Interesting blog bits

1. Wenli Li and Michelle J. White on Bankruptcy, mortgage default, and foreclosure. Did US bankruptcy laws exacerbate the housing crisis? This column says that a 2005 reform that made declaring personal bankruptcy more difficult increased mortgage defaults and home foreclosures. It recommends reversing that legislation to reduce the number of foreclosures, which have high social costs.
2. Matt Nolan writes a Dear Rod Orman letter. Matt disagrees with Orman about monetary policy.
3. Matt Nolan also writes on Agreement or no? David Cunliffe has stated that new prudential regulation by the Reserve Bank shows that they agree with Labour on the need to dump the monetary policy consensus. Matt says no.
4. Eric Crampton writes about the Advantage: Arts over Commerce. As an arts man myself I have to say an arts degree has a huge advantage over a commerce degree.
5. Fatih Guvenen, Burhanettin Kuruscu and Serdar Ozkan on Taxation of Human Capital and Wage Inequality: A Cross-Country Analysis. High top marginal tax rates erode incentives to acquire human capital. Anyone surprised?
6. Jaime de Melo, Jean-Marie Grether and Nicole A. Mathys on Trade, pollution, and the environment: New international evidence. The "pollution haven" view asserts that globalisation draws industries to countries with lax environmental regulation. This column present evidence that that the major polluting industries are not very footloose and that changes in emissions through the relocation of activities are relatively small. The growth of trade itself, however, is likely to contribute to growing emissions associated with transport.