A Voucher System for Investigative Reporting
Dozens of proposals are floating around suggesting different ways to fix what seems to be the broken business model for newspapers. Michael Kinsley‘s Op-Ed, working backwards from the gross numbers, provides a devastating critique of the claim that micropayments on the Internet could save the industry: Micropayment advocates imagine extracting as much as $2 a Read More »
Los Angeles Transportation Facts and Fiction: Smog
As part of an ongoing quiz about transportation in Los Angeles, in the last post I challenged the notion that the city is sprawling. But sprawl or no, Los Angeles’s air is choked with its world-famous smog. Isn’t it?
Answer: A half-truth. Read More »
Sad, But True
An interesting article by Gregory Clark on the post-crisis status of macroeconomics includes the following money quote: Recently a group of economists affiliated with the Cato Institute ran an ad in The New York Times opposing the Obama‘s [sic] stimulus plan. As chair of my department, I tried to arrange a public debate between one Read More »
What Else Acts Like Cheap Wine and Cigarettes?
Denis Defreyne It’s interesting to see how people’s spending patterns respond to a (presumably) temporary decline in income during the recession. Which items are more or less income-elastic in the short run? A pediatrician friend of ours mentions that he is seeing less business; when there are three kids with coughs, for example, a parent Read More »
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