Saturday, September 27, 2008

Big picture

Neat little story related by Tim Harford:

Shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, a Russian bureaucrat travelled to the west to seek advice on how the market system functioned. He asked the economist Paul Seabright to explain who was in charge of the supply of bread to London. He was astonished by the answer: "Nobody."

I like that because it is astonishing that these things take care of themselves (well, not that bread is wandering in to London by itself, but you see what I mean). It's also a fun reminder of the massive economic policy differences that are possible in the world - a reminder of the size of the question "how should I/we/the country allocate resources". 

Thursday, September 25, 2008

What's next for economics?

Not every scientist is working on a cure for cancer, but it's surely one of the big open questions in medical science. Does economics have a cure-for-cancer question, one that every economist would sell his soul to answer?

A thought experiment: there's an economics seminar or lecture about to take place, in an hour, at a location an hour away from you. You hear a rumor about the content of this seminar. What credible rumor would make you jump in the car and high-tail it to the scene?

Again, being that it's probably foolhardy to speculate on what the next "big idea" might be, this might be an unanswerable question. Nevertheless, if it's not possible to think of an example, we might have a problem on our hands. Is this question different in economics than in other fields? 

Broadly, there are three things that might qualify. First would be the uncovering of a new piece of evidence, a Dead Sea scrolls-type discovery that would be vital for some purpose or another. What might that be in economics?

Second, and related, would be proving of some unproven result. Whether an unproven provable theory can logically exist in economics is debatable; in theoretical economics, we're always subject to the underdetermination problem that skews the definition of "proof"; the theories are always logically consistent from within, and nothing is provable from without. In empirical work, we face not just the problem of where the evidence for our groundbreaking proof comes from, but if it is conceivable that the evidence could realistically exist to make such a proof. There a "proof" could rest on clever data collection or a new econometric technique that can interpret the real-world data in a usefully new way. 

Third, we might have some methodological development, perhaps of the kind that saw "information" formally brought into the methodological fold in the 1970s. Whether this could rightly be called a methodological breakthrough is again not clear: is it not just a new application of the existing methodology? 

Could neuroeconomics, partway closing the underdetermination door, do the trick? Will the modeling of complex systems by powerful computers help? All I know is that fewer than 1% of economics seminars are genuinely interesting in and of themselves (that is, apart from the paper and to the terminally curious); what could boost that ratio?

Friday, September 19, 2008

More investment banking schadenfreude

I have to mention a New York Times op-ed in which Roger Cohen can barely contain his glee at the fate of the "masters of the universe" who may now be seeking alternate employement. I sympathize:

When I taught a journalism course at Princeton a couple of years ago, I was captivated by the bright, curious minds in my class. But when I asked students what they wanted to do, the overwhelming answer was: "Oh, I guess I’ll end up in i-banking."

Try teaching economics, sir! We're the ones who really get to see squandered potential: in economics classes, it's beyond overwhelming. And get this:

According to the Harvard Crimson, 39 percent of work-force-bound Harvard seniors this year are heading for consulting firms and financial sector companies (or were in June). That’s down from 47 percent — almost half the job-bound class — in 2007.

Isn't that a little bit tragic? Is the only thing we can offer our smartest young people a career in consulting and banking? Is it the only thing our smart young people want to do?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Hey, look, it's a financial crisis

Nothing like a good financial mess to underscore just how little anyone really understands the "economy". By which I probably mean the financial system. I think. There's also nothing like a good financial mess to slaughter in cold blood any chance I ever had of convincing anyone that economics is not the same as finance

Fortunately, the economics behind everything from risk trading to bailouts is very simple, even as the financial system manages to be opaque enough to make a lot of people look confused and silly. Even better, pretty much everyone understands that economics: for example, 'moral hazard' can mean something as simple as 'if the government is willing to bail out a bank when it's in trouble, risks for that bank are less risky so they might be willing to take more risks'. Of course, then you might well ask 'more than what?' or 'how risky?', but the idea is solid. Even the trading of risk is not especially difficult to grasp, because we're all familiar with the concept of insurance, and it's in exactly the same spirit, perhaps with a bit of hot potato thrown in as the risk gets chopped up and passed around. 

But the system? I think that's pretty confusing. The BBC has valiantly compiled a little glossary of some of the jargon, but we're already in very, very deep; too deep for that glossary to be helpful. Sure, it might turn some otherwise baffling sentences into plain English, but what if I don't know, say, what the stock market is, what is does, what it means? What good is a passage like this one to me:

Not far behind was Royal Bank of Scotland, whose shares ended down 10.2% at 189.1p. Barclays fared better, its shares closed down 2.53% at 308p.

Hell, what good is that to anyone? What is it saying? For those of us who know what the stock market does, maybe because we've studied finance, were simply interested or just have that little piece of information in our heads, it means something, but how many people is that? It's just as bad as using the word 'economics', which I've already argued is usually meaningless

It must be hell to try to write about a financial crisis for a lay audience. There's a perfect parallel between the entanglement of the institutions themselves and the contortions of language needed to explain it. Of course, personally, and I realize this is a terrible thing to admit, I'm experiencing delightful schadenfreude over the whole affair, so I admit to being less sympathetic than curious. 

Strange quotations

I'm scratching my head at this one from Barack Obama:

He added, "Senator McCain – you can’t run away from your words and you can’t run away from your record. When it comes to this economy, you’ve stood firmly with George Bush and a failed economic theory, and what you’re offering the American people is more of the same."

I struggle to even offer a guess as to what 'economic theory' he's talking about. 

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Goods, marketing, preferences and the Genius

I've gotten used to ignoring iTunes pining for one upgrade or another - seems to happen every other time I start it up - but, this time, the promise of the Genius was too tempting to ignore. 

The Genius is a new gadget attached to iTunes that is designed to create "smart" playlists at the touch of a button; pick a song from your library and it'll create a playlist made up of songs that fit well with the one you picked. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's precisely the same idea that personalized internet radio (my favorite is Pandora) has been trading on for a few years, with the obvious difference that Pandora and its cousins are capable of creating playlists built on more than one song or genre and that they can play you songs you don't own. Both Genius and Pandora are working on a collective wisdom principle - learning what to recommend based on what you like and on what people like you like, and so on. Actually, that even sounds a bit like the supposed basis for Goggle's search algorithm, right?

Anyway, I've been crying out for this: shuffle in iTunes is precisely useless, and I'm pleasantly encouraged by early returns from Genius. What's all that got to do with economics?

Well, what do we assume about preferences? We've always tried to be agnostic about what people like, which was neat for keeping us honest but made us a little fuzzy on where they come from or how they might change. Genius and Pandora are, arguably, operating on a person with malleable preferences, who's persuadable that she likes what's being connected. For these to be valuable products, there must exist preference for convenience (having playlists made for you rather than doing it yourself) or surprise (for hearing unexpected songs). 

Or could it be as simple as information? Perhaps these things are most valuable as informers, letting us know what goes well with our music or showing us new music that we might like. Again, slightly non-traditional consumer theory, although imperfectly informed consumers isn't a new idea in economics or in life. Strangely, iTunes seems to be at a distinct disadvantage here; sure, this new gadget is designed to recommend things to you to buy at the iTunes store, but it's not a pure free-preview model like Pandora. Nevertheless, we're in the territory of deterministic preferences, and in particular the role of advertising.

The most commonly asked question about advertising in economics has been 'informative or not?', and there's the balance between these two functions: am I being coerced or informed when Genius tells me what songs I'm missing that would go well with one I own? The strict segregation of preferences and the tangible world of goods and budgets that is used in consumer theory is violated a little by this kind of thing; we get into nice philosophical questions like how to define a good. Are my preferences changing when I learn about these awesome songs I'm missing out on?

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Economics From The Heart

A brief interlude to recommend "Economics From The Heart", a collection of short Paul Samuelson columns from the 60s through the 90s. Doesn't look like it's in print, but you can get it used for cheap on Amazon. It's entertaining stuff, not just as a document of historical op-ed economics:

Billy Graham's book on angels sold well, one presumes primarily to non-angels. Intellectuals have a propensity to write books that are read only by intellectuals and therefore do not sell well. This despite the propensity of intellectuals to read books. That is all intellectuals are good for: to read, write and talk about books and ideas.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Measurement again

From the New York Times:

During the boom years of the Bush presidency — remember them? — economic growth was an especially unreliable indicator of how most Americans were doing.

Our problem, again, is that semantically dead word 'economics'. 'Economic growth' is an especially fun one, not least because it actually refers to growth in GDP, which is something that's kind of confusing anyway. Look at this catalog of misery:

The numbers were impressive, but the gains were lopsided, benefiting executives and investors far more than hourly workers and salaried employees. Because the growth was fueled by reckless lending and borrowing, it created an illusion of wealth even as many Americans lost ground...

The government reported that the economy grew at a surprising 3.3 percent in the second quarter, while productivity (the measure of how much workers accomplish per hour) soared. Unfortunately, those bounces did not mean a rebound in the lives of most Americans.

Growth rose, but so did unemployment. Productivity surged, but wages fell. Fixing that disconnect is the central economic challenge for the next president.

Increased exports were responsible for last spring’s strong economic growth numbers. But selling more abroad has not led to more manufacturing jobs or working-class pay raises at home.

Oh my. One point is that the popular metrics - like 'growth' - clearly aren't capturing everything that's relevant, but we knew that. Another would be that it's therefore pretty odd that we continue to use the word economics when, lo, it's actually two degrees away from making sense: first, it usually means something like GDP or unemployment or productivity or something, and second, even that wouldn't actually tell a proper story. 

Yet a third point is that the title of the article is "Real Life Economy": seems like there's a bit of a trust issue developing with the metrics the media reports when they talk about 'the economy'. Economists look silly again, but was it their fault? And are we surprised?

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Using economics to talk policy

A few years ago I took a course called "Economics of OECD Countries" with a wonderful teacher, Gavin Cameron, who sadly passed away recently. It was really an economic history course; we took a few big, general, flexible models from macroeconomics and used them to talk about the last hundred years in the rich countries of the world - the Great Depression, oil shocks, the 'Golden Age' of growth, the rise of computers, productivity. It wasn't an especially politicized class, just nuts and bolts economics, but I'll be forever grateful not just for learning a bit of history but for learning that a little model goes a long, long way.

For instance: the BBC website had a piece a while back about the presidential candidates' economic policies with this passage:

Mr McCain has endorsed "supply side economics", calling for more tax cuts for business to boost economic growth and sharp cuts in spending programmes.
Mr Obama, on the other hand, wants more domestic spending, particularly on health care, and has indicated that he is not averse to higher taxes on the rich to pay for it.

Again, I'm not going to start analyzing policy, but I really like - no sarcasm here, I promise - that the same debates that have cropped up again and again through the history of economic policy as an actual thing are still here. A crude characterization would be to call Obama Keynesian, on the strength of what the article is saying; it's the famous injection of spending by the government to try to prop everything up, the great policy success of the original Keynesian era. That was the one that dragged America out of the Great Depression. 

Or did it? Surely a bold stroke to open the government's wallet when the whole country is broke, but, of course, there's plenty of wiggle room for debate. One of the many things we talked about in our course was the role of war spending in providing a natural bounce out of the Depression. Same concept, different reasons. 

McCain's being painted in the BBC article as a supply-sider, which is something of a dirty little epithet around the Dem-leaning economics faculties of the world. Paul Krugman made his journalistic bones (as opposed to his impressive academic record) with "Peddling Prosperity", a big chunk of which was devoted to a critique of what came to be called supply-side economics. Perhaps I'm reaching a bit here, but you could plausibly argue that supply-side policy grew out of monetarism, which was itself the big weapon against the oil-shock driven recession of the 1970s. Keynesianism versus monetarism was the big debate in economic policy, and it lives still into the 21st century.

As a teacher, the beauty of these debates is that they don't need fancy techniques, or math, or number crunching, to be explained. Naturally some of the academics who've spent their careers on policy questions are doing very complicated things, but to explain - in simplified form, but correctly - what was driving the problems of the 30s, the 70s, or whenever, and the logic behind the policies that were tried, is easy. It takes a bit of clear reasoning and is even easier if we are willing to use a few simple diagrams, both commodities that go a long, long way in economics. It's possible, even, to boil the whole mixture off to a supply-and-demand story. Don't roll your eyes, though: there's a reason why that's the most famous, most reproduced little model in economics, and how awesome that we can use it to talk about the biggest policy issues of the last century.

Many economics courses are 'tooling up' courses, where you learn those models, the diagrams, the math; what is even more crucial are those courses like the one Professor Cameron taught me, the ones where we use those tools to think about interesting things. It's truly staggering how simple the tools are that we used, truly gratifying to learn how far even the simplest little insight can go.