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You can trace my earlier jobs here, my next job, which I believe started at age nineteen, involved giving summer talks to high school debaters.  The program was called Economics in Argumentation, and it continues today in a much broader form under the name Economic Thinking, led by the excellent Gregory Rehmke, who was program […] The post My Economics in Argumentation seminars job...

In Australia physicians are currently banned from recommending COVID vaccines as this is considered a form of advertising.  (See also this twitter thread). Crazy, but then I am reminded that one year ago Britain’s Advertisement Standards Authority banned advertisements for masks ruling that: Public Health England did not recommend the use of face masks as […] The post Bad Advertising Bans appeared first on...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: A skeptic might say that demand is limited because there are already so many good and highly informative markets in other assets. In 2009, for instance, was a market necessary to predict how well the iPhone was going to do? The share […] The post Are prediction markets going to make...

I’ve already posted about my chess teaching, and my grocery store work (here and here), my next job was as managing editor of the Austrian Economics Newsletter, for 1980-1981.  I was only eighteen (and nineteen) then, so for me this was a big step up. I was responsible for commissioning content, making sure authors got […] The post My job as managing editor of...

STAT is reporting a ‘scandal’: The Trump administration quietly took around $10 billion from a fund meant to help hospitals and health care providers affected by Covid-19 and used the money to bankroll Operation Warp Speed contracts, four former Trump administration officials told STAT. The NYTimes tried to create a similar scandal back in June […] The post Why Didn’t Congress Fund Operation Warp...

It was great to see your “Thursday assorted links” link regarding chess. It has been fascinating to follow the recent online boom to which the game has been subject and to think about what it may mean for the organization, and business, of chess over time. I speculate, of course, but – as to what […] The post Ola Malm on the future and...

The Canadian province of British Columbia has moved to First Doses First (as I suggested they would) with a four month (not three as in Great Britain) delay on the second dose. Quebec is already using FDF. I believe that the rest of Canada will follow shortly: Also on Monday, the province announced it is […] The post Canada Moves to First Doses First...

A new study from Public Health England shows that both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccine work well from the first dose. If that sounds familiar it’s because the results are similar to those found in Scotland. The results cover all adults in England aged 70 years and older (over 7.5 million people). Vaccination with either […] The post The English Data Support First Doses...

I wanted to present this paper to you all, here is the abstract: Economics, Sociology, and Anthropology are dominated by the belief that social outcomes depend mainly on parental investment and community socialization. Using a lineage of 402,000 English people 1750-2020 we test whether such mechanisms better predict outcomes than a simple additive genetics model. […] The post The Gregory Clark working paper appeared...

Canada has approved the AstraZeneca vaccine. The US has not. The US has paid for an AstraZeneca factory in Baltimore and stockpiled millions of doses. The US should lease the factory to Canada or simply make the doses available for export. The same factory will also produce the J&J vaccine so it’s possible that there […] The post A Biden Plan for World Vaccination...

How can the resilience of ERCOT’s grid be improved without resorting to costly regulatory mandates that may or may not yield benefits? ERCOT could implement clear market rules requiring natural gas generators to have firm supply contracts in order to be certified as an eligible resource for emergency conditions. Plant owners have incentives to do […] The post Lynne Kiesling and Vernon Smith on...

As the pace of recovery quickens, and most balance sheets continue to look decent, it seems increasingly obvious that $1.9 trillion is too much to spend.  We are spending at least $1 trillion too much, with very little investment to show for it, and $1 trillion is a lot of money.  Heaven forbid they should […] The post Following the science? — the show...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is one bit: The hypothesis is that a lot of this new money got funneled into asset price markets, rather than being spent on goods and services. Measured rates of price inflation for consumer goods have remained stubbornly below 2%. This view is misguided. First, dollars are […] The post Is all that extra money trapped...

Market design to accelerate COVID-19 vaccine supply is my new paper in Science, co-authored with Camilo Castillo, Michael Kremer, Eric Budish, Susan Athey and others. We make three vital points. First, governments invested much less than our group advised. We spent trillions on fiscal support and maybe $20 billion or so on vaccines, far too […] The post Market Design to Accelerate Vaccine Supply...

One hour, fifteen minutes, almost all of it about the history and culture and economic future of the Caribbean, here is the audio.  It starts with Rasheed interviewing me, but later becomes more of a back-and-forth dialog, covering Cuba, Trinidad, Barbados, the best music from Jamaica, why Haiti has failed so badly, whether the Caribbean […] The post My Caribbean podcast with the excellent...

Duke University has gone to incredibly and absurd lengths to contest other people’s trademark applications. For example, Duke opposed the following marks by filing with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board : “The Dude Diet” for a diet-related website “Kuke” for electronic products “Goluke” for clothing “Le Duc” for food and drink services they have […] The post Duke is a Trademark Bully! appeared...

But there was also a missed opportunity on the demand side. Texas has retail choice for electricity, but the overwhelming majority of Texas customers face electricity prices that are too static, too inflexible, and don’t respond to market conditions. Economists have been advocating dynamic prices for decades, but adoption has been slow. Case in point. […] The post Texas utilities should have had more...

A new study looking at essentially the entirety of the Scottish population finds that both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccine work very well at preventing hospitalizations from the first dose. UK policy for use of vaccines against COVID-19 involves an offer of a first dose followed by a second dose 12 weeks later. To our […] The post The AstraZeneca Vaccine Works Well appeared...