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Growth: Consequences
A Category Archive (85 entries)
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July 23, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen offers six, not mutually exclusive. For example, 4. Energy becomes very cheap, destruction is easy, deterrence is difficult, power decentralizes, and we retreat to medieval-style fortresses. In my view, the two most interesting variables in forecasting the future... MORE
July 1, 2008
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Brad DeLong writes, The true history of the U.S. since 1980, IMHO at least, is not Sean Wilentz's "Age of Reagan" but is instead composed of a half dozen or so deeper and broader tides, like: 1. The end of... MORE
June 24, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
is that human nature has changed in the last few hundred years. If you could go back to 1708 and replace all of the babies at conception with babies conceived today, my prediction is that the alternative history from 1708... MORE
June 23, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly (I'm as big a fan as Tyler Cowen and Seth Roberts) has a great story on the last 25 years' best 25 innovations in entertainment technology. You need to subscribe for the full story,... MORE
June 11, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Following up on an earlier post about hypothetical travel back in time, Tyler Cowen writes, I don't think 1700 would be so much easier for me than 1000. Even if I fell into London, patronage would be hard to come... MORE
June 9, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
I'm not a chess geek - I prefer games where people laugh. But I suspect that my many chess geek friends will be interested in this paper that uses chess data to argue for the real-world importance of the Flynn... MORE
June 3, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
The IEEE Spectrum symposium that I mentioned in the previous post includes Robin's thoughts on The Economics of the Singularity. in each economic era the question of whether growth speeds up or slows down depends on two competing factors. Deceleration... MORE
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
John Tierney writes, Do you have trouble sticking to a diet? Have patience. Within 10 years, Dr. Kurzweil explained, there will be a drug that lets you eat whatever you want without gaining weight. At least once at a Milken... MORE
May 31, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
I've often heard Robin Hanson called a "space cadet" or even a "replicant." So it's pretty dramatic to see him throw cold water on his fellow cadets:Sigh. The US government spends more on space research than on NIH and NSF... MORE
May 30, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
I like the first two weeks of Growthology, the new blog by Tim Kane and Bob Litan. Highlights from what is perhaps its best post so far:After 12 years, Peter Carlson is leaving his job as a journalist covering magazine... MORE
March 5, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
What delicious irony that Steve Marglin tries to argue against modernity--saying that we need more community and less stuff--in an appearance on...YouTube. Will Wilkinson keeps sounding like he wants to put "community spirit" into the utility function, so that economists... MORE
January 18, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
If you're a nerd over 30, you'll probably laugh at this. If you're a younger nerd, you had to be there. If you're not a nerd, why are you reading econ blogs on a beautiful Friday afternoon? HT: Don Boudreaux... MORE
January 17, 2008
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
He writes, Any single year there has been inflation, from one year to the next. From 1900 to 2008 there has been radical *deflation*, for instance in the Sears catalog. You'd rather spend 10K in the modern catalog than in... MORE
January 16, 2008
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok writes, Forget the talk of recession. The world is about to enter a new era in which miracle drugs will conquer cancer and other killer diseases and technological and scientific advances will trigger unprecedented economic growth and global... MORE
December 29, 2007
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
Arnold's got a "non-pacifist syllogism" to counter my "pacifist syllogism". I think all of Arnold's premises are wrong or misleading. Point-by-point:Premise 1: There will always be individuals and groups whose comparative advantage is plunder and extortion. Call them pirates.For any... MORE
December 27, 2007
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
First, on figuring out the causes of growth A linear framework rules out the possibility that the effect of a change in the variable of interest may differ according to the initial level of that variable and that the effect... MORE
December 3, 2007
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Aubrey de Grey writes, The practical fact is that, of the three categories of death enumerated at the beginning of this section (early, “bad” late and “good” late), society seems committed to delaying all three. The only issue is the... MORE
November 15, 2007
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
The 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States lists death rates per 100,000 population. The 1951 Statistical Abstract of the United States lists death rates per 1000 population. When you look at the numbers, it's easy to see why. Back... MORE
July 6, 2007
Economics and Culture
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, The puzzle of declining family size in the face of rising wealth remains. Since I'm currently steeped in Gregory Clark, let me throw in my two cents. From Clark, we learn that in England: 1. Prior to the... MORE
April 12, 2007
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
An excerpt: we did not get really good control over the techniques for purifying drinking water until about World War I, but we needed everything that was done up to that point to figure out how to do it. Then... MORE
March 23, 2007
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
This essay by James McCormick is difficult to summarize. Here is a taste: To summarize my argument then, (1) our prosperity and peace is far ahead of most of the world and increasing, (2) we don’t appear to have enough... MORE
February 5, 2007
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Tim Worstall writes, The theory is the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem. Stripped to its essentials this says that we would expect the process of globalization to have the following effect: it will lower wages in the US and raise corporate profits (more... MORE
January 1, 2007
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Edge has a whole bunch of them. Jonathan Haidt says, The Baby Boomers Will Soon Retire I am optimistic about the future of social science research because the influence of the baby boom generation on the culture and agenda of... MORE
December 28, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Bill Gates writes, How soon will robots become part of our day-to-day lives? According to the International Federation of Robotics, about two million personal robots were in use around the world in 2004, and another seven million will be installed... MORE
December 26, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
A year ago, I listed five stories to follow on a long-term basis. Now for an update.... MORE
December 4, 2006
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
The above graph is lifted from a forthcoming book by Surjit S. Bhalla, called Second Among Equals: The Middle Class Kingdoms of India and China. It shows the share of the middle class in world population rising from 2... MORE
November 30, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
He writes, Economists Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger and Julia Lane...note [that] job turnover and firm disappearance have positive effects, in the aggregate...As workers lose jobs in one niche or sector, they gain in another, moving on to better jobs and... MORE
September 26, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
I've been carping on the public's pessimistic bias for quite a while. Now Robert Fogel persuasively argues that even economists suffer from it: At the close of World War II, there were wide-ranging debates about the future of economic developments.... MORE
September 22, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Hans Rosling is amazing. There are many lessons in this talk about how well-being around the world has changed over the past forty years. But what struck me was the quality of the presentation. My impression is that the number... MORE
September 8, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
A caricature of hypocrisy: Overweight, middle-aged man in a Che Guevara t-shirt, talking on a cell-phone in his illegally-parked BMW.... MORE
August 28, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
Heard of the Magdalene Asylums? Long story short: They were quasi-prisons in Ireland for "wayward" girls and women, run by nuns. To sustain themselves economically, the inmates ran Magdalene Laundries. Check out the movie The Magdalene Sisters; and if you... MORE
August 6, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
I have not read Benjamin Friedman's book, but Megan McArdle has. When earnings are growing, Friedman says, people are more tolerant of minorities, more welcoming to immigrants, more solicitous of their fellow citizens, more supportive of democratic institutions, and just... MORE
July 30, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Gina Kolata writes in the New York Times, The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they... MORE
April 24, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Tim Worstall points to this interesting paper by BLS economists Ian D. Wyatt and Daniel E. Hecker. Teachers below the college level increased 1.4 times as a proportion of total employment between 1910 and 2000, from 1.6 percent to 3.8... MORE
April 17, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Nicholas Eberstadt writes, China’s national pension system as of 2025 promises today to be more or less the same system that has always provided for the country’s elderly and infirm: namely, the family unit. But herein lies a problem: The... MORE
March 23, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Ken Rogoff writes, Globalization proceeded at a rapid pace through much of the last century, and at a particularly accelerated rate during its last two decades. Yet the vast body of evidence suggests that technological changes were a much bigger... MORE
February 10, 2006
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
My grandpa sent me a telegram to congratulate me on my college graduation. Even then, I thought it was weird. Thirteen years later, the market has finally pulled the plug on telegrams: Well, now nothing is worth a telegram. Western... MORE
December 29, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
I have an essay on what I call the Most Important Economic Story of the Year. The average productivity growth rate in the last five years is the highest over the past half century. For Discussion. What do you think... MORE
December 28, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
As an end-of-year type post, here is a list of economic stories that I think will be worth following next year. Note that all of them are long-term stories, which won't be resolved in 2006 alone.... MORE
December 1, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
An Excerpt: ultimately, what the government can pay [in future Social Security benefits] depends on how the economy performs. If we continue to grow as we have in the neighborhood of 2 percent per annum per capita over the past... MORE
October 25, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
He writes How about my house?! Is that going to be "obsolete" in 18 years? Even if housing prices go down a bit and my kids are extremely successful, my house will be worth years of their expected wages. Your... MORE
October 24, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Bryan asks, we're a lot less focused on inheritance than we used to be. Why would that be? The Kurzweilian answer is that rapid technological change has made inheritance--apart from "inherited" human capital--less valuable. Which would be more valuable to... MORE
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
From my latest essay: Ray Kurzweil argues that the information component of goods and services is rising relative to the value of the physical resources employed in production. All of our products are becoming information-intensive. Computer software and pharmaceuticals are... MORE
October 18, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
I discuss the economics of accelerating growth in my latest essay. If output per person in 2025 is more than 5 times what it is today, then the economy will have won the race. That means that all of the... MORE
September 30, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Amar Bhide writes, Over 30 years after the introduction of minicomputers and more than 20 years after the introduction of microcomputers, the mainframe remains an important category. Total worldwide revenues of large-scale computer processors (or mainframes) amounted to $16 billion... MORE
September 2, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Glenn Harlan Reynolds interviews Ray Kurzweil, who generically answers my objection to his forecasts. to achieve the software designs, we need to reverse-engineer the human brain. Here, progress is far greater than most people realize. The spatial and temporal (time)... MORE
August 25, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, Imagine that nanotechnology, or some other version of The Next Big Thing, came to pass. The bounty of nature would be replaced by the bounty of science. Might our economy look a bit more like the welfare... MORE
August 17, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I wrote, In my opinion, James Miller is making a bad bet. If you want to bet against Ray Kurzweil, you should look for patterns of prediction errors. As this essay will show, Kurzweil has been... MORE
August 13, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
James Hamilton writes, Between 1995 and 2004, U.S. output per worker grew at a 2.9% annual rate, even faster than the impressive pre-1973 pace. It's hard to attribute this to a change in any of those factors thought to have... MORE
August 5, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Jeremy Rifkin says, [An economist] would say we are going to create new types of jobs: analysts, consultants, programmers, engineers, educators and technicians, right? That was Robert Reich's idea when he was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. The problem... MORE
August 3, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Mahalanobis quotes Peter C.B. Phillips and Donggyu Sul, the fastest learning countries are China, India and the East Asian group. Remarkably, China has experienced over four centuries of base trajectory OECD growth in the last 52 years taking it to... MORE
March 31, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Ray Kurzweil is always fascinating. We’ll ultimately disconnect the sensual and social pleasures of eating from the biochemical task of keeping an optimum set of nutrients in our bloodstream. That sounds like a very concise statement of the goal for... MORE
March 10, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Richard Cooper writes, Development as a global policy objective dates from the 1940s. Relative to expectations then, the world economy performed outstandingly well during the second half of the 20th century. Worldwide growth in average per capita income exceeded two... MORE
March 7, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Bryan Caplan
I've come across an essay by Herbert Spencer that is eerily reminiscent of the work of the late great Julian Simon. Writing in the late 19th-century, Spencer proposes the following relationship between objective conditions and public opinion: "[T]he more things... MORE
January 14, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
While I'm in the middle of reading about "network commonwealths" in James C. Bennett's The Anglosphere Challenge, the National Intelligence Council, a CIA affiliate, has just released Mapping the Global Future. Most forecasts indicate that by 2020 China’s gross national... MORE
January 11, 2005
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
I've started reading The Anglosphere Challenge by James C. Bennett. I'm only up to Chapter One, but already it is very stimulating. For example: In popular misconceptions, it is imagined that in America and the other advanced countries people will... MORE
January 3, 2005
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
In a long essay, I write The reduced significance of capital means that the cost of entry is lowered in many industries. Today, we see this in the shops that people have set up on eBay or in the blogs... MORE
November 24, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Following Marginal Revolution's recommendation, I bought Ian J. Deary's Intelligence, which is a summary of research on IQ testing. For me, the most interesting chapter was on the Flynn effect (see also this post), which is that IQ scores have... MORE
November 2, 2004
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Bryan Caplan writes, studying the public's beliefs about economics...income growth seems to increase economic literacy, even though income level does not. In other words, poor people whose income is rising—like recent immigrants—have more than the average amount of economic sense;... MORE
October 31, 2004
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Ronald Bailey reports, Nanotechnology would make it possible for 100 billion people to live sustainably at a modern American standard of living, while indoor agriculture using high-efficiency inflatable ten-pound diamond greenhouses would help restore the world's ecology. The ultimate limit... MORE
October 8, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Mark Bahner writes, So we have "the economic literature" with a per-capita GDP mean value in 2100 of $22,900, versus Arnold Kling saying over--way over, in fact!--$20,000,000. What in the world is going on?! Is Arnold Kling a lunatic or... MORE
September 24, 2004
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I suggest using an escalator rather than a pie as a metaphor for differences in income. Overall, over 60 percent of families surveyed in 1975 made it to the top 40 percent in 1991. If the "distribution... MORE
August 14, 2004
Public Choice Theory
Michael Munger
by Michael Munger Guest Blogger Economist Ray Fair's very simple model on presidential elections has some interesting things to say about the upcoming election. Given the macro-economic and macro-political factors that have mattered in the past, George W. Bush should... MORE
July 26, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
One way to track the increased affluence in America is to look at the trends in new home construction. This research report from the National Association of Homebuilders is filled with interesting facts. For example, Some of the features that... MORE
July 23, 2004
Labor Market
Arnold Kling
Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane predict that computer automation is leading to a split in the labor market. Good jobs will increasingly require expert thinking and complex communication. Jobs that do not require these tasks will not pay a... MORE
July 15, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I argue against the view that life is getting harder for all but the rich. In the 1970's, ordinary working people drove Vegas and Pintos. They did not eat out much. They rarely traveled by airplane.... MORE
July 8, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
I put together a simple table of productivity performance over the last forty years. The table helps to demonstrate what Brad DeLong is talking about. The 17 percent productivity growth from the first quarter of 2000 to the first quarter... MORE
June 28, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Is productivity growth the most overlooked economic story? Brad DeLong thinks so, and Virginia Postrel agrees. The productivity story is boring. It isn't really, but editors think it is. There's no obvious conflict, no scandal, no little guy getting hurt... MORE
June 14, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Steve Antler points to a study by Fredrik Bergström & Robert Gidehag of various indicators of prosperity in the U.S. relative to countries of the European Union. Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will... MORE
May 26, 2004
Labor Market
Arnold Kling
Bruce Bartlett pointed to a Dallas Fed analysis of the causes and consequences of higher productivity. One of the sections, on the evolution of work, says The United States will continue to move up the hierarchy of human talents as... MORE
May 20, 2004
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
David R. Henderson and Charley Hooper argue that most of us are rich. Except for the few hundred thousand who are homeless, the Americans whom the U.S. government defines as poor live exceptionally rich lives. In most ways, their lives... MORE
February 17, 2004
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Eli Noam says that an economy where the key input is research will be unstable. In industries where up-front costs are high but production and distribution costs approach zero, the main strategy will be to consolidate and cartelise in order... MORE
December 9, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Jeff Cornwall points to a survey on entrepreneurship. Cornwall writes, The survey sampled 1,000 Americans over the age of 18. Here are some of their findings: * 56% of Americans dream of starting their own business (E.M. Couple this with... MORE
October 29, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
In an essay called Will Science Save Social Security?, I write, Overall, if events play out over the next quarter century as the technology optimists predict, then GDP will be so astronomical that the costs of Social Security and Medicare... MORE
October 24, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
A paper by Jeremy Greenwood, Ananth Seshadri, and Mehmet Yorukoglu examines the role of modern appliances in liberating women from housework. To understand the impact of the household revolution, try to imagine the tyranny of household chores at the turn... MORE
September 3, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
On Labor Day, President Bush announced that there would be a new Assistant Secretary of Commerce charged with addressing the decline in manufacturing employment. This prompted a number of skeptical responses. Yesterday, Daniel Gross wrote, The new assistant secretary must... MORE
August 21, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Irving Kristol recently wrote a neoconservative manifesto. It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative... MORE
August 20, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
This week I got some well-deserved pushback on a couple of posts. Peter Gallagher was not impressed with the story of robots and comparative advantage. (Update: Gallagher posted a new comment with a more favorable interpretation of the robot example.)... MORE
July 18, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
I share Brad DeLong's fascination with anecdotes that illustrate historical comparisons of income. He posted one concerning the pay of a professor one hundred years ago. our professor sees himself as a reasonable and badly underpaid man. He is not... MORE
May 26, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Paul A. Jargowsky found that "concentrated poverty" (people living in high-poverty neighborhoods) declined by 24 percent in the United States in 1990's. In contrast, he says that from 1970 to 1990 poverty became more concentrated spatially. Based on the trend... MORE
April 16, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I suggest that the economy has grown more diverse over the past fifty years, making it more elastic. One way to describe the elastic economy is that it has become more complex. Human wants continue to be... MORE
March 12, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Marian L. Tupy writes, If I am correct, then at least some of the roots of contemporary anti-Americanism rest on a deep misunderstanding concerning the functioning of international economics. Contrary to common misconception, the reasons for global economic inequality rest... MORE
February 12, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Back in December, Virginia Postrel marveled at being able to buy a 5-pound bag of flour for 69 cents. In response, Brad DeLong on his weblog calculated the cumulative gain in productivity over the last 500 years, using flour as... MORE
February 6, 2003
Social Security
Arnold Kling
Liberal and conservative economists are not as far apart on the issues of fiscal policy as it might first appear. Both sides share a concern that government growth could outstrip GDP growth. The position of liberal economists on the U.S.... MORE
January 28, 2003
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Glenn (Instapundit) Reynolds links to a pessimistic treatment of economic growth by Michael Rogers. In my little part of the world that sample has included advertising agency people, a television executive, two doctors, a lawyer, a retail stockbroker, a building... MORE
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