Archives: March 2006

The Free Lunch Statistic

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 31, Categories:

Economists are fond of saying that there's no such thing as a free lunch. That of course is ridiculous, because our entire prosperity is based on the fact that technological...

My Take on the Coming Housing Bust

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 31, Categories: Macro

By my calculations, a drop of 10% in national housing prices over the next few years would put home values back on the long term trend line. See my piece...

The Problem with Prediction Registries

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 21, Categories: Future

David Brin (whom I like very much) has advocated 'prediction registries'-that is, keeping track of the predictions of experts and pundits, so we can see which ones were right and...

Rising Wages in China

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 20, Categories: Trade

Take a look at this BW article about fast-rising wages in China. Could make a big difference....

Young Americans Take It on the Chin

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 20, Categories: Income Distribution

I'm an optimist, but I'm forced to admit that this has not been a good decade for young Americans. See my story here....

U.S. Universities Still Lead

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 16, Categories: Education

A new report from a top OECD education expert has a table on the top 20 universities in the world. Seventeen are in the U.S. The list may be skewed...

Steroids vs the Smart Pill

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 14, Categories: Tech

Steroids build muscles and physical endurance. Politicians and journalists generally do not rely on muscles and physical endurance to do their jobs. That makes it much easier for the politicos...

The trade deficit: A 20th century measure in a 21st century economy?

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 14, Categories: Trade

I've never met Brad Setser. But I'm sure he's a nice guy. After all, he keeps writing about me. Last week he did a post entitled Mike Mandel, Ricardo Hausmann...

Rising Real Net Worth per capita

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 09, Categories: Investments

Today's data release from the Federal Reserve shows that real net worth per capita rose again in 2005, and is now higher than before the bust. In 2005, real net...

Attitudes Towards Science

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 08, Categories: Tech

Maybe this is something everybody already knows. I was leafing through the (pdf) pages of the new Science and Engineering Indicators 2006, from the National Science Foundation (Ok, I'm wierd),...

Slowdown in Consumer Credit Growth

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 07, Categories:

Interesting news from the Fed...the new report on consumer credit (here) shows that consumer credit in January rose by only 2.9% over a year earlier, the smallest increase since 1993....

Wal-mart and Dark Matter

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 04, Categories: Trade

Inadvertently, Brad Setser seems to have given me a very good example of dark matter. In a recent post, he wrote Super-efficient big box retailing may increase overall US productivity,...

Do I Deserve A Wedgie?

Posted by: Michael Mandel on March 01, Categories: Journalism

I've just published an article in BW which rounds up a lot of comments about my cover story, Unmasking the Economy, including one person who thinks that I deserve a...