here’s Krugman’s op-ed on capital flows today: But the truth, hard as it may be for ideologues to accept, is that unrestricted movement of capital is looking more and more like a failed experiment. And here is Bernanke on capital … Continue reading

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Technical Change and the Relative Demand for Skilled Labor: The United States in Historical Perspective

A new working paper from Larry Katz & Robert Margo This paper examines shifts over time in the relative demand for skilled labor in the United States. Although de-skilling in the conventional sense did occur overall in nineteenth century manufacturing, … Continue reading

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Concentration in Mortgage Lending, Refinancing Activity, and Mortgage Rates

Here’s a recent paper from David Scharfstein and Adi Sunderam on the effects of mortgage market concentration on refinancing effectiveness. Seems like some interesting variation that could be used to trace out the effects of refinancing on consumption in a follow up … Continue reading

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Reforming Money Market Mutual Funds

Here’s a new proposal from Sam Hanson, David Scharfstein, and Adi Sunderam. We analyze the leading reform proposals to address the structural vulnerabilities of money market mutual funds (MMFs). We take the main goal of MMF reform to be safeguarding financial stability. … Continue reading

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Productivity & International Management Heterogeneity

Here is a chart from John Van Reenen’s recent paper on management as a technology. It shows that the distribution of survey-assessed management quality across firms varies quite a bit across countries. In the US, you see much fewer poorly … Continue reading

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