After my first semester teaching Econ 101, I have lots to digest. I’ll post thoughts here over the next few weeks as I go through the process of revising for the second go-around.
Author: jdc
What if legal permanent residents could vote?
According to the Department of Homeland Security, there are more than 13 million legal permanent residents in the United States. I’m one of them. U.S. politics matters a lot to me, since this is where I live my life, but my fellow green card holders and I have no vote with which to express our opinions on the future of our home country. Perhaps you can imagine how frustrating that is.
What’s the deal with “returns to scale”?
(Pedagogy for the economists)
It’s time to retire the concept of “returns to scale”, at least in our intro/intermediate microeconomics. I don’t think it’s doing anything useful for us, it’s meaningful only as a pure thought experiment, and I think it confounds understanding of more relevant types of return to inputs in production.
Fake news in networks
Fake news is in the news, part of the nauseating task of dressing the ugly wound of the presidential election. The OED has named “post-truth” its word of the year, and the Republican candidate for president aligned himself with the kind of wilful confusion that is known to be a deliberate tool of autocratic regimes.
Hands Up – Blood Orange
Imagining a shadow cabinet in the U.S.
In the aftermath of the election, we are seeing the usual, healthy debate within both the winning and losing parties over what to make of the results and what comes next. I do fundamentally believe in the importance of vigorous debate inside political parties followed by unified support of the ultimate platform. It is crucial to avoid fractures that may make it impossible to build a majority coalition.
PSA
The secret ingredient is cough syrup.
Anecdotal empiricism: finding good websites
My conjecture about how finding neat new websites on the internet has changed over the years:
A very short history of my personal correspondence with Hillary Clinton
So back in the dark days of dial-up internet the White House website was pretty much on a par with your average GeoCities page—a few adorably amateurish pictures, some cobbled together links, probably a MIDI version of The Star-Spangled Banner (OK maybe not that last one). I know this because the internet was just a wee village back then and pre-Google you pretty much typed plausible addresses in to see if they took you anywhere interesting. I was always into the U.S. and its stuff so there I am.
Cord-cutting economics; or, why can’t we stream live TV?
In 2016, we are well past the time when cord-cutting and streaming entered the mainstream. Why, then, is streaming that replicates TV still such a tough nut to crack?
Jim Campbell 