Interesting blog bits

1. Tom Clougherty on Cato Journal: Revisiting Three Intellectual Pillars of Monetary Wisdom.

   It is argued that conventional thinking on monetary policy rests on three faulty assumptions.

2. Timothy Taylor on the Allocation of Scarce Elevators

   One of the great economic problems of out times!

3. Robert Grundke and Christoph Moser on Evidence of hidden protectionism in the US in the Great Recession

   When the Great Recession hit the world economy, fears of protectionism led to close monitoring of non-tariff barriers to trade. The increase in US import protection appeared rather modest for all those trade policy measures that do not need to be notified to the WTO. However, stricter enforcement of given product standards does not require any notification. This column argues that the US has increasingly relied on this less transparent and trade-reducing policy instrument during the recent economic crisis.

4. Ed Dolan asks What Does the Unemployment Rate Measure? Labor Market Slack or the Social Stress of Joblessness? Why Does it Matter?
   

   Written in a US context but the issues raised apply to other countries as well.

5. Eric Crampton on Tobacco excise: running the numbers
   

   He looks at the likely effects of the tobacco tax hikes.

6. Branko Milanovic on Why “Make America Denmark Again” will not happen
   

   Milanovic looks at the seemly counter-intuitive idea that the rise of US inequality coincides with the decline of large companies that used to employ hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers and by their substitution by much smaller companies.

7. Chad P. Bown and Meredith Crowley on Today’s trade policy and trade research
   

   Free trade is under fire in nations across the world. This column surveys evidence on the importance of trade barriers. There is substantial variation in applied trade policy across countries, industries, and their trading partners, both cross-sectionally and over time. The variation found in these newly available and increasingly detailed databases offer researchers the opportunity to analyse and better understand firm-level trade, aggregate trade, and the shock to the world economy precipitated by China’s phenomenal export growth.

8. John Taylor on Rules Are Green and Discretion Is Red in the Monetary Game

   Taylor discusses a call for reform of the international monetary system.

9. Tim Worstall on Organic food is worse for the environment

   Organic food is not better than other produce in Britain because food standards are already so high.

10. Winton Bates asks What is the "bourgeois deal" and why should you care?

    The basic idea being that it is ethical and rhetorical change that has enabled most humans today to be much better off than their forebears. The bourgeois deal refers to societal acceptance of innovations that compete with and displace old ways of doing things in exchange for widespread improvements in living standards.