Interesting blog bits

1. James Banks, Zoë Oldfield and James P Smith ask Do differences in childhood circumstances explain US-England health differences at older ages?

   How much of our health in adulthood and old age is determined by our childhood? Using decades of data from the US and England, this column shows that the US excess in disease is common throughout the age distribution of the population. Moreover, poor childhood health tends to worsen adult health more in the US.

2. Amanda Goodall asks Physician-leaders and hospital performance: Is there an association?

   Are hospitals better run by former doctors or by specialist managers? This column looks at the top-ranking hospitals in the US and finds that hospital-quality scores are about 25% higher in physician-run hospitals than in the average hospital.

3. Simon J Evenett warns us that Resolve against protectionism weakens since the Seoul G20 Summit.

   Despite the public commitments made at the Seoul G20 summit, this year protectionism has slipped off the work programme of G20 nations. The latest evidence published in the 9th Report of the Global Trade Alert, summarised here, shows that government resolve against protectionism has weakened as global economic prospects have dimmed. The global trading system is not out of the protectionist woods.

4. Tim Worstall on African Free Trade Zone

   For some reason I’ve never really understood a certain sort of person gets all agitated if you suggest that free trade might solve some of Africa’s problems.

5. Matt Nolan comes out In defence of government funded tertiary education

   As a young child I was told repeatedly that education was a right, and that society should pay for it – not just at the primary level, not just at the secondary level, but at the tertiary level as well. Being an argumentative child I disagreed repeatedly.

6. Gavin Kennedy notes that the Repair and Renovation of Adams Smith's Panmure House Approved! (at last)

   It has just been announced (11.30 am this morning!) that the Scottish Government has approved the proposals from Edinburgh Business School (Heriot-Watt University) for the sympathetic renovation of ‘Panmure House’, just off old Edinburgh’s historic Royal Mile, where Adam Smith lived from 1778 up to his death in 1790.

7. Kurt Schuler on Free banking and the historical gold standard

   Over at his recently established blog “Uneasy Money,” David Glasner has a post on “Gold and Ideology.” (He has started fast out of the gate, writing prolifically; I hope he doesn’t burn out, but there’s a lot to write about when the subject is money.) He claims that “the gold standard never managed itself; in its classical period from 1870 till World War I it was under the constant management of the Bank of England with the occasional assistance of the Bank of France and other major banking institutions.” I disagree.