Interesting blog bits

1. Welly Gnome on Why Politicians Ignore Economists

   Politicians ignore economists because they’re the only profession with a loud minority who speak truth to power.

2. Not PC on Spending, “austerity,” and starting to grow again

   Cunliffe had written:
   
   CUNLIFFE: When you start closing down your government services and firing your workers, those people have no money to spend. Because they have no money to spend, the local businesses suffer. So they start firing staff. And so the economy goes into deep recession, with no easy way out.
   
   This is a common Keynesian notion. It’s also complete bollocks.

3. Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth on Hatred transformed: How Germans changed their minds about Jews, 1890-2006

   The persecution of Jews during WWII is one of the darkest and most puzzling chapters of recent history. This column asks how economics can help our understanding, particularly of how people’s attitudes to Jews have changed over time. It argues that ‘cultural economics’ shows that there is more to understanding how people behave than looking at their incentives.

4. Frits Bos and Coen Teulings on The Dutch CPB: What can be learned from the world’s oldest fiscal watchdog?

   The sovereign debt problems in European countries have increased the interest in fiscal watchdogs. This column draws lessons from the evolution of the oldest such institution, the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. It suggests starting with a conventional approach focusing on monitoring and analysing the government budget only to later contribute to broader policy issues.

5. Tim Worstall on Wind Farms Cause Global Warming!

   This is a lovely story from the UK press today based on a paper that has just appeared in Nature. Wind farms cause global warming! And yes, it really is true, this is not some joke nor strange denialist “science”.

6. Art Carden on Let's Be Blunt: It's Time to End the Drug War

   Prohibition is a textbook example of a policy with negative unintended consequences. Literally: it’s an example in the textbook I use in my introductory economics classes and in the most popular introductory economics textbook in the world. The demand curve for drugs is extremely inelastic, meaning that people don’t change their drug consumption very much in response to changes in prices. Therefore, vigorous enforcement means higher prices and higher revenues for drug dealers.