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Popular Media So, let me get this straight. We’re in a major recession triggered by a collapse in the housing market, itself the inevitable result of government . . .
So, let me get this straight. We’re in a major recession triggered by a collapse in the housing market, itself the inevitable result of government policies, led by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to get the wrong loans to the wrong people so they could buy the wrong houses. The Obama Administration’s remedy is not to let Fannie and Freddie die a long-overdue and merciful death, but to prop them up, to give them additional powers, and to subsidize private mortgage lenders who extend yet more credit to more borrowers who can’t pay it back, thus making what might have been a temporary misallocation of the housing stock into a permanent one. Brilliant!
Read the full piece here.
Popular Media As I noted elsewhere yesterday, the “stimulus” bill making its way through Congress is a fine illustration of the Higgs effect, the tendency of government to expand . . .
As I noted elsewhere yesterday, the “stimulus” bill making its way through Congress is a fine illustration of the Higgs effect, the tendency of government to expand massively in response to “crises,” real or imagined. Naomi Klein’s “Disaster Capitalism” thesis is exactly backward: “disasters” are inevitably followed by huge increases in the public sector at the expense of the private. Anyway, if you have any doubt that the current legislation has precious little to do with economic stimulus, consider the details of the House’s proposed $825 billion package, which includes:
TOTM Yesterday I criticized Brad DeLong for, essentially, acting like a child. Today I want to draw attention to three posts from Brad DeLong–in none of . . .
Yesterday I criticized Brad DeLong for, essentially, acting like a child. Today I want to draw attention to three posts from Brad DeLong–in none of which does he act like a child.
Popular Media On Thursday President-elect Obama named law professor Cass Sunstein to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an executive-branch office with the mission of analyzing . . .
On Thursday President-elect Obama named law professor Cass Sunstein to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an executive-branch office with the mission of analyzing and coordinating federal regulation. Most recently, Sunstein is known for his work with Richard Thaler on “choice architecture” and behavioral public policy, including their book Nudge.
TOTM There has been a great deal of speculation and discussion in this blog and around the antitrust community regarding what will happen with the DOJ . . .
There has been a great deal of speculation and discussion in this blog and around the antitrust community regarding what will happen with the DOJ Section 2 Report. Rightly so. It is a document with the potential to influence both agency monopolization enforcement decisions, international antitrust enforcement, and U.S. doctrine itself in federal court. What precisely happens with the Section 2 Report is also of considerable significance given the confluence of events that suggest, at least to me, a significant increase in monopolization enforcement (see also some more general predictions about the Obama antitrust regime).
TOTM Stories like this one suggest that winning Olympic gold in Beijing have catapulted team members into better seasons. Here’s a quote from Lebron James… Read . . .
Stories like this one suggest that winning Olympic gold in Beijing have catapulted team members into better seasons. Here’s a quote from Lebron James…
TOTM The Law Market, Larry Ribstein’s new and important book with Erin O’Hara looks great and is available here from Oxford University Press. The book description . . .
The Law Market, Larry Ribstein’s new and important book with Erin O’Hara looks great and is available here from Oxford University Press. The book description from the website sets the stage…
TOTM Last month I highlighted the story of DeMarcus Cousins, a blue chip high school basketball recruit who was playing a game of chicken with the . . .
Last month I highlighted the story of DeMarcus Cousins, a blue chip high school basketball recruit who was playing a game of chicken with the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) over signing his National Letter of Intent — the letter that commits a player to attend the university and imposes the penalty of giving up a full year of eligibility if the student-athlete transfers. Cousins claims that he stayed near home and UAB to play for former Indiana University coach Mike Davis who had allegedly represented to Cousins that UAB would release Cousins without penalty if Davis was no longer his coach. Cousins has been holding out to try to bargain for this term in his NLI. Nothing new there — though if anybody has information on the follow-up story there I’d love to hear it.
TOTM One of the highlights of my recent time as Scholar in Residence at the Federal Trade Commission was the opportunity to work with some of . . .
One of the highlights of my recent time as Scholar in Residence at the Federal Trade Commission was the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds around on antitrust issues on investigations and policy projects as well some academic projects. The subject of this post is one of those academic projects. Motivated by the conventional wisdom that the technical demands placed on federal courts in antitrust cases in terms of evaluating expert economic and econometric evidence has increased substantially over the last twenty years or so, Former Bureau of Economics Director (now returned the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University) Mike Baye and I decided to try to take a swing at measuring the empirical effects of economic complexity of judicial decision-making in antitrust litigation.
