Why did Rome and Byzantium fall apart after centuries of success? What causes civilizations to collapse, from a dysfunctional fourth-century-B.C. Athens to contemporary bankrupt Greece? The answer is usually not enemies at the gates, but the pathologies inside them. What ruins societies is well known: too much consumption and not enough production, a debased currency, and endemic corruption.
In order to further progress on the new Handbook of Macroeconomics, which will be published next year, Harald Uhlig and I, the co-editors of the Handbook, hosted two conferences at Stanford and Chicago in April. Harald and I attended both conferences—three days in each venue—where we heard distinguished macroeconomists present 35 draft chapters and critical commentary on each of those chapters.
Jack Jennings was the most influential education policy staffer on the Democratic side of Congress for the past half century. He served on the House Education Committee team for some twenty-seven years, then founded and led a well-regarded quasi-think tank called the Center on Education Policy, which continues to issue useful studies.
Hoover fellow Joshua Rauh discusses pensions and Social Security and whether or not they are working. Rauh points to the retirement systems in Denmark and Australia as successful and sustainable retirement systems because they have a low but stable base pension for everyone and people are also able to have private savings accounts with good investment options.
Californians have a serious case of HGTV House Hunters' envy. The show, which predominately takes place in the American Midwest, gives a sneak peek into housing markets across the country. For those of us in California, where the average house price hovers around $440,000 - almost 2½ times the national average - watching homebuyers purchase dream homes for a fraction of that price can be demoralizing.
When I teach my Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom, I spend a lot of time on the pillar "Economic thinking is thinking on the margin." I was talking to a friend recently who has a reasonably-well-paying job and gets the respect of many of the people she deals with but doesn't get the respect of her employer. I suggested that she "think on the margin."
The business community reaped the benefits of migrating to cloud architectures in both economic efficiency and customer interface, and it is not going back. Defense Department information technology systems are economically unsustainable, but the department only now is catching the revolutionary spirit of the cloud, and adoption is slow and not in line with advances in the commercial sector.
Six words frame almost all written and spoken discourse. It's increasingly difficult to read an article or hear remarks on any subject that does not include one or more of the six words or their correlates which underpin the contemporary liberal (bigger government) narrative:
Hoover fellow John Cochrane discusses the US trade deficit and the outlook for the US economy. Cochrane notes that trade to deficits are often a sign of strength. It means people around the world want to invest in the US indicating the US has a stronger economy than other countries.
Hoover fellow Richard Epstein discusses his Defining Ideas piece, “Baltimore’s Real Police Problem.” Epstein notes that the recent unrest in Baltimore is less about the particulars of the gruesome death of Freddie Gray and more about the set of policies that have increased the odds of such tragedies happening. These policies cover a broad range of issues, from police practices to public education. But they all bear the mark of progressive thinking, which has reduced the legitimate prospects for advancement and increased the odds of social disruption.
The food chain Chipotle recently announced that none of its offerings will contain ingredients from GMOs. Henry Miller devastates this piece of grandstanding in the Forbes.com post “Chipotle: The Strangest Restaurant Menu Ever:”
Sony Pictures’ new documentary from writer, director, and producer Gabe Polsky tells the story of the Soviet National Hockey Team through the eyes of its captain and national hero, Slava Fetisov. Whitney McIntosh ‘17 of the Stanford Arts Review discusses the film here.
