In the last post I noted that monopsony is definitely not the only and not even really the best theoretical argument for why we see no disemployment effects. Commenters made this point too, inclu...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-few-more-thoughts-on-monopsony-and.html
Don Boudreaux has written a long post challenging me by name on monopsony power and the minimum wage. I've addressed all the points in his comment section before, although he does not speak to t...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/08/frictions-monopsony-power-and-entry.html
Recently, Don Boudreaux called Robert Reich sophomoric for suggesting that productivity (as the BLS measures it) and real wages should move in tandem. Even an intro student could tell you that w...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/05/don-boudreaux-seems-to-pick-and-choose.html
I love this graph . When you just graph the monetary base you give the impression that the Fed is (1.) in complete control and (2.) very expansionary. It takes careful argument to walk people bac...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/05/i-love-this-graph-from-paul-krugman.html
My thoughts are with Baltimore tonight. The last time the governor called the National Guard out to respond to riots my dad was able to get out to his grandfather's farm in Baltimore County. Not ...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/04/brief-reaction-to-baltimore.html
I wanted to highlight this post by David Henderson on the late Barbara Bergmann, much of which is a discussion of her writing on the wage gap. He promises more to come. One of the things I lik...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/04/david-henderson-on-barbara-bergmann-and.html
Does anybody have experience with a distributed lag model for a panel dataset? I'm getting this odd result where I'm trying a bunch of different lag lengths and no matter what I run the two longe...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/04/does-anybody-have-experience-with.html
I got an email today announcing an Urban seminar, and the abstract reminded me of some of the Piketty debates around Bob Murphy and Phil Magness's paper and subsequent discussions. Here it is: >...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/04/data-adjustments-not-conspiracy-just.html
In the last sentence of the last post I alluded to the fact that things get more complicated when we move from caring about inequality to doing something about inequality. You can obviously never...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/03/fairness-and-policy.html
The last twelve months have really been The Year of Inequality. It started with the English translation of Piketty's book and it has taken over the political agenda. Over the last year I've...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/03/why-inequality-matters.html
This is the weirdest application of Friedman's plucking model I've ever seen. Friedman did not show deep recessions can't have slow recoveries, he showed that the magnitude of the recovery is co...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/02/john-taylor-has-one-of-weirdest.html
I've said here before that in work I've done I've often used the word "disparity" rather than "discrimination" because "discrimination" confuses people - they think they know what it is, but it's...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/02/wage-gaps-and-occupational-coefficients.html
Whenever I identify my philosophical leanings I always like to qualify that I'm by no means a professional philosopher - it's simply what resonates with me of what I've read which is of course li...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/02/postmodernism-pragmatism-and-motte-and.html
Commenter Julien Couvreur taught me a fantastic new term today: the motte and bailey fallacy. I don't think his comment is persuasive at all, but it's interesting enough to spend some time talki...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/02/is-my-gender-wage-gap-view-motte-and.html
Patricia Arquette recently promoted gender equality particularly as it relates to the wage gap at the Oscars. Some Facebook discussion followed, and Bob Murphy encouraged me to put my position i...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/02/thinking-clearly-about-gender-wage-gap.html
I've pointed out several times now that there are a few basic points that seem to commonly trip people up on Piketty. A confusing new critique of Piketty by Peter Lewin illustrates the trouble p...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/02/peter-lewin-on-thomas-piketty.html
Recently, Hagedorn, Manovskii, and Mitman (hereafter HMM) released an NBER working paper on the impact of unemployment insurance benefit extensions on employment. I find it interesting enough to...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-research-on-unemployment-insurance.html
...because I don't blog much these days so why not bring it up into a main post that a few other people might read. Levi Russell starts a little rough on me : "This post seems like a bunch of ...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/01/responding-to-levi-russell.html
1. Read him. 2. He is surprisingly sloppy on several points - most fantastically the tax history and the minimum wage history. Magness and Murphy provide a good overview of all this in pages 1 ...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/01/my-advice-on-piketty.html
Phil Magness responds to my last post here . It's somewhat disappointing. He seems to miscalculate the first correction I was discussing and misunderstand my claim on the second two. On the fir...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/01/magness-responds-and-misses-point-im.html
Bob Murphy had asked me to read his new paper with Phil Magness a little while ago to get reactions before it was released, and I was swamped and didn't get a chance to. Still semi-swamped, I rea...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/01/very-quick-context-free-thoughts-on.html
The video is here. I finally got a chance to watch it. Some quick reactions: 1. In order of how interesting the presentations were, the ranking IMO clearly goes Weil > Mankiw > Auerbach. Th...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-few-quick-thoughts-on-piketty-aea.html
Brad leaves some thoughts , on which I'll just add a few of my own: > "Could it be that the time series covers a long era in which for > the most part the Federal Reserve is...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/01/brad-delong-consistently-my-most.html
Recently Paul Krugman presented a scatterplot with change in real GDP on the y axis and change in real government purchases on the x axis, with each observation being a country. The point was ...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2015/01/dont-jump-on-scatterplot-bandwagon.html
In case anyone is interested, I'll be presenting at an Infometrics Institute workshop today (here ). The topic is information theoretic/maximum entropy econometrics and I'll be presenting my work...
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2014/12/two-conferences-straddling-holidays.html