Unemployment Update

The Rise of European Leisure

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 0 times. Similar articles

There has been some recent discussion in the blogosphere about comparing the United States and Europe. With the pending passage of the healthcare bill and the more general expansion in the size of government, the United States of the future will in some ways start looking more like Western Europe today. So I thought my blog readers might enjoy this excerpt from my favorite intermediate macroeconomics textbook:Higher unemployment rates in Europe are part of the larger phenomenon... Read more

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Learning from Europe

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 0 times. Similar articles

Here is GDP per capita, adjusted for differences in price levels (PPP), from the IMF, for the United States and the five most populous countries in Western Europe:United States 47,440 United Kingdom 36,358 Germany 35,539 France 34,205 Italy 30,631 Spain 30,589 Readers of today's column by Paul Krugman might find these figures useful to keep in mind.Update: See Mark Perry and Tino Sanandaji. Read more

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Renting is cheaper than Buying

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 0 times. Similar articles

The title of this blog post might lead you to think I am talking about real estate. But no. What I have on my mind is something far more important: Textbooks!Check it out here. Students can now rent my favorite textbook for about half the price of buying it. Read more

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Wealth-dependent Fines

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 1 times. Similar articles

Tyler Cowen alerts us to an intriguing story: A Swiss court has slapped a wealthy speeder with a chalet-sized fine ? a full $290,000.Judges at the cantonal court in St. Gallen, in eastern Switzerland, based the record-breaking fine on the speeder's estimated wealth of over $20 million.A statement on the court's Web site says the driver ? a repeat offender ? drove up to 35 miles an hour (57 kilometers an hour) faster than the 50-mile-an-hour (80-kilometer-an-hour) limit.Is it optimal to base... Read more

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Blogometrics

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 0 times. Similar articles

A new ranking of economics blogs based on the scholarly impact of the bloggers. Read more

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How well is Team Obama working'

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 0 times. Similar articles

Al Hunt says the economic team is not working well, leading Mickey Kaus to wonder whether Larry Summers will be pushed out.I would be very surprised if that happened. President Obama seems astute enough to recognize that Larry as an economic policy adviser is nonpareil. Larry is simply too good to give up.On the other hand, the job Larry has--NEC Director--traditionally has the responsibility of coordinatiing the policy process, which requires more people skills than deep... Read more

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Why is the recovery so tepid'

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 0 times. Similar articles

The answer from Gary Becker, Steve Davis, and Kevin Murphy. Read more

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Dave Barry's 2009 Year in Review

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 0 times. Similar articles

It was a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of "I feel hopeful!" and later in the sense of "I hope this year ends soon!"It was also a year of Change, especially in Washington, where the tired old hacks of yesteryear finally yielded the reins of power to a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as Nancy Pelosi. As a result, Washington, rejecting "business as usual," finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it, and instead... Read more

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Goodbye, Estate Tax (for now)

From Greg Mankiw's Blog , 2 year ago, Read 0 times. Similar articles

The estate tax is now gone, one of the goals of President Bush. But under current law, it will come back next year.As I recall, the reason for this peculiar state of affairs was not, as Paul Krugman suggests, an attempt to hold down the official cost of the Bush tax cuts. Indeed, back in 2001, what would happen in 2011 was outside the 10-year budget window, so rigging the official cost could not have been the motive for the return of the estate tax next... Read more

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