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Links for 07-31-16
Posted by Mark Thoma on Sunday, July 31, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (183)
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Posted by Mark Thoma on Sunday, July 31, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (183)
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson:
The Path to Prosperity Is Blue: How can America's leaders foster broad prosperity? For most Republicans — including Donald J. Trump — the main answer is to "cut and extract": Cut taxes and business regulations, including pesky restrictions on the extraction of natural resources, and the economy will boom.
Mr. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan are united by the conviction that cutting taxes — especially on corporations and the wealthy — is what drives growth.
A look at the states, however, suggests that they're wrong. Red states dominated by Republicans embrace cut and extract. Blue states dominated by Democrats do much more to maintain their investments in education, infrastructure, urban quality of life and human services — investments typically financed through more progressive state and local taxes. And despite what you may have heard, blue states are generally doing better. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Saturday, July 30, 2016 at 11:42 AM in Economics | Permalink Comments (99)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Saturday, July 30, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (146)
Hadn't heard this story before:
Why Does Economics Reject New Thinking?, by Rick McGahey: The Economist magazine is running a series on six big economic ideas that have shaped the field in recent decades, and they start with one of the best—George Akerlof's 1970 "The Market for Lemons."
The concepts in the paper were groundbreaking insights about the price distortions that come about when one party has more information than the other, and influence economics and regulation to this day. ...
Akerlof shared his Nobel with Joe Stiglitz and Michael Spence. All three economists questioned a basic premise of standard microeconomic theory—that parties to market transactions have equal and perfect information, and that information equality helps produce market-clearing prices (covering not only commodities, but labor and finance) resulting in fair competition between equally informed parties ... [and] ...optimal overall social returns. ...
But there is another essential part of the Akerlof story—the narrow-minded nature of academic economics. The paper was rejected from several major economics journals. His graduate students at Berkeley had to read the paper in mimeographed form, as Akerlof had trouble getting it published. He testifies that the American Economic Review and The Review of Economic Studies both rejected the paper on the grounds that the subject was trivial.
But the paper's rejection from the Journal of Political Economy was the most telling. According to Akerlof, one reviewer recognized the profound issues in the paper, and rejected it on the basis that "if this paper was correct, economics would be different." ...
...while it is good that The Economist and others recognize the power of Akerlof's ideas, the story of "The Market for Lemons" also must remind us about how hard it was—and still is—for new economic thinking to be heard and accepted by most economists.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 29, 2016 at 03:25 PM in Economics, Market Failure | Permalink Comments (62)
Branko Milanovic:
The forthcoming changes in capitalism?: Sometimes it's useful to put symbolic dates on when a different era begins. The end of Thatcherism, it could be argued, came on July 10 in the then PM-candidate speech by Theresa May. It was perhaps appropriate that another woman, a Tory Prime Minister, would be credited with the ending of Thatcherism. The key words, which immediately attracted attention (see also Philip Stevens in today's "Financial Times") were not those about inequality (which has become a common place these days) but about the changes in the internal structure of capitalism: reintroduction of workers' and consumers' representatives on management boards, limits on the executive pay, reduction of job insecurity for the young people and much greater access to top jobs for those coming from less privileged backgrounds.
For the first time since the late 1970s (at the top level of policy-making), we are back to the issues of reforms in the way capitalism functions rather than discussing the ways in which the external environment would be made more market friendly. In essence, this is a confession that "civilizing" capitalism cannot be done only "externally" by relying on the "harmony of private interests" but that the state has a bigger role that goes beyond ensuring the protection of property rights, taxation and redistribution.
The past 35 years have shown that the neo-liberal conception of capitalism, combined with its global reach, has increased inequality to often unsustainable levels, left large segments of the population in the rich world without significant increase in real income and with heightened insecurity, and brought populist policies with a vengeance. ...
He goes on to identify three areas where he can imagine change.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 29, 2016 at 10:08 AM in Economics | Permalink Comments (41)
Claudia Sahm
women and econ blogs: I enjoy reading econ blogs. ... So why are there so few female economic bloggers? ... Here are some of my hypotheses:
1. Women with opinions are not well received. I have heard this one but I am not so sure. My gateway to tweeting and blogging was commenting on Marginal Revolution. I was tolerated (very few women comment there) but it was clear that some of the other commenters did not appreciate a woman with an opinion. I was once told that I was an example of why women should not have gotten the vote, hmm. In contrast, I have felt perfectly welcome in econ-dork Twitter. ...
2. Women are busy with other forms of service. ...many economist positions do not lend themselves well to blogging. There are many women working in government as economists ... I have never seen more female macroeconomists than at the Fed and I've enjoyed getting to know other female economists in government via DCWEP. But public service and blogging can be pretty tricky. And for junior women in academia it may be even riskier to blog. I don't understand why so few senior women in academia blog. Diane Coyle is on the only I can think of ... their absence makes me think blogging is a mistake. And of course, service goes beyond work ... there's family too.
3. Women underestimate what they would contribute by blogging. Blogs, for all their interesting ideas, have a bit of egos running amok too. ... I have sat in meetings with two male economists basically yelling at each other over something unknowable ... they finish and walk away pleased with their digs and I am drained just by listening. ... It is easy to think that showmanship is a part of blogging and maybe women are less likely to enjoy that. Or the ones who do are less likeable. But really blogs are about sharing ideas and all economists have plenty of ideas. Plus it is a very flexible format ... though maybe it is harder for women to imagine themselves as econ bloggers given the current landscape? ...
As with a lot causality debates, the reason why there are few women blogging is probably a complex mix of factors. But it's nothing set in stone either. In fact, I am always happy to see other women on Twitter, blogging ... or more generally voicing their opinion on economics. There is plenty of work to go around!
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 29, 2016 at 10:00 AM in Economics, Weblogs | Permalink Comments (120)
Republicans and the patriot act:
Who Loves America?, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: ...too many influential figures on the right are tribalists, not patriots.
We got a graphic demonstration of that reality after Michelle Obama's speech, when she spoke of the wonder of watching her daughters play on the lawn of "a house that was built by slaves." It was an uplifting and, yes, patriotic image, a celebration of a nation that is always seeking to become better, to transcend its flaws.
But many people on the right ... heard was a knock on white people. "They can't stop talking about slavery," complained Rush Limbaugh. The slaves had it good, insisted Bill O'Reilly: "They were well fed and had decent lodgings." Both men were, in effect, saying that whites are their tribe and must never be criticized.
This same tribal urge surely underlies a lot of the right's rhetoric about national security. Why are Republicans so fixated on the notion that the president must use the phrase "Islamic terrorism," when actual experts on terrorism agree that this would actually hurt national security, by helping to alienate peaceful Muslims?
The answer, I'd argue, is that ... it's all about drawing a line between us (white Christians) and them (everyone else), and national security has nothing to do with it.
Which brings us back to the Vlad-Donald bromance. Mr. Trump's willingness to cast aside our nation's hard-earned reputation as a reliable ally is remarkable. So is ... his support for Mr. Putin's priorities... And he has offered only evasive non-answers to questions about his business ties to Putin-linked oligarchs.
But what strikes me most is the silence of so many leading Republicans in the face of behavior they would have denounced as treason coming from a Democrat...
What this tells you, I think, is that all the flag-waving and hawkish posturing had nothing to do with patriotism. It was, instead, about using alleged Democratic weakness on national security as a club with which to beat down domestic opponents, and serve the interests of the tribe.
Now comes Mr. Trump, doing the bidding of a foreign power and inviting it to intervene in our politics — and that's O.K., because it also serves the tribe.
So if it seems strange to you that these days Democrats are sounding patriotic while Republicans aren't, you just weren't paying attention. The people who now seem to love America always did; the people who suddenly no longer sound like patriots never were.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 29, 2016 at 09:22 AM in Politics | Permalink Comments (130)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 29, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (140)
James Ledbetter:
What Does 'Regulatory Capture' Mean to Business and the Economy?: In recent months, the idea of "regulatory capture" ... has been enjoying its star turn. ... Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office revealed that it had (at the urging of two members of Congress) begun investigating whether the New York office of the Federal Reserve is too close to the financial institutions it is supposed to regulate. This is, apparently, the first GAO investigation of its kind. ...
For all the ubiquity of charges of capture, however, it can be difficult to grasp exactly what capture is, or how serious a social and economic problem it represents.
As it is commonly used, "capture" seems malleable enough to fit into the worldviews of both the left (evil corporations outfox, outspend, and manipulate regulators) and the right (state regulation is harmful to businesses). And yet, historically, capture theory embodies a more collusive view of the relationship between government and enterprise. Classic capturists argue that ... businesses accept regulations because they ultimately help improve profits. ...
Intuitively, though, we know that not all regulation benefits companies. ...
Some scholars are urging that we rethink the entire idea. A 2013 essay by William Novak, a law professor at the University of Michigan, ... accepts that regulatory capture exists, but he offers two refinements... One is that capture may be more likely among "vertical" regulators--those who enforce rules within a single industry, such as trucking--than among "horizontal" regulators, those whose mandates apply broadly across society, such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The second is that ... it is far from proven that regulators are any more prone to it than other institutions. The financial crisis ... was a regulatory failure, to be sure. But, as Novak said in an interview, "entire sectors of the government became enamored with financial interests, including Congress."
And thus, if we intend to tackle the problem of capture, we need more precise definitions and measurements. There is a risk of either weakening regulations that genuinely protect the public, or allowing some incumbents to continue their unearned free ride and squash disrupters. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, July 28, 2016 at 09:36 AM in Economics, Regulation | Permalink Comments (9)
Dean Baker:
The Case for a Financial Transactions Tax, The Century Foundation: There has been considerable interest in financial transactions taxes (FTTs) in the United States and other wealthy countries in the years since the financial crisis. An FTT can be a way to both raise a large amount of revenue and also rein in the financial sector. This report examines the evidence on the potential for raising revenue through an FTT, its impact on the economy, and also the possibility of using the revenue to defray in particular the cost of higher education. The report argues:
- A financial transactions tax could likely raise over $105 billion annually (0.6 percent of GDP) based on 2015 trading volume. This estimate is roughly in the middle of recent estimates that ranged from as high as $580 billion to as low as $30 billion.
- The full amount of this tax would be borne by the financial industry, and not individual holders of stock or pension funds and other institutional investors. Evidence suggests that trading volume is elastic with respect to price, meaning that any drop in trading volume resulting from the tax would reduce costs for end users by a larger amount than the tax would increase them.
- It is reasonable to believe that the industry would be no less effective in serving its productive use (allocating capital) after the tax is in place. This means that one of the primary effects of the tax would be to reduce waste in the financial sector, reducing costs while having little or no effect on its principal purpose: to allocate capital effectively.
- The revenue raised through an FTT would easily be large enough to cover the cost of free college tuition (among other social programs), although if nothing were done to stem the growth rate of college costs, it would eventually prove inadequate.
The report also notes that the financial sector is the main source of income for many of the highest earners in the economy. This means that downsizing the industry through an FTT could play an important role in reducing income inequality. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, July 28, 2016 at 09:23 AM in Economics, Taxes | Permalink Comments (60)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, July 28, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (167)
Here's a link to the Fed's statement on its policy decision today:
Policy is unchanged, sees improvements in the economy, says short-term risks have fallen.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 11:15 AM in Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (24)
Tim Duy:
July FOMC Preview on Bloomberg: How long can doves at the Federal Reserve stand their ground?
The fight within the U.S. central bank continues at this week's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting as both hawks and doves jockey for dominant position. This battle will go to the doves; the Fed is not expected to raise its interest rate target just yet. Both the hawks and the doves know this. Both camps also know that this meeting is about laying down markers for the September meeting. And while the doves have the upper hand this month, the current flow of data will increasingly place them on the defensive as the second half of the year progresses.
Continued at Bloomberg....
Posted by Mark Thoma on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 12:15 AM in Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (20)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (259)
Noah Smith:
Economists Give Up on Milton Friedman's Biggest Idea: One of the core pieces of modern macroeconomic theory, handed down to us by the great Milton Friedman, probably missed the mark. ...
The idea is called the permanent income hypothesis (PIH). ... The PIH says that people's consumption doesn't depend on how much they earn today, but on how much they expect to earn over their lifetime. ...
That assumption about human behavior has huge implications for policy. If true, the PIH means that the effectiveness of a fiscal stimulus is likely to be a lot lower than economists thought in the 1960s. ...
It's also important for finance. ... Friedman's idea says that consumers want to smooth out their consumption... So in theory people will spend a lot for financial assets that pay off during recessions, allowing them to avoid tightening their belts.
PIH is so dominant that almost all modern macroeconomic theories are based on it. ... Unfortunately, there's just one small problem -- it's almost certainly wrong. Not completely wrong, mind you, just somewhat wrong. ...
The mounting evidence against the PIH -- the papers I cited are only a small sampling -- is causing economists to cast around for an alternative. ...Narayana Kocherlakota ...thinks macroeconomists should set aside their big, complex formal models of the economy, since these elaborate constructions are built on a foundation that probably doesn't describe reality all that well. He recommends that economists go back to the drawing board, and look around for new, more accurate kernels of insight with which to build the theories of tomorrow.
In the meantime, we should all recognize that Milton Friedman's ideas might have been too influential. His impact on economics was deep and lasting, but this theory, at least, hasn't stood the test of time.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 08:25 AM in Economics | Permalink Comments (46)
Jeff Frankel at Econbrowser:
Trump Jr.'s Pants-on-Fire Allegation of Manipulated Jobs Numbers: When interviewed about the unemployment numbers, which have fallen steadily since 2010, Donald Trump Jr., replied "These are artificial numbers. These are numbers that are massaged to make the existing economy look good, to make this administration look good when, in fact, it's a total disaster." PolitiFact asked a variety of experts about the quote. Their bottom line: the quote from the younger Trump was a "Pants on Fire" lie. The truth is that presidents don't and can't manipulate the jobs numbers. No White House has even tried — at least not since Richard Nixon made a heavy-handed attempt in 1971 to interfere with BLS staffing. After that, extra firewalls were put in place.
Here is my own full response to PolitiFact's question regarding the Trump claim...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 08:24 AM in Economics, Politics, Unemployment | Permalink Comments (9)
Paul Krugman:
Pax Trumpiana: With everything else going on, it may be hard to stay with the evolving Trump/Putin story. But it's really crucial. I don't think Trump is literally an agent of the Kremlin; instead, he's someone Putin is aiding because he knows Trump is close to, probably financially entangled with friendly oligarchs. And equally important, Putin knows that Trump's combination of ignorance and greed would quickly undermine the Western alliance: already we have, incredibly, a presidential candidate essentially proposing that we turn NATO into a protection racket, in which countries get defended only if they pay up.
All of this is, as it turns out, dovetailing with my bedtime reading.
I'm a huge fan of Adrian Goldsworthy's histories, and I have a galley of his new opus, Pax Romana. Great fun as usual, plus lots of detail. ...
America is, one hopes, not ancient Rome; we aspired to universal values from the beginning, and the Pax Americana, while far from being perfect or even free from some evil, has surely been the most benign great-power domination in history. Still, there is some parallel between how we've run much of the world and what the Romans learned to do.
But Trump doesn't care about any of that — he basically wants America to behave like Rome at its worst, to become the predatory power of Lucullus and Sulla.
And all those ultra-patriotic Republicans are cheering him on.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 08:01 AM in Economics, Politics | Permalink Comments (131)
I have a new column:
Economists, Blogs, and Donald Trump: The reason I have this column can be credited to, or blamed on, George Bush.
During the presidential campaigns before the 2004 election, I was very unhappy with the coverage of Bush's economic proposals in the press. The reporting on the claim that tax cuts would cause so much growth they would pay for themselves, and the discussion of Social Security privatization were particularly irksome, but there was a more general sense that people writing about economic issues were too easily lulled into "bothsideism" and swayed by political spin. Readers were not being informed about what economic theory and evidence says about the policies the candidates were proposing.
In an attempt to do whatever I could to change that, I started writing letters to the local paper followed by three op-eds. Then, one day in March of 2005 I started ablog. That eventually led to this column.
I wasn't the only one who began using blogs to try and improve communication about economics. The number of economists with blogs has grown substantially, and it has made a difference. The press coverage of economic issues is much better than it was during the campaigns for president in 2004. It's not perfect, there are still occasions when I want to tear my hair out in frustration, but it's far better than it was. ...
So it's been frustrating to see how little difference it has made in the current presidential campaign. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 07:38 AM in Economics, Politics, Weblogs | Permalink Comments (34)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (133)
Chris Dillow:
Brexit: a blow to the low-paid?: The CBI reported today that manufacturers' business confidence has fallen at its fastest rate since early 2009, causing falls in investment and hiring plans. This corroborates surveys by Deloitte, Markit (pdf), the Institute of Directors and, to a lesser extent the Bank of England* all of which suggest that the Brexit vote will depress economic activity. ...
What worries me is that the pain of this will disproportionately hit the low-paid. A new paper (pdf) from the Minneapolis Fed says:
It is precisely the households at the bottom of the wealth distribution with low savings rates and high propensities to consume out of current income that suffer the largest welfare losses from a severe recession. Further, these losses are much more severe than those sustained by the "average" household.
This is because the low-paid have no financial assets to cushion themselves against job loss and so must suffer either big falls in living standards or resort to high-cost payday lenders whereas the rich have savings and/or access to cheaper credit**. Also, firms faced with uncertainty might well respond by hoarding skilled labour – which is harder to find when needed – and trimming unskilled workers.
Although the coming downturn will probably not be as severe as the 2009 one, I suspect that these mechanisms will still operate. ...
What's more, for now we are only seeing the short-run effect of increased uncertainty. In the long-run, it's possible that by depressing world trade growth, the losers from Brexit will be those in more skilled manufacturing and finance jobs.
For now, though, it might be the low-paid that suffer the most from Brexit. These, though, were more likely (pdf) to have voted Leave. We might ask them Johnny Rotten's famous question: ""Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, July 25, 2016 at 12:13 PM in Economics | Permalink Comments (37)
Marilyne Tolle at the Bank of England's Bank Underground blog:
Central bank digital currency: the end of monetary policy as we know it?: Central banks (CBs) have long issued paper currency. The development of Bitcoin and other private digital currencies has provided them with the technological means to issue their own digital currency. But should they?
Addressing this question is part of the Bank's Research Agenda. In this post I sketch out how a CB digital currency – call it CBcoin – might affect the monetary and banking systems – setting aside other important and complex systemic implications that range from prudential regulation and financial stability to technology, operational and financial conduct.
I argue that taken to its most extreme conclusion, CBcoin issuance could have far-reaching consequences for commercial and central banking – divorcing payments from private bank deposits and even putting an end to banks' ability to create money. By redefining the architecture of payment systems, CBcoin could thus challenge fractional reserve banking and reshape the conduct of monetary policy. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, July 25, 2016 at 09:35 AM in Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (10)
The phrase "trumped up" comes to mind:
Delusions of Chaos, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Last year there were 352 murders in New York City. This was a bit higher than the number in 2014, but far below the 2245 murders ... in 1990, the city's worst year. In fact..., New York is now basically as safe as it has ever been, going all the way back to the 19th century.
National crime statistics, and numbers for all violent crimes, paint an only slightly less cheerful picture. And it's not just a matter of numbers; our big cities look and feel far safer than they did a generation ago...
How, then, was it even possible for Donald Trump to give a speech accepting the Republican nomination whose central premise was that crime is running rampant, and that "I alone" can bring the chaos under control? ...
Yet there's no question that many voters — including, almost surely, a majority of white men — will indeed buy into that vision. Why? ...
Well, I do have a hypothesis..., Trump supporters really do feel, with some reason, that the social order they knew is coming apart. It's not just race, where the country has become both more diverse and less racist (even if it still has a long way to go). It's also about gender roles — when Mr. Trump talks about making America great again, you can be sure that many of his supporters are imagining a return to the (partly imagined) days of male breadwinners and stay-at-home wives. ...
But what are the consequences of these changes in the social order? Back when crime was rising, conservatives insistently drew a connection to social change — that was what the whole early '90s fuss over "family values" was about. ...
Then a funny thing happened: Crime plunged instead of continuing to rise. Other indicators also improved dramatically — for example, the teen birthrate has fallen 60 percent since 1991. Instead of societal collapse, we've seen what amounts to a mass outbreak of societal health. The truth is that we don't know exactly why. ...
The point, however, is that in the minds of those disturbed by social change, chaos in the streets was supposed to follow, and they are all too willing to believe that it did, in the teeth of the evidence.
The question now is how many such people, people determined to live in a nightmare of their own imagining, there really are. I guess we'll find out in November.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, July 25, 2016 at 01:39 AM in Politics | Permalink Comments (115)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, July 25, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (81)
David Warsh:
Dani Rodrik and Mr. Trump: David Brooks, of The New York Times, wrote the single best piece I read last week on the Republican convention: "Death of the Party." Like him, I was riveted by Donald Trump's acceptance speech. The scene seemed straight out of one of those dystopian Batman movies of the 1980s, '90s, and '00s, an outlandish character, sailing under false colors, bullying and threatening, preying on fears, selling Gotham a bill of goods, preparing chaos.
By the time the nominee bellowed, "I am your voice" to the hall of delegates, he seemed simply the latest in a long line of improbable adversaries: the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Ra's al Ghul, the Scarecrow, Bane, Mr. Trump.
But then Batman movies depend on the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, to answer the Bat signal, expose the fraud, counter the villains' plans, and save the city.
Batman in this case is Dani Rodrik, 58, of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is likely to be the next economist to enter the pantheon of those who went to school in the '70s whom much of the public knows today" Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke. ...
Rodrik isn't exactly fighting with Trump, the way Batman fights with those villains. He is, by his own account, recasting the globalization narrative, replacing the familiar triumphalist version with a more nuanced account, including the ill-effects of integration that gave rise to the Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns, and those of H. Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan before them. (Meanwhile, Rodrik is interpreting events in Turkey as well.)
The Trump campaign supports no intellectual edifice whatsoever. For all its flaws, it is up to the Clinton campaign to begin translating into political terms the deeper understanding globalization – its costs as well as its benefits – that Rodrik, Unger, and many others have been working out.
Holy Hoodwink, Batman! Let's get to work!
Posted by Mark Thoma on Sunday, July 24, 2016 at 10:14 AM in Economics, International Trade, Politics | Permalink Comments (40)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Sunday, July 24, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (211)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Saturday, July 23, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (182)
Branko Milanovic:
In defense of equality (without welfare economics): When I taught recently at the Summer School at Groningen University, I began my lecture on the measurement of inequality by distinguishing between the Italian and English schools as they were defined in 1921 by Corrado Gini...
I put myself squarely in the camp of the "Italians". Measurement of income inequality is like measurement of any natural or social phenomenon. We measure inequality as we measure temperature or height of people. The English (or welfarist) school believes that the measure of income inequality is only a proxy for a measure of a more fundamental phenomenon: inequality in welfare. The ultimate variable, according to them, that we want to estimate is welfare (or even happiness) and it is distributed. Income provides only an empirically feasible short-cut to it.
I would have been sympathetic to that approach if I knew how individual utility can be measured. There is, I believe, no way to compare utilities of different persons. ... The only way for the "welfaristas" to solve this conundrum is to assume that all individuals have the same utility function. This is such an unrealistically bold assumption that I think nobody would really care to defend it...
Now, the welfarst approach continues to be associated with pro-equality policies. Why? Because if all people have the same utility function, then the optimal distribution of income is such that everybody has the same income. ...
My students then asked how I can justify concern with inequality if I reject the welfarist view which is the main ideological vehicle through which equality of outcomes is being justified. (A non-utilitarian, contractarian alternative is provided by Rawls. Yet another alternative, based on equal capabilities—a close cousin to equality of opportunity (of which more below) is provided by Amartya Sen.)
My answer was that I justify concern with income inequality on three grounds.
The first ground is instrumental: the effect on economic growth. ...
The second is political effect. In societies where economic and political spheres are not separated by the Chinese wall (and all existing societies are such), inequality in economic power seeps and ultimately invades and conquers the political sphere. ...
The third ground is philosophical. As Rawls has argued, every departure from unequal distribution of resources has to be defended by an appeal to a higher principle. Because we are all equal individuals (whether as declared by the Universal Charter of Human Rights or by God), we should all have an approximately equal opportunity to develop our skills and to lead a "good (and pleasant) life". Because inequality of income almost directly translates into inequality of opportunities, it also directly negates that fundamental equality of all humans. ...
I have to say here that in addition inequality of opportunity affects negatively economic growth...
My argument, if I need to reiterate it, is: you can reject welfarism, hold that inter-personal comparison of utility is impossible, and still feel very strongly that economic outcomes should be made more equal—that inequality should be limited so that it does not strongly affect opportunities, so that it does not slow growth and so that it does not undermine democracy. Isn't that enough?
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 22, 2016 at 08:59 AM in Economics, Income Distribution | Permalink Comments (77)
Is it more than ignorance?:
Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House? This should be a ludicrous, outrageous question. After all, he must be a patriot — he even wears hats promising to make America great again. ...
I'm not talking about merely admiring Mr. Putin's performance — being impressed by the de facto dictator's "strength," and wanting to emulate his actions. I am, instead, talking about indications that Mr. Trump would ... actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy, at the expense of America's allies and her own self-interest.
That's not to deny that Mr. Trump does, indeed, admire Mr. Putin. ... But admiration for Putinism isn't unusual in Mr. Trump's party. ...
All of this is, or should be, deeply disturbing..., what we're now seeing ... goes beyond emulation, and is starting to look like subservience.
First, there was the Ukraine issue — one on which Republican leaders have consistently ... criticized Mr. Obama for insufficient action... And the G.O.P. platform was going to include a statement reaffirming this line, but it was watered down to blandness on the insistence of Trump representatives.
Then came Mr. Trump's interview with The New York Times, in which ... he declared that even if Russia attacked members of NATO he would come to their aid only if those allies — which we are bound by treaty to defend — have "fulfilled their obligations to us."
Now, some of this is Mr. Trump's deep ignorance of policy... But is there more to the story? Is there some specific channel of influence?
We do know that Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's campaign manager, has worked as a consultant for various dictators, and was for years on the payroll of Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president and a Putin ally.
And there are reasons to wonder about Mr. Trump's own financial interests. Remember, we know nothing about the true state of his business empire, and he has refused to release his taxes... We do know that he has substantial if murky involvement with wealthy Russians and Russian businesses. ...
At some level, Mr. Trump's motives shouldn't matter. We should be horrified at the spectacle of a major-party candidate casually suggesting that he might abandon American allies — just as we should be horrified when that same candidate suggests that he might welsh on American financial obligations. But there's something very strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 22, 2016 at 08:36 AM in Politics | Permalink Comments (146)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 22, 2016 at 12:06 AM Permalink Comments (232)
Narayana Kocherlakota:
Yellen Needs to Make More Speeches: What does the U.S. Federal Reserve think about the repercussions of Britain's vote to leave the European Union? Amazingly, we still don't really know...
Fed officials give a lot of speeches, and many have addressed Brexit in recent weeks. But, as they always say, they don't speak on behalf of the Federal Open Market Committee...
Only one official, Fed Chair Janet Yellen, has the authority to speak on the committee's behalf, and she does so rarely. ... In all, according to the Fed's website, she has discussed policy at six formal public appearances this year. Her next won't come until the Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole conference in late August and the committee meeting of Sept. 20 to 21. ...
The Fed hasn't always been so taciturn. In 2004, at the beginning of the central bank's last tightening cycle, Chairman Alan Greenspan spoke or testified on 29 separate occasions... Granted, his language was famously hard to parse. But by speaking nearly three times a month, he left no confusion among the public or Fed watchers about who to follow if they wanted to know the future course of monetary policy.
Today, people are a lot more concerned about the state of the global economy than they were in 2004... So if anything, the Fed should be communicating more. That means having a press conference after every open-market committee meeting, and having Yellen make a lot more public speeches. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, July 21, 2016 at 10:45 AM in Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (57)
Mike Konczal and Marshall Steinbaum:
New Paper: Demand-Side Business Dynamism, by Mike Konczal and Marshall Steinbaum: We—Marshall Steinbaum, who has recently joined the Roosevelt Institute as a visiting fellow, and Mike Konczal—have a new working paper out titled Declining Entrepreneurship, Labor Mobility, and Business Dynamism: A Demand-side Approach. We hope you check it out! We think it adds some important evidence on an unfolding debate. ...
A lot of people have recently been focusing on a worsening economic phenomenon commonly referred to as the decline in "business dynamism" or "labor market fluidity." There are a lot of ways to measure that, but it's generally defined as the declining rate at which new businesses are formed and grow, or a decline in overall labor market mobility, which includes job transitions, quitting a job, and geographic migration for work. ...
Most ... analyses stress supply-side factors such as excessive occupational licensing, restrictions on building new housing, and regulations more broadly. However, recent investigations haven't found evidence for these supply-side factors as drivers of the decline. Measures of dynamism that don't require geographic mobility are also falling, so it's not driven by housing. ...
This paper provides an alternative explanation for the recent trends of declining entrepreneurship, falling labor mobility, and rising concentration of employment in old firms and large firms. Our explanation focuses on weakening demand, especially during the slow recovery from the last two recessions. That demand slowdown should, in turn, be investigated further, keeping in mind both secular stagnation and how power is shifting in favor of the owners and managers of incumbent firms alongside rising profits and inter-firm inequality. The key findings in this report are...
Jumping to the conclusion:
This paper argues that the decline in mobility, dynamism, and entrepreneurship is a result of declining labor demand since 2000. When it is hard to find another job, employed workers stay at the jobs they have, impairing their ascent up the job ladder and the accompanying wage growth over careers that historically led to the middle class. Declining entrepreneurship can also be explained by workers' reluctance to leave large, stable incumbents to start their own firm or to work at a start-up when they cannot be assured that they will have a more stable job to return to. Thus, we find that the concentration of employment in old firms and in large firms mirrors the timing of declining labor mobility due to declining demand.
Regardless of what you make of the merits of policy debates over occupational licensing, housing restrictions, and regulation, these items are not the driver of the aggregate decline in labor market fluidity. Our alternative analysis suggests future research should investigate potential policy-related causes of those trends in demand and market structure—such as declining effective marginal tax rates on high earners and a permissive environment for inter-firm mergers—that deemphasize full employment and market competition and enable secular stagnation. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, July 21, 2016 at 08:48 AM in Economics | Permalink Comments (34)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, July 21, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (141)
Saleem Bahaj, Iren Levina, and Jumana Saleheen at the Bank of England's Bank Underground:
Is finance a powerful driver of growth?: Since the financial crisis the UK has experienced a period of weak productivity growth, weak investment coupled with a decline in credit to non-financial sectors of the economy. But there is debate about the direction of causality: did low growth and other structural factors mean firms and households wanted to borrow less – as argued by Martin Wolf? Or did the financial sector offer too few funds to the real economy in the wake of the crisis as banks tried to repair their balance sheets. Alternatively, the financial system may not be functioning properly in general, if much of the financial sector's activity contributes little to the betterment of lives and efficiency of business – a point made by John Kay.
In this post, we analyse whether there has been enough finance to enable productive investment? This question was posed to the Bank of England by the Government last year, as part of its 'productivity plan'. One concern is: Is the financial sector is holding back UK productivity? This post summarises our own insights on this topic, partly drawing on the recent Bank Discussion Paper. Importantly, our interpretation is blurred by the lack of data. But let's start with the really interesting things we uncovered.
What we know
To measure the concept of finance for productive investment, we split our thinking into two questions:
(Q1) Are there unexploited productive investment opportunities in the UK? We found no conclusive evidence of investment deficiency....
(Q2) Is there enough finance to ensure productive investment takes place? Yes for the corporate sector as a whole, but not for all firms
The real question of interest here is if investment is low, is the blockage that is stopping investment taking place due to real economy factors – such as globalisation and secular stagnation – or financial factors – such as a lack of access to finance. ...
Large firms, with access to bond and stock markets, don't appear to have problems financing themselves. Small firms that do have access to capital markets rely heavily on net equity issuance to finance their business... But the vast majority of small firms do not have access to market-based finance and are heavily dependent on bank funding or internal funds. Surveys show that small firms' access to finance remains an issue, but it now affects a smaller proportion of firms than in recent years...
What next?
In an era of big data, we have discovered the presence of big data gaps. These data gaps may have blurred our bottom line: we have not found any conclusive evidence of investment deficiency in the UK; and the corporate sector as a whole appears to have an adequate supply of finance to fund their desired investment activities. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 05:37 AM in Economics, Financial System | Permalink Comments (126)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (156)
Simeon Djankov at PIIE:
European Red Tape Is a Bogus Justification for Brexit: Did the European Union's ship of state run aground on misleading anecdotes? It would appear so. Red tape is frequently mentioned as one of the main reasons for Brexit. ...
But however much Brussels is reviled for burdensome regulations, especially in the conservative British press, it is primarily up to the national governments to regulate business and ensure that their regulation is competitive. In recent years, individual European countries have actually improved the environment for doing business. Half of the 25 countries in the world where it is easiest to do business are EU members, according to the 2016 World Bank's Doing Business survey. These are Denmark (3), United Kingdom (6), Sweden (8), Finland (10), Germany (15), Estonia (16), Ireland (17), Lithuania (20), Austria (21), Latvia (22), Portugal (23), and Poland (25). Malta is the lowest-ranked EU country, at 80 (of 189 economies). ...
An examination of the EU's record on regulations shows that in practice the EU governs few areas of business activity and that it has a lighter regulatory touch than many other parts of the world, including the United States. Yet the perception of bureaucratic Europe persists. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 08:26 AM in Economics, Politics, Regulation | Permalink Comments (25)
Tim Duy at Bloomberg:
Why the Fed Can't and Shouldn't Raise Interest Rates: ... The flattening of the U.S. yield curve as investors see little chance of rates rising in the longer term should serve as a red flag that their focus on short-term interest rates may be doomed to failure.
One of the defining features of this tightening cycle is the same as the cycles that came before – the yield curve is flattening, and very quickly. The spread between 10-year and two-year U.S. Treasuries has collapsed to 88 basis points at a time when the federal funds target rate is 25-50bps. This suggests that the Fed actually has very little room to raise short-term rates. If additional rates hikes compress the yield curve further, the capacity for maturity transformation – effectively the process of borrowing on shorter time frames to lend on longer time frames – will soon be compromised. ...... Bottom Line: The Fed needs to remember that how they got into this policy stance may offer a lesson for how to get out. Policy makers cut rates to zero and then instituted quantitative easing. Now they should consider selling assets before raising rates. Or, at a minimum, utilizing a mixed strategy of rate hikes and asset sales. The objective of meeting the Fed's mandate in the context of maintaining financial stability may be unattainable using the interest rate tool and associated forward guidance alone. Unfortunately, the Fed does not appear to be debating the policy mix — at least not in public. They remain focused on interest rates, delaying balance sheet policy to a later date. On the current trajectory, however, that later date may never come.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 07:43 AM in Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (16)
Narayana Kocherlakota:
Don't Try This Crazy Trick on the Economy: Some economists argue that the Federal Reserve should take a highly unconventional approach to ending a long period of below-target inflation: Instead of keeping interest rates low to spur economic activity and push up prices, it should raise rates.
Labeled "Neo-Fisherism" ... (after the famous monetary economist Irving Fisher), it's an idea I once entertained. Allow me to explain why I now think it's dangerous. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 07:43 AM in Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (29)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (182)
Jon Faust:
Why has transparency been so damn confusing?: The theme of our recent series of posts on understanding FOMC actions and communications has been the well-disguised, steady predictability of FOMC policy. The basic story is that policy is driven by a consensus on the FOMC. The consensus tends to evolve slowly and predictably, and for some time now, the consensus has behaved consistently as if driven by two principles:
So long as steady job market gains persist, continue a gradual, pre-announced removal of accommodation.
So long as inflation remains below target, take a tactical pause if credible evidence arises that the job gains might soon falter.
The factual record, I argued, is unambiguous: over the last three years, we've gotten normalization at a preannounced pace as in to the first principle, punctuated only by brief (so far) tactical pauses as under the second.[1]
But the fact that my low-drama story lines up with the facts doesn't make it correct. And my story directly contradicts the popular narrative of a skittish, market-obsessed Fed flip-flopping at every opportunity. This is where the well-disguised part comes in.
Before continuing, however, I want to emphasize that I came to the views I'm describing during my years working on transparency and communications on behalf of the chairs Bernanke and Yellen—a job that ended about 2 years ago now. Yes, I did my small part in making the mess. But the FOMC members and Fed staffers like me also worked pretty hard to understand what was going wrong and attempting to improve the situation. This series of posts is essentially the lessons I took from these efforts. It would be inappropriate for me to say who among my former colleagues subscribes to these views, but I similarly don't want to claim the ideas as my own. For now,[2] I'll be deliberately and appropriately vague in saying that all the points I'm making were in the air at the Fed while I was there. In this post, I'll sketch the basics, leaving details and support for subsequent posts. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, July 18, 2016 at 08:44 AM in Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (33)
I have a new post at MoneyWatch:
The toughest question about global trade: This year's battle for the White House has put international trade in the spotlight. Donald Trump has led the charge against trade agreements, but Hillary Clinton's reversal of her support for President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) also reflects the evolving view of the benefits of globalization.
The American public has long been suspicious of international trade, but economists have been much more supportive. However, new evidence in the economics literature has caused a rethinking of how to evaluate trade agreements.
This research documents that the negative effects of globalization on employment and wages are larger than many people realized. In addition, it recognizes that most of the benefits have accrued to those at the top of the income distribution while the costs -- lost jobs, lower wages and fewer attractive employment opportunities -- have fallen mainly on the working class.
One response from many advocates is to point out that international trade has lifted millions of people around the world out of poverty and that reducing the pace of globalization would slow the rate of global poverty reduction.
All of which brings up an important and rather difficult question: Just how should we value international trade? ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, July 18, 2016 at 08:37 AM in Economics, International Trade | Permalink Comments (107)
Balancing the unbalanced:
Both Sides Now?, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: When Donald Trump began his run for the White House, many people treated it as a joke. Nothing he has done or said since makes him look better. On the contrary, his policy ignorance has become even more striking, his positions more extreme, the flaws in his character more obvious, and he has repeatedly demonstrated a level of contempt for the truth that is unprecedented in American politics.
Yet while most polls suggest that he's running behind in the general election..., there's still a real chance that he might win. How is that possible? Part of the answer, I'd argue, is that voters don't fully appreciate his awfulness. And the reason is that too much of the news media still can't break with bothsidesism — the almost pathological determination to portray politicians and their programs as being equally good or equally bad, no matter how ludicrous that pretense becomes. ...
You might think that Donald Trump, who lies so much that fact-checkers have a hard time keeping up, who keeps repeating falsehoods even after they've been proved wrong, and who combines all of this with a general level of thuggishness aimed in part at the press, would be too much even for the balance cultists to excuse.
But you would be wrong. ...
And in the last few days we've seen a spectacular demonstration of bothsidesism...: an op-ed article from the incoming and outgoing heads of the White House Correspondents' Association, with the headline "Trump, Clinton both threaten free press." How so? Well, Mr. Trump has selectively banned news organizations he considers hostile; he has also, although the op-ed didn't mention it, attacked both those organizations and individual reporters, and refused to condemn supporters who, for example, have harassed reporters with anti-Semitic insults.
Meanwhile, while Mrs. Clinton hasn't done any of these things, and has a staff that readily responds to fact-checking questions, she doesn't like to hold press conferences. Equivalence!
Stung by criticism, the authors ... issued a statement denying that they had engaged in "false equivalency" — I guess saying that the candidates are acting "similarly" doesn't mean saying that they are acting similarly. And they once again refused to indicate which candidate was behaving worse.
As I said, bothsidesism isn't new, and it has always been an evasion of responsibility. But taking the position that "both sides do it" now, in the face of this campaign and this candidate, is an act of mind-boggling irresponsibility.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, July 18, 2016 at 08:02 AM in Economics, Politics, Press | Permalink Comments (38)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, July 18, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (127)
Jim Hamilton:
Helicopter money: Despite aggressive actions by central banks, many of the world's economies are still stagnating and facing new shocks, leading to renewed calls for helicopter money as a serious policy prescription for countries like Japan and the U.K.. And, if things go badly, maybe the United States? ...
After discussing helicopter money, he concludes with:
... If helicopter money is no more than a combination of fiscal expansion and LSAP, and if we think LSAP hasn't been able to do that much, it's clear that the fiscal expansion part is where the real action is coming from. On the other hand, if we think both components make a difference, there's no inherent reason that the size of the fiscal operation has to be exactly the same as the size of the monetary operation.
Nevertheless, as has been true with LSAP, there might be some psychological impact, if nothing else, from announcing this as if it were a new policy. For example, I could imagine the Fed announcing that for the next n months, it will buy all the new debt that the Treasury issues. For maximal effect this would be coupled with a Treasury announcement of a new spending operation. Doubtless the announcement would bring out calls from certain quarters that the U.S. was going the route of Zimbabwe. And just as in the previous times we heard those warnings, those pundits would be proven wrong, as indeed the effects would not be that different from what we're already getting from central bank expansions around the globe.
Helicopter money is no bazooka for stimulating the economy. Ben Bernanke offered this reasonable summary:
Money-financed fiscal programs (MFFPs), known colloquially as helicopter drops, are very unlikely to be needed in the United States in the foreseeable future. They also present a number of practical challenges of implementation, including integrating them into operational monetary frameworks and assuring appropriate governance and coordination between the legislature and the central bank. However, under certain extreme circumstances– sharply deficient aggregate demand, exhausted monetary policy, and unwillingness of the legislature to use debt-financed fiscal policies– such programs may be the best available alternative. It would be premature to rule them out.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Sunday, July 17, 2016 at 10:36 AM in Economics, Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (33)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Sunday, July 17, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (116)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Saturday, July 16, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (167)
Tim Duy:
Data dump, by Tim Duy: Interesting mix of data today that will give monetary policymakers plenty of food for thought. My guess is that it will probably drive a deeper division in the Fed between those who looking to secure two hikes this year rather and those good with just one or none at all.
Retail sales came in stronger than expected, although prior months were revised down. Various measures of sales excluding gas are perking up compared to last year:
While prior expansions churned out some better spending numbers, the consumer is clearly not in some kind of recessionary free-fall. Remember, 2% growth is the new 4%. These data will help reassure the Fed that the bulk of economic activity - that directed by consumers - remains solid.
Industrial production rose, albeit on the back of autos. Compared to a year ago, factory activity remains in negative territory. Still, softness in the sector does not exhibit the degree of dispersion typically experienced in recessions:
Still looks to me more like a mid-cycle slowdown like the mid-80s and 90s rather than a recession. Containing such a slowdown argues for keeping rates low for now.
Inflation as measured by the consumer price index continues to firm. Core CPI inflation came in at 0.2 percent m-o-m and 2.3 percent y-o-y. Of course, the Fed targets PCE inflation, and there the core number is weaker:
See Calculated Risk for more measures of inflation. The key point here is that the Fed's preferred measure is tracking lower than other measures. Watch for the hawks to press their case on those higher measures; the doves should keep a focus on PCE. The doves should win this battle. If they don't win, the Fed will be effectively targeting a different inflation rate than stated in their long-run policy objectives. That would then render those objectives and likely future similar missives essentially worthless.
The Atlanta Fed released its wage measures for June. These measures - which track persons steadily employed over the past twelve months - continue to exceed the average measures of the employment report:
The Atlanta Fed measure just about in the pre-recession territory; while the standard measures still have a ways to go. The Atlanta Fed measure tells the Fed that cyclical labor market dynamics are not terribly different than the past. When unemployment goes down, wage growth accelerates:
Demographic effects - the exit of higher earning Boomers from the labor force, replaced by lower earning Millennials - appear to be weighing on average wage growth. Which one is the better guide for monetary policy? Policymakers will again find themselves at odds along the obvious lines. The San Francisco Fed gives mixed guidance on the issue:
How to best gauge the impact of wage growth on overall inflation is less clear. As long as employers can keep their wage bills low by replacing or expanding staff with lower-paid workers, labor cost pressures for higher price inflation could remain muted for some time. If, however, these lower-wage workers are less productive, continued increases in unit labor costs could be hiding behind low readings on measures of aggregate wage growth.
On net, when the Fed faces a mixed message, they tend to move slower than faster. So given the low core-PCE environment, the doves will likely remain in control.
Separately, the Wall Street Journal has a story on which Fed speakers are most useful as policy guides. The article is behind the WSJPro paywall, but via Twitter came this graphic:
Granted, this type of list is always in flux. That said, I would definitely move Brainard, Powell, and Tarullo up with Yellen and Dudley. I find it very rare that you would learn less from a Board member than a regional president. This is especially true given the caliber of these three speakers. And remember that Tarullo doesn't talk a lot about monetary policy, but when he does you probably should listen. Brainard has been driving policy since last fall. Of the regionals, I would place Evans at the top. Williams has been too hawkish in his guidance the past couple of years; you really need to put a negative delta on any rate forecast you glean from him. Rosengren steered you wrong this year as he joined Williams in trying to set the stage for a June rate hike. I don't see where Lockhart should be in the top half of this list. And I don't know what to make of Fischer. He has leaned hawkish this cycle as well, to the point of being one who scolds markets for thinking differently. He appears to me to be an outlier on the Board at the moment, not one driving the policy debate.
Bottom Line: Generally solid data sufficient to keep the prospect of a rate hike or two alive for this year. But soft or mixed enough on key points to lean policy closer to the former than the latter.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 15, 2016 at 11:13 AM in Economics, Fed Watch, Monetary Policy | Permalink Comments (2)
Brad Setser:
The Outsized Impact of the Fall in Commodity Prices on Global Trade: Global trade has not grown since the start of 2015.
Emerging market imports appear to be running somewhat below their 2014 levels.
Creeping protectionism? Perhaps.
But for now the underlying national data points to much more prosaic explanation.
The "turning" point in trade came just after oil prices fell. ...
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 15, 2016 at 10:51 AM in Economics, International Trade, Oil | Permalink Comments (2)
High stock prices are "not evidence of a healthy economy":
Bull Market Blues, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Like most economists, I don't usually have much to say about stocks. Stocks ... have a lot less to do with the state of the economy or its future prospects than many people believe. ...
Still, we shouldn't completely ignore stock prices. The fact that the major averages have lately been hitting new highs ... is newsworthy and noteworthy. What are those Wall Street indexes telling us?
The answer, I'd suggest, isn't entirely positive..., in some ways the stock market's gains reflect economic weaknesses, not strengths. ...
We measure the economy's success by the extent to which it generates rising incomes for the population. But stocks ... only reflect the part of income that shows up as profits.
This wouldn't matter if the share of profits in overall income were stable; but it isn't. The share of profits ... has been a lot higher in recent years than it was during the great stock surge of the late 1990s ... making the relationship between profits and prosperity weak at best. ...
When investors buy stocks, they're buying a share of future profits. What that's worth to them depends on what other options they have for converting money today into income tomorrow. And these days those options are pretty poor... So investors are willing to pay a lot for future income, hence high stock prices for any given level of profits. ...
This may seem, however, to present a paradox. If the private sector doesn't see itself as having a lot of good investment opportunities, how can profits be so high? The answer, I'd suggest, is that these days profits often seem to bear little relationship to investment in new capacity. Instead, profits come from some kind of market power... And companies making profits from such power can simultaneously have high stock prices and little reason to spend.
Consider the fact that the three most valuable companies in America are Apple, Google and Microsoft. None of the three spends large sums on bricks and mortar. ...
In other words, while record stock prices do put the lie to claims that the Obama administration has been anti-business, they're not evidence of a healthy economy. If anything, they're a sign of an economy with too few opportunities for productive investment and too much monopoly power.
So when you read headlines about stock prices, remember: What's good for the Dow isn't necessarily good for America, or vice versa.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 15, 2016 at 09:10 AM in Economics | Permalink Comments (40)
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 15, 2016 at 12:06 AM in Economics, Links | Permalink Comments (142)
Rajiv Sethi:
On Arrest Filters and Empirical Inferences: I've been thinking a bit more about Roland Fryer's working paperce use of force, prompted by this thread by Europile and excellent posts by Michelle Phelps and Ezekeil Kweku.
The Europile thread contains a quick, precise, and insightful summary of the empirical exercise conducted by Fryer to look for racial bias in police shootings. There are two distinct pools of observations: an arrest pool and a shooting pool. The arrest pool is composed of "a random sample of police-civilian interactions from the Houston police department from arrests codes in which lethal force is more likely to be justified: attempted capital murder of a public safety officer, aggravated assault on a public safety officer, resisting arrest, evading arrest, and interfering in arrest." The shooting pool is a sample of interactions that resulted in the discharge of a firearm by an officer, also in Houston.
Importantly, the latter pool is not a subset of the former, or even a subset of the set of arrests from which the former pool is drawn. Put another way, had the interactions in the shooting pool been resolved without incident, many of them would never have made it into the arrest pool. Think of the Castile traffic stop: had this resulted in a traffic violation or a warning or nothing at all, it would not have been recorded in arrest data of this kind.
The analysis in the paper is based on a comparison between the two pools. The arrest pool is 58% black while the shooting pool is 52% black, which is the basis for Fryer's claim that blacks are less likely to be shot by whites in the raw data. He understands, of course, that there may be differences in behavioral and contextual factors that make the black subset of the arrest pool different from the white, and attempts to correct for this using regression analysis. He reports that doing so "does not significantly alter the raw racial differences."
This analysis is useful, as far as it goes. But does this really imply that the video evidence that has animated the black lives matter movement is highly selective and deeply misleading, as initial reports on the paper suggested?
Not at all. The protests are about the killing of innocents, not about the treatment of those whose actions would legitimately plant them in the serious arrest pool. What Fryer's paper suggests (if one takes the incident categorization by police at face value) is that at least in Houston, those who would assault or attempt to kill a public safety officer are treated in much the same way, regardless of race.
But think of the cases that animate the protest movement, for instance the list of eleven compiled here. Families of six of the eleven have already received large settlements (without admission of fault). Six led to civil rights investigations by the justice department. With one or two possible exceptions, it doesn't appear to me that these interactions would have made it past Fryer's arrest filter had they been handled more professionally.
The point is this: if there is little or no racial bias in the way police handle genuinely dangerous suspects, but there is bias that leads some mundane interactions to turn potentially deadly, then the kind of analysis conducted by Fryer would not be helpful in detecting it. Which in turn means that the breathless manner in which the paper was initially reported was really quite irresponsible.
For this the author bears some responsibility, having inserted the following into his discussion of the Houston findings:Given the stream of video "evidence", which many take to be indicative of structural racism in police departments across America, the ensuing and understandable outrage in black communities across America, and the results from our previous analysis of non-lethal uses of force, the results displayed in Table 5 are startling... Blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot by police, relative to whites.
His claim that this was "the most surprising result of my career" was an invitation to misunderstand and misreport the findings, which are important but clearly limited in relevance and scope.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 08:49 AM in Economics | Permalink Comments (13)


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We are having an art mingle on our yahoogroup, England Stampers, and it requires using our alcohol markers to color images. I had been sort of stuttering and stumbling with this project . . . I had something in mind, and it was just not gelling. So I finally tossed that idea aside -- along with all the scraps of paper and images -- and started over.
Ahhhhhh . . . I feel much better now. I reached for my trusty Elzybells Art Stamps, which work wonderfully with alcohol markers.
Then, I popped over to the Copic Colour Challenge to see what colors they were suggesting this week. I then discovered that Elzybells is the sponsor of the Week 21 Copic Color Challenge!
Here are the recommended colors.
Yes, I really had ALL of them, and used them in my artwork. The Smoky Blue is one of my favorite Copic blue shades, and I use it all the time.
In addition to the Elzybells Art Stamp, I also used Creative Imaginations gold embossed tea party paper, Prima flowers, and Stampin' Up ribbon.
I'll mail the cards to the mingle recipients tomorrow, and I'm so much happier with the results!


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If you're not sure how to treat mum this weekend, why not spend some time with her at a local event or market? If you're not in Brisbane check out our list of Mother's Day markets Australia-wide. For Brisbanites, tune into 612ABC on Saturday at 9:30am for a what's-on round-up including these interesting activities:
Sherwood State School Fete in Sherwood
Mt Maria College Mother's Day Market in Mitchelton
Mayfield State School Movie in the Suburbs in Carina
Queensland Museum Vinyl Fair at the Queensland Museum and GOMA
Wood Exhibition at the QUT Art Museum in Gardens Point
Sunday 11 May
The Green Shed Markets at Mt Tamborine
Mother's Day Classic Run at Southbank
Journey Through My Mind Art Exhibition at King George Square
Queensland Rose Society Autumn Show at Mt. Coot-tha Botanic Gardens
Eagle Farm Markets at Ascot
UPDATE: Listen back to our foodie chats and find out which song I dedicate to mum for Mother's Day here (such a cheap gift...):


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David Cameron may inherit a set of circumstances which will challenge and test him to the limit. With terror on our doorsteps and financial chaos already in through the door, he will need to draw on every ounce of strength and ability that he has.
Yesterday, he portrayed to us all the hidden qualities he will draw upon when his day comes. He understands the importance of a strong and loyal team around him. He feels and understands the pain of every citizen who is suffering; and more importantly he is driven to do something about it.
He will be a great man, has all the qualities needed to become the next Churchill, my own personal political hero.
I looked at David yesterday whilst he delivered his speech and felt emotional with pride. No other party has anyone who comes anywhere near.
When he finished to rapturous applause the thought 'your country needs you' went through my mind, as I am sure it did many others.
Roll on that day.


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The popularity and reach of iTEP are rapidly expanding in the Middle East. iTEP Executive Director Michael Salenko traveled last month to Iraq, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia to meet with distributors, institutions and government officials.
In addition to visiting many high-level institutions in Riyadh, Michael held training sessions with iTEP Saudi Arabian distributor SOUKS HR Solutions. For this leg of the trip, he was escorted and aided by an official from the Department of Commerce.
Michael is seen to the left in Istanbul with Salih Baycan, Owner, and Director of Discover English. They discussed marketing strategies and opportunities to provide more companies and institutions with affordable English assessment.
In Iraq, Michael visited the beautiful new campus of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. He also met with the Interchange Institute and several potential partners in the Kurdish region of the country.
With the increasing prominence of academics and business in this part of the world, iTEP is thrilled to have the opportunity to be the language assessment tool of choice for many organizations.


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On ESPN, you can currently look at the percentage of people in the country taking any team to reach any round. I thought it would be interesting to compare the average person's picks to Ken Pomeroy's log 5 projections. This will help determining the "value" of final four picks. If a team's value is especially high, it might be worth it to take the gamble in order to attempt to position yourself better among other Louisville brackets. Obviously the log 5 projections aren't perfect. Thus, I decided to include the Vegas odds that each team reaches the final four in the table too. The Vegas odds weren't actually used in finding value teams, but they can either reinforce (or not) the log 5 rankings.
The DIFF column on the right is simply (log 5 final four%) - (ESPN final four%). The thing that jumps out is the "Florida Effect". Not only does Florida shatter the top spot for best value, but they also turn Georgetown and Kansas into bad values. There's a whole bunch of uncertainty surrounding the Gators, but if you trust log 5 (and Vegas) they are nearly a must in your bracket. Miami and Ohio State are the other two that stand out. The conference tournaments have a ridiculous amount of pull on ESPN brackets, or so it seems. Ohio State, Miami, Kansas, and Louisville are all in the top five most picked final four teams (with Indiana) and are coming off conference tournament championships. Syracuse has struggled, but they seem like a much better alternative to Indiana in the East than Miami. Finally, if you decide to go with Pitt in your final four, log 5 says you have an 11.7% chance of taking a commanding lead in your pool.


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We ask all families to make an annual contribution to School Fund to help finance the 'extras' which enhance the curriculum.
This remains at £15 per pupil per annum although many families prefer to pay £5 per term – or even 50p per week.
If you have a number of children in school, we ask you to pay on behalf of two of them i.e. a maximum of £30 per family.
The money is used at the discretion of the class teacher after discussions with pupils, and is used for such diverse items as ingredients for cooking, food for class pet goldfish, decorating a book corner to make it more inviting, and a science workshop


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kidzsearch.com > wiki Explore:images videos games
Kashrut (Hebrew: כשרות, pronounced to rhyme with wash-ROOT; usually translated as Kosher) is the name Jews give to the laws about the kind of food that they may eat. Their holy books specify certain kinds of food that are all right to eat, and that other kinds should not be eaten.
The Kashrut laws say that products classified as meat must not be eaten in the same meal with dairy products. Fish, fruit, and vegetables are considered neutral, called pareve (pronounced "PAR-veh"), and may be eaten with either meat or dairy meals. Jews who "keep kosher" have separate utensils for meat and dairy foods, and wait a number of hours after eating one type of food before eating the other type.
The meat of some animals may not be eaten at all. Animals whose meat may be eaten must be killed in a special, careful way by a religiously trained slaughterer. Meat that is not fit to eat is called treif (pronounced TRAYf).
Basic rules of Kashrut
Types of meat and drink
- Land animals that chew their cud (ruminate) and have a split (cloven) hoof may be eaten (note that animals with toes may not be eaten. They must be true hooves). This includes livestock like cattle and sheep, but not pigs (which do not chew their cud) or camels (which do not have split hooves).
- Animals that eat meat (carnivores and omnivores) may not be eaten. This also means that birds of prey may not be eaten.
- Specific birds (from a list) may not be eaten. This includes ostrich for example.
- Fish must have fins and scales. Fish without scales (like eels), seafood (like lobster and shrimp), and shellfish (like mussels) are forbidden.
- No amphibians or reptiles may be eaten. Examples of these are frogs.
- Most insects may not be eaten, with some exceptions like locusts.
- Wine must be specially made. There are special rules about alcohol and other intoxicating substances.
Preparing food
- The animals need to be killed in a special way. The kosher slaughterer has religious training for this work.
- An animal that dies by natural means, or is killed by another animal or a hunter, may not be eaten.
- Meat from a sick animal may not be eaten.
- No blood may be eaten. All blood needs to be drained from the meat (by soaking and salting it). In eggs, not even eggs with just a spot of blood can be eaten.
- Foods made in a factory have a kashrut label on the package. This means the food is approved by an inspector chosen by a rabbi.
- A kosher kitchen has separate sets of dishes: one for meat foods, another for dairy foods.
- Food may not be cooked during the Sabbath.
Other pages


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Gift Baskets Netherlands
Send Gifts to Netherlands
We understand that ordering with a company overseas can be scary. This shop is run by a company based in Germany. Running a business here we assure you that
online store regulations are under the strictest regulations you can find worldwide! Your online order for your gift in Netherlands is absolutely safe with us - so rather focus on your giving experience.
We are effectively operating our service for Netherlands since 2002.
meet us and see who is behind
gift baskets Netherlands
If you want to find out more about us,
meet us and see who is behind gift baskets Netherlands
Gift Baskets Netherlands
We send gift baskets to Netherlands from our warehouse in Germany where all our gifts are designed, assembled and given the special touch.
All gift baskets and gift boxes go through our own hands to make sure you only get the best quality available!
Find at the very least 150 gifts and hampers plus a great range of additional gifts we send to Netherlands.
We also offer our full gift basket service for
International Gifts and Gift Baskets
in the rest of Europe as well. We are here to make you look good!
Netherlands Gifts
Here at Gift Baskets Netherlands, we combine European gourmet foods with the finest international wines. We not only provide amazing gifts for delivery in Netherlands, we are located in Germany - right in the heart of Europe.
We are not a worldwide operating company who sells other's companies gifts, we only send our OWN gifts made with love! Each and every gift that leaves our store went through our very own
hands to make sure you only get the best quality for a decent price.
We are a Gift Basket company offering international Gifts and Gift Baskets for delivery in Netherlands, which is not far from our warehouse.
Delivery all over the country
Address and delivery information
for International Gifts
Gifts, Hampers and Gift Baskets to the Netherlands, Holland, Almere, Amersfoort, Amsterdam, Apeldoorn, Arnhem, Breda, Dordrecht, Eindhoven, Enschede, Groningen, Haarlem, Haarlemmermeer, Joint Force Command Brunssum , Maastricht, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, The Hague, Tilburg Holland, Utrecht, Zaanstad, s-Hertogenbosch,
How to find your perfect online gift for Netherlands
Buying gifts online is the easiest and fastest way for your needs in Netherlands. We offer this online gift service
for Netherlands and the rest of the European Union.
When clicking on a gift, you will also find additional gifting options to personalize your gifts for Netherlands.
You can browse through different price ranges or occasions, or if you already have an idea what should be inside your gift, check out the content links and build your own perfect Netherlands gift by using our additional gifts. We deliver your Gift in Netherlands. Start with your very easy online search by using following choices:
Netherlands Gifts by Content
Gourmet Food Gift Baskets
Snack Gift Baskets
Chocolate Gift Baskets
Wine Gift Baskets to Netherlands
Champagne Gift Baskets
Alcohol Gift Baskets
Wellness Gift Baskets
Jewelry Gift Baskets
Teddy Gifts
Gifts to Netherlands by Price
- 40 Euro
40 - 80 Euro
80 - 100 Euro
100 - 500 Euro
by Occasion
Birthday Gift Baskets
Thank You
Gifts for Men
Gifts for Women
Wedding Gift Baskets
Christmas Gifts Netherlands
Easter Gift Baskets
All Gifts for Netherlands
New Gifts and Gift Baskets
Baby Gifts in Netherlands
All Baby Gifts
Baby Boy Gifts
Baby Girl Gifts
Gender Neutral Baby Gifts
Baby Gift Boxes
Baby Gift Baskets
Baby Diaper Cakes
Hampers vs. Gift Baskets
Strange enough, an American would not think about a delicious gift basket when hearing the word hamper. Nevertheless, our Australian
and New Zealand friends and our friends in the UK would strongly disagree
when told that Americans can only think about a laundry basket when hearing the word hampers. For us at Gift Hampers Netherlands
there is no difference, speaking of gift baskets and hamper baskets or
gift hampers - it's exactly the same.
We offer a great range of Birthday Gifts Netherlands, Christmas Gifts Netherlands or Baby Hamper for delivery in Netherlands. Show your favorite family, friends, corporate colleagues and partners living in beautiful Netherlands that you care!
Our gift hampers to Netherlands range - from wine to chocolate and gourmet to champagne
Some of our hampers Netherlands are delivered in wicker baskets, others in wooden boxes and others
in a high quality gift box with an exclusive finish. These keepsake boxes are exclusive for our store.
We made sure that every gift container is part of each gift. All our gourmet gift baskets for Netherlands, champagne gifts or chocolate gift hampers to Netherlands include not only best food and good wines, our high-quality gift containers add extra value to your choice. Take a look around and see for yourself!
Here at Gift Baskets Netherlands we take care that your gift makes an excellent impression with a memorable effect when it is opened and consumed. We are here to make you look good.
Send Gifts to Netherlands: Reviews
Rating: 5.0 (8 reviews)
Jolanda S. (December 2017, ):
Thank you for the wonderful gift box. Our customer sent us pictures and it was so beautiful. We will definitely buy from you again!
Sten D. (December 2017, ):
Thank you for your prompt reply.
Also just wondering who to contact about the service I have received?
The online service your company has provided has been amazing and I am so thankful.
Vera L. (November 2017, ):
Thank you so much Susanne,
My parents received the gift today and they were thrilled with the items and quality.
Thanks very much indeed.
Kind Regards,
Rochelle R. (December 2017, ):
Hello Susanne,
Thank you very much for all your efforts in making this a success.
We will definitely be using your company again in the future.
Best regards,
Sue F. (December 2016, ):
Thank you for the wonderful gift box. Our customer sent us pictures and it was so beautiful. We will definitely buy from you again!
Sharon B. (March 2018, ):
Dear Susanne,
I am very happy to let you know that UPS have delivered the parcel to my friend. She has contacted me to tell me what a lovely surprise it was and that the gifts were very nice.
Thank you for your assistance. Have a nice Easter weekend.
Kind Regards
Geraldine F. (December 2019, ):
Hello Susanne,
First of all I would like to thank you for your professional & smooth service! We received a lot of positive comments last year & once again this year, for the gift baskets that were sent out :)
Judy C. (November 2019, ):
Thank you, Susanne!!!
I tried to order through SO many sites and your site was the easiest and most reasonable but also had the best choices! Ordering internationally can be a challenge, but your site was really the easiest. Thank you.
Legal Information
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Thank you to those who contribute to our ongoing cycle of improvement. Top contributors:
Ken Dietz - Elizabeth, NJ
Educators apply here to access accessments. Approval may take one to two days.
I think I read that the Algebra 2 curriculum was being revised-will this be done before the school year starts? I'm just trying to pace my year out and get my first unit planned. Thanks.
Dear Ms. Schmitz, Thank you for your comment. We are working diligently on getting as much of the Algebra II course finished prior to the school year starting. All of the files in Units 1-4 are completed (Overview of Functions, Linear & Absolute Value Functions, Quadratic Equations & Complex Numbers, and Quadratic Functions). We have 4 units (Polynomial Functions, Rational Functions, Radical Functions, and Sequences & Series) whose presentations have been passed through by one of our writers. They are being reviewed by another writer prior to posting them. They should be finished by the end of August/beginning of September. That will bring us to having about 2/3 of the course completed. We will be finishing the remaining units during the first few months of the school year (Sept.-Nov. or Dec.). If you would like to see the overall plan for this course, please use the link below (Google Spreadsheet that can be viewed). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A-iIQibN_T9umKTDGKRXEtlfdtxwxSJpJH0QrV8RbHU/edit?usp=sharing Kind regards, Audra
So will even/odd, end behavior, symmetry, increasing/decreasing be covered in two units? It is in the unit one slides and assessments but it is listed in Unit 12 Function Behavior Summary in your spreadsheet.
Dear Ms. Schmitz, Thank you for your comment. Due to the structure of the comments on our website, I'm answering your question about even/odd, end behavior, etc. here. The various topics of even/odd, end behavior, symmetry, etc. are covered throughout the course as the students learn about the various types of functions (e.g. Quadratic Functions, Polynomial Functions, Rational Functions, etc.). Each unit relating to functions discusses the characteristics of each type of graph, including even/odd, symmetry, etc. Unit 12: Function Behavior Summary will be providing a recap of everything that was studied throughout the course regarding functions, prior to the start of Conics. Kind regards, Audra
Thank you!


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URUGWIRO VILLAGE - PRESIDENT Paul Kagame, has assured the public that the forthcoming elections will be held in a free and fair environment and will not interrupt the country's peace and stability
Addressing the monthly news conference at Urugwiro Village - probably the last one of his 7-year term - President Kagame said that he is certain that the voting will be conducted in a transparent manner.
"I have no doubt that this election will be conducted in a free, fair and stable manner and the outcome will be reflecting what Rwandans wanted in the first place. That, I can guarantee," Kagame said.
Despite reports suggesting that the President will win the elections, Kagame said that he would not take anything for granted and will embark on a 3-week countrywide campaign tour, where he will account for the last 7 years, and ask Rwandans to entrust him and his party, RPF, another term in office. He added that he is confident that his party has delivered a lot in terms of development and transforming the country.
The President pointed out that if Rwandans do not vote him back, he will, willingly, pass the baton to the winning candidate.
Kagame, further cautioned, against "self appointed spokespersons" who want to determine what is best for Rwandans. The decision of who leads Rwanda is solely for Rwandans, the President said, adding that foreigners should have nothing to do with the choices Rwandans make.
"Let nobody be mistaken about Rwanda's commitment, dedication and determination to shape her future," Kagame said, adding that some people are determined to continue referring to Rwanda as a "failed state" but that will not be the case because Rwandans will not let anyone decide for them who they want to be.
The President further accused some foreigners of seeking to impose what they would like to portray as "legitimate opposition" on Rwanda, adding that opposition is not established from outside the country and that outsiders cannot determine what and who the opposition is.
"You may create an opposition, but who manages it: will you create it from outside and keep managing it from inside? It will be difficult for you and those you have created," Kagame said. "First of all, as an outsider, you have no business creating anything political in another country."
Kagame, clarified that his responsibility, as President, is to create an environment that would enable the opposition to develop but not to create the opposition itself.
The President criticised the section of the media that are attempting to create the impression that the country is facing a crisis, adding that if anything, Rwandans should be the ones to tell their story.
Commenting on the recent incident in Spain, during the MDG Advocacy Group in Madrid, where the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, did not meet him after he was pressurised by a group of "charities", Kagame said he was caught up between internal Spanish politics.
The President said that one or two Spanish MP's arm-twisted Zapatero into deciding not to take part in the meeting or they would not give him their vote.
Kagame and Zapatero are co-chairs the MDG Advocacy Group.
Spain, in 2008, issued indictments against 40 RPF officers, similar to French Judge Bruguiere's own indictments against Rwandan officials.
Both warrants have since been roundly denounced around the world as baseless and politically motivated.


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State Journal
Political Education
It was billed as a major debate for Illinois' gubernatorial
candidates—vying in one of the tightest and most closely watched
races in the country—to hash out their plans for education.
But last week only half of the competitors showed up at the event, a prelude to the March 19 primaries.
The attendees included, not surprisingly, Paul Vallas, the former Chicago schools chief who last week was running third in polls for the Democratic nod.
Mr. Vallas was joined by Republican candidates Patrick O'Malley, a state senator, and Lt. Gov. Corrine Wood. GOP frontrunner Jim Ryan, the state's attorney general, was a no-show, as were Democratic candidates Roland Burris, a former state attorney general and state comptroller, and U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich.
Mr. Ryan and Mr. Blagojevich had bowed out because of previous commitments, according to the event's sponsor, National-Louis University.
However, Mr. Burris had been expected to attend. His office did not return calls for comment late last week.
During the 90-minute exchange, the three candidates pledged to revamp the state board of education and give more control to districts and local school boards.
Mr. Vallas wasn't surprised at the no-shows.
"The candidate with the most money is always the one who is the least likely to show up," he said, taking a swipe at Mr. Blagojevich in an interview last week.
The Democratic lead has changed hands several times. Last week, using some of a hefty war chest for television ads, Mr. Blagojevich leapfrogged ahead of his competitors.
Mr. Vallas has struggled to gain name recognition outside of Chicago. According to a Feb. 17 poll by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago television station WGN, 31 percent of Democratic voters support Mr. Blagojevich, 27 percent back Mr. Burris, and 20 percent support Mr. Vallas. Mr. Vallas began a series of television spots in southern Illinois last week, and he believes those will help him close the gap.
—Joetta L. Sack
Vol. 21, Issue 24, Page 13Published in Print: February 27, 2002, as State Journal


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The principle of TIR has been known or at least suspected since the 1840's, when David Colloden and Jacques Babinet first designed and built water fountain displays in which the streams of water also guided or carried light to enhance the display. As the theory and understanding of the behaviour of light improved, the ability to utilize the principle of TIR also improved. In essence, an interface between two materials, such as between water and air or between glass and air, acts as a reflective surface. Glass that has been drawn into long, thin, and highly flexible fibers, and is then coated with a non-absorbing material provides an interface that reflects essentially all light back into the fiber itself, allowing none to escape through the periphery of the glass fiber. The reflected light beam bounces back and forth from interface to interface along the length of the fiber, until it exits the end of the fiber as an exact image of the light that first entered the fiber.
As a communications or message carrier, optical fibers alone are not enough. Ordinary light, and even polarized light, contain a vast range of wavelengths, all in different phases of their vibratory cycles. The laser is the final key that makes fiber optics feasible for communication purposes. Since the light waves from a laser are all within a very narrow range of wavelengths and are all in the same phase of their vibratory cycles, the signal, and the message it carries, does not get all twisted about and mashed into an incomprehensible blur by the countless reflections experienced as it passes from one end of the fiber to the other.