Links on institutions

Commodity Prices and Institutions

Property Rights and Growth - some interesting historical perspective. For more on property rights in medieval England, I am currently reading North, Wallis, and Weingast, Violence and Social Orders.

Paul Romer on Ending Poverty

I'm less bullish on charter cities than some of my other colleagues in institutional economics. It seems like institutional arrangements would be sensitive to the prevailing local relative prices and preexisting distribution of property rights (a la North, 1981).

Some links on teaching Principles of Economics

We're not out to get our students (Art Carden).

Property rights are probably the most important economic concept ignored by most principles courses. An interesting piece on property rights and karaoke (NPR).

Sometimes economists get principles of economics questions wrong (Tabarrok); sometimes economic researchers claiming that economists get principles of economics questions wrong write the question wrong (Cowen); sometimes there's more than one answer (Decker via Depken). Lesson: we have to be thoughtful about writing the questions we ask students.

Finally, a couple of unrelated random hits: Does the Current Account Still Matter? (Mehrling); some facts about Obama's first-term record - the right and left are both wrong (Sullivan).

Democracy and Performance

Does regime type affect development or does development affect regime type? I'm more in the latter camp. Democratizations that preceded the development of economic institutions and economic development in Eastern Europe since 1990 have been fragile.

Business in China (Economist) and government in India (Economist)

Some links

Increasing taxes a little and funding health reform may do more good (at least in the short run) than cutting spending. Someone remind folks that tax revenues are already at 50 year lows as a percentage of GDP.

A similar (but maybe a bit less firm) conclusion here.

More similar conclusions from Krugman on modern Keynesianism (on VOX not his hackish blog).

A couple of cool statistics links:

Paydays are a killer?

Billion Prices Project

Some institutional links:

Gender bias and agricultural technology

Cursed by resources or institutions?

Why continuing to be a Royals fan (among other things) is good for me.

Exports are overrated?

Education and Democracy

The Economist (see also HERE) asks why there is no apparent causal (or even correlative) relationship between education and democracy. They claim, "It is possible, however, that education reinforces authority and the power of ruling elites; indeed, it may often be designed to do precisely this." This seems entirely plausible to me.

A working paper by Bang and Mitra shows that, once we control for certain other factors, the impact of education on growth is even ambiguous. What other factors, you ask? Gender equity/bias. One explanation here is that in countries that have high rates of education among men (but not among women) education is doing precisely what the Economist suggests - fortifying the established position of the traditional elites.

Some links on institutions and failed states

The long-lasting effects of corrupt institutional history. (Vox; more here)
Oil (resources?) and democracy. (Vox)
Failed states, poor institutions, and poverty. (Freakonomics)

Some links, with tragedy of the commons in Zimbabwe

A good picture of the tragedy of the commons - the reason Elinor Ostrom shared the economics Nobel last year.
The Harvard undergraduate thesis everyone's talking about.
Does taking the first, possibly temporary, job in a crisis hurt future EP?