Like many libertarians, I feel that small government is an eminently practical rule of thumb proven by hundreds (if not thousands) of years of observation. So when Rafe recently posted in response to a presentation that David Cameron made at TED, it got my dander up. Calling the small government philosophy,...

Rafe linked to this essay by Robert Reich.  I don’t have much of a problem with his first point backing Obama’s plan to offer a tax credit for hiring.  I think temporarily suspending the employer’s share of payroll tax is a better mechanism (as suggested by Bryan Caplan a year ago), but...

The trials chronicled in Part I have a happy ending.  I eventually obtained an excellent individual plan from Assurant Health. I followed my own advice and got a high deductible plan that covers no primary care. I thought it would be worth comparing to the traditional PPO coverage I had previously. The...

As you may recall, I previously posted about my recommendations for fixing health care (Part I, Part II, Part III). Recently, I had to navigate the current system and thought I’d share my experience in the context of those recommendations. You see, COBRA ran out on my health insurance from the last...

I’m usually a rather optimistic person.  But yesterday, I thought I saw a sign of the apocalypse and panicked.  The usually insightful Coyote Blog posted a chart that I interpreted as saying that the number of people on government payrolls was now larger than the number of people on private payrolls...

The truth is out there. Finally. The NYTimes has a piece on the problems and differences between generic and brand name drugs. Think they are the same? Think again. The article is excellent and I recommend everyone read it. As usual, I will quote liberally, with some of my own commentary. But there is a...

As I have written before, one of my goals is to resolve the differences between Arnold Kling’s and Scott Sumner’s views on macroeconomics. There is now some evidence that I may actually understand what is going on. Will Ambrosini, wrote about a Blanchard and Gali paper that combines two standard...

Tim Harford has a good analysis of the latest research on micro-lending’s effect on poverty.  The basic result is that the near and medium term effects are extremely modest.  This isn’t too surprising given the relative magnitudes of the intervention and the problem. But there was always hope...

Michael Pollan, as always, making perfect sense: Now watch Will Allen on urban...

Ever since he taught my Econ 1 class, I’ve liked John Taylor.  He always struck me as a practical guy, especially for a macroeconomist. So I was not surprised at what I found when I followed Arnold Kling link to Taylor’s analysis of the stimulus.  Using Department of Commerce data, he...

The following question was given as a homework problem in a course I’m TAing: CNBC had an interesting program on the current financial crisis. They located one investor who noticed that since the late 1990’s housing prices have been growing 10 percent every year (that is, each year, the average...

Having addressed the uninsured and doctor’s visits, the next health care problem on my list is hospital spending. It represents the largest share health care costs, $696.5B in 2007 or roughly 32%. Now, it’s worth repeating that I don’t object to increased spending per se. It might be...

Don’t throw the data mining baby out with the black swan.  It’s what you DO with the data that creates problems, not the misunderstanding according to Taleb himself.  If policy makers aren’t looking at this, they’re not changing anything: “So the central lesson from...

A superb discussion of the need and risks of financial innovation.  Evolution, complexity, simplicity, and why an equivalent of an FDA approval process may be just what the doctor ordered.  Unfortunately critical thinking is probably still required: “We are told, particularly in the U. S., that...

Via the indispensable Tyler Cowen, a new paper from Johnson and Fowler explores whether overconfidence is, in fact, adaptive. They show that it it is under some very reasonable assumptions.  They model competition for resources as a two-player game and then analyze the evolutionary dynamics of populations...

Now that we’ve solved the problem of the uninsured, it’s time to move on to the problem of doctor’s visits. Spending on physician and clinical services was $479B in 2007, 22% of total health care spending. Only hospital spending accounts for a larger share at 32% (I’ll be addressing...

Declan McCullagh of CBSNews reports that a Department of Treasury analysis released under the Freedom of Information Act estimates that a cap and trade program would raise $100B to $200B a year in taxes. Those taxes come from us one way or another. Recall that my estimate of the cost to cover the uninsured...

A wonderful historic analysis of economics (as a struggling social science) giving a huge shoutout to complexity: “This recognition that the economy is complex is not a new discovery. Earlier economists, such as John Stuart Mill, recognized the economy’s complexity and were very modest in their...

If you do nothing else intellectual this Sunday, do these two things: (1) Read Tyler Cowen’s NYTimes column on how the bestowing of political favors was at the heart of the financial crisis and how we’re about to make the same mistake with health care. (2) Remember Norman Borlaug.  He is the...

Yes, I’ve decided to wade into the health care waters again.  One of the problems with the current debate is that it confounds several distinct problems.  So I’m planning to briefly address each one individually in the hopes of achieving some clarity.  First up, the uninsured. Most of us...

If you had a billion dollars to make the world a better place, how would you spend...

Just in case you hear phrases like, “America no longer makes things,” “…decline of American manufacturing,” or “China is now the world’s factory,” here are the facts… Don Boudreaux points out that the latest official statistics from 2007 show that US...

I saw this brief New York Times article syndicated in the San Jose Mercury News.  Evidently, one of the challenges in identifying new cancer treatments is recruiting enough patients for drug trials.  The issue is that oncologists have little incentive to encourage their patients to enroll in drug...

I was listening today to a Fresh Air interview from a couple of weeks ago on the reasons for the high cost of health care: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your...

The two economists that have most informed my view of the current macroeconomy are Arnold Kling and Scott Sumner. In both cases, their models and explanations make sense to me.  They use solid reasoning and evidence; I don’t feel I’m getting a lot of hand waving. Unfortunately, at first glance,...