Via Mark Thoma, Miller-McCune has a nice writeup of some research done by psychologists and published in Psychological Science. The results of their study explain the seeming “irrationality” of people who stayed behind in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina (this might be of interest to Sean and his recent Big Easy blogging at [...]
Archive for August, 2009
Staying Behind and Rationality
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged behavioral economics on August 31, 2009 | 5 Comments »
“Heterodox” Economists and the Crisis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Economic Crisis, Marxian on August 30, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Anyone who reads this blog knows that we like to take swings at the mainstream from the heterodox corner. Naturally, I was interested when I saw that Mark Thoma asked Barkley Rosser at EconoSpeak to respond to his claim that heterodox economists did not predict the crisis any better. Rosser points out some problems with [...]
Wages and Productivity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Economic Crisis, Marxian on August 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Rick Wolff on wages, productivity, capactiy utilization, and capitalist exploitation:
Two particular sets of August economic data reveal the deepening economic divide behind the “recovery” talk.
The first set of numbers came from the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. They showed some remarkable facts about (1) US workers’ productivity — the physical quantity of [...]
Big Business in Organic Foods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food on August 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The consolidation of the organic food industry, from Contexts
Click here for larger image
And a more recent post on the complex politics of corporate food marketing.
Back to School
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged college costs on August 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Magic and the Market”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Anthropology, behavioral economics on August 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Go read Sean’s post at Economies in Cultural Perspectives. I meant to post on this article today (and I apologize for the ultra-lite blogging- I’m transitioning to a new city). Sean seems to hit on the main points and possible concern that I would raise.
“Feral Houses”
Posted in Uncategorized on August 22, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Detroit photographer James D. Griffioen (h/t SusanG@DK) has a photo gallery of what happens when humans abandon structures and nature takes them back. Here’s my favorite:
I always enjoy the thought experiment of what would happen to our structures if humans vanished and nature took over. How long would the Willis (f.k.a Sears) Tower remain standing? [...]
“Capitalism: A Love Story”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Economic Crisis on August 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Via Paul Kedrosky, the trailer is out for Michael Moore’s new movie, to be released October 2nd, Capitalism: A Love Story. It’s hard for me to not enjoy a trailer that involves MIA’s Paper Planes.
On a related note, I’m genuinely surprised how seriously Michael Moore is taken at this point in [...]
Reintroducing Macroeconomics
Posted in Uncategorized on August 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I recently found an interesting textbook, Reintroducing Macroeconomics: A Critical Approach by Steven Mark Cohn. It came it out in December 2006.
This lively introduction to heterodox economics provides a balanced critique of the standard introductory macroeconomic curriculum. In clear and accessible prose, it explains many of the key principles that underlie a variety of alternative [...]
There is such a thing as a free textbook
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Open Source on August 20, 2009 | 1 Comment »
There may be no such thing as a free lunch, according to neoclassical economists, but now there are free textbooks. And, ironically enough, many of them are for Principles of Economics courses. From Epicenter:
What did you do this summer? Flat World Knowledge stayed busy on campus and now has 40 times as many students and [...]
