Archives: May 2005

The Revenge of the Communists

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 31, Categories: Growth

Which countries have fared the best over the past 10 years? We hear a lot about the success stories of China and India, but less about growth in other countries....

Your House, My Broadband

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 26, Categories: Macro

David H comments that "So, try to make the case to me that Tech is a better place to spend my money." Well, David, I can't make that case as...

The Telecom Economy Dude

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 26, Categories: Tech

James Enck of EuroTelcoBlog has what he calls "big problems" with my recent post on telecom, where I argued that "This is the beginning of the telecom revolution, not the...

How Housing is Squeezing Out Other Spending

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 26, Categories: Macro

I've got a new story here about how the housing boom is hurting the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, I didn't have room for this wonderful chart, which shows how...

Are Our Lives Riskier Today than in 1979?

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 25, Categories: Income Distribution

Okay, let's throw this question open to everyone. In what ways are our lives (working/home) more risky than they were in 1979, and in what ways are they less risky?...

More on length of unemployment

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 25, Categories: Labor Market

A reader suggested that, to be fair, I show DeLong's chart of unemployment duration, which is adjusted for the business cycle. That is, he estimates what the duration of unemployment...

Length of Unemployment: Up or Down?

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 25, Categories: Labor Market

Just read several interesting items on the length of unemployment. Paul Krugman wrote in the NYT on May 23 that "unemployment lasts much longer than it used to." Writing in...

The Charts that the NYT Didn't Want to Show You

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 24, Categories: Education

How the NYT story on education leaves out the key numbers.

More on Housing

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 23, Categories: Macro

One of my regular readers, Jack Krupansky, takes issue with my previous item. In a comment, he says that Sorry, but it's more than a little misleading for you or...

WSJ Misses the Point on Telecom

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 23, Categories: Tech

There's an economically misguided article about telecom on the front page of the WSJ this morning. The article starts off by saying that Markets for cellphone services in Europe and...

The Real Cost of the Housing Bubble

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 23, Categories: Macro

Assuming that there is a housing bubble--which looks more and more certain--what are its real costs?

Start-ups and hiring

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 19, Categories: Tech

I heartily recommend Paul Graham's very interesting new essay called Hiring is Obsolete. (found via a reference from Slashdot). Graham is a programmer, computer language designer, and author. The main...

Telecom Prices Are Up...and That's a Good Thing

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 18, Categories: Tech

Buried deep in this morning's CPI report from the BLS was the encouraging news that phone prices have been rising at a 2.1% rate over the past 3 months. That's...

Feels Like 1996 All Over Again

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 17, Categories: Income Distribution

Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting flashes of deja vu from the NYT's multi-part series on class, followed by today's WSJ story on consumer debt, with the headline "Lagging...

Absolute versus relative mobility: A Primer

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 16, Categories: Income Distribution

I'm coming back to the same point because it's an important one: Absolute mobility matters more than relative mobility. *Absolute mobility means that living standards are increasing in absolute terms:...

The Real Truth About Mobility

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 16, Categories: Income Distribution

There's a lot of discussion about income mobility today, but most of it blurs the real facts. For example, Kevin Drum writes that life roles have become more hardened. While...

Siegel's Rule

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 15, Categories: Investments

Jeremy Siegel has come up with a new rule for guiding investment decisions.

Mobility vs Wage Gains

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 15, Categories: Income Distribution

Would you rather live in a society with a lot of mobility but no wage gains, or a society with a bit less mobility and good wage gains?

Why Social Security Shouldn't Be Job #1

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 13, Categories: Fiscal Policy

Some good stuff from Brad DeLong, who argues that too much emphasis is being put on Social Security reform. He writes Why is the American political system focusing its attention...

Cisco's New Option

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 12, Categories: Tech

I always thought that most of the people who favored expensing stock options really would be happier just getting rid of them. Now, with Cisco's latest proposal for valuing options,...

More on trade deficits

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 11, Categories: Trade

David Altig has a nice piece about the sustainability of the trade deficit. He fails to note, however, that the deficits are sustainable as long as U.S. wealth, net of...

The Value of Immigrants

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 10, Categories: Labor Market

In a new column, I estimate that immigrants and other foreign workers are bringing about $200 billion of human capital into the country annually. That substantially compensates for the large...

Big trade deficits, but more wealth

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 10, Categories: Growth

What's more important, big trade deficits or high productivity? Debt to foreigners is building up, but productivity is soaring. Last Thursday's data from the BLS shows that output per hour...

Seed Corn

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 09, Categories: Growth

Americans are often accused of being too focused on consuming today, and not enough on investing for tomorrow. That's wrong, according to the latest numbers from the National Science Foundation....

Not That Storm Again

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 08, Categories: Macro

Writing in the NYT today (5/8/05), Daniel Gross makes the case for "The Perfect Storm That Could Drown the Economy." He worries about "the many obvious and worrisome portents,"...

Information hiring?

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 06, Categories: Labor Market

The best news out of the job report this morning, as far as I'm concerned, is that employment in the information sector is up by 24,000 over the past three...

Housing vs Tech

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 05, Categories: Macro

Angry Bear observes, quite correctly, that the non-service portion of the US economy has slowly been evolving from a goods-producing economy into a house-producing economy. In the same vein, Brad...

A Tech Bounce?

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 04, Categories: Tech

In the new issue of BusinessWeek, I lay out the reasons why we may be on the verge of another tech/information/communications boom, driven by the consumer side of the economy....

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 04, Categories: Macro

Here's a disturbing thought: Could Greenspan finally have lost his preternatural ability to control the economy?