Another Friday – another post with interesting links on economics.
1. Let’s keep the tradition and start with a link from Michael Fuenfzig – property rights and internal migration in Russia.
2. Economics Blog tells us how austerity could be self-defeating.
3. For any Star War fans out there – was Death Star really worth all the fuss?
4. From The Atlantic – how being kidnapped by pirates is just something from game theory.
5. Noah Smith has an interesting post on the essence of financial crisis.
6. Again from Noah – structuralists vs. cyclicalists.
7. Nick Rowe from Worthwhile Canadian Initiative has a couple of interesting posts. First – about forward and backward looking stuff. And second – about identity economics.
8. The Economist’s Free Exchange blog talks about possible Greek exit from Eurozone.
9. Paul Krugman has a quite pessimistic piece on economics and its usefulness.
10. And finally – an interesting blog (the whole blog!) dedicated to why you shouldn’t get a PhD. Not willing to discourage ISET students from doing one, but just to list all the cons (and we all know about pros, don’t we?)
Interesting list, as usual! But let me say this, Giorgi: you shouldn’t be reading the number 10.
It’s too late for me anyway :))
Related to 9, I’ve just bought (and read) a book by Ha-Joon Chang “23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism”. His #23 is called “good economic policy does not require good economists”. He argues that most economic miracles were engineered by lawyers and … engineers. A quote: “the government will acquire most able economic policymakers by recruiting those who have studied what happens to be the most prestigious subject in the country (which could be law, engineering or even economics, depending on the country), rather than a subject that is notionally most relevant for economic policy-making (that is, economics).
Eric, does he demonstrate that? If yes, I should definitely have a look at that book.
Well, I would not say he ‘demonstrates” this econometrically, but whatever he has to say sounds quite convincing (certainly, logical). He uses a lot of examples, some well known, some less so…