Category: Newspapers
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Mark D. White This morning's Baby Blues comic strip falls under the category "out of the mouths of babes": Even litte Hammie knows that it isn't always about the numbers–sometimes it's about the principle of that matter! This made me think of Amartya Sen's example of counterpreferential choice in which a person has to choose…
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Mark D. White In his column in this morning's New York Times, Mark Bittman reiterates his call for regulation of the amount of sugar Americans consume, such as taxing sugary foods and adding them to the list of items for which food stamps cannot be used–nothing new there. (I've discussed Bittman before here.) After presenting…
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Mark D. White In the New York Times, psychologist Barry Schwartz (author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less) warns us of "The Danger of Too Much Efficiency," in which he argues that, while efficiency is generally a good thing and enables increases in standards of living, more efficiency is not necessarily better.…
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Mark D. White In today's Wall Street Journal, there is a book review by Burton Malkiel of Models. Behaving. Badly., a critique of excessive reliance of mathematical modeling in finance and economics, written by Emanuel Derman, a key player in developing the very techniques he now criticizes. Judging from Malkiel's review, Derman's book echoes themes which…
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Mark D. White In his column in today's New York Times, David Brooks explores "The Limits of Empathy," arguing that empathy may help us feel for other people, but it is not enough to actually spur us to action and help us make tough ethical decisions, and in the end may amount to little more…
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Mark D. White At this blog, we stress the ethical issues that underlie economic reasoning in theory, practice, and policy. In yesterday's post at The New York Times' Economix blog, Catherine Rampell made the same point in response to Peter Orszag's call for improving policymaknig by vesting more power in technocratic committees rather than elected,…
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Mark D. White As this New York Times article celebrates, the U.S. military's "don't ask don't tell" policy is officially over. Military personnel who are gay or lesbian no longer have to suppress their identity and compromise their cherished virtue of honesty to serve their country. (H/T: Erica Greider.)
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Mark D. White In today's New York Times, David Brooks writes in "If It Feels Right" about a recent study of young adults in America that reveals their incapacity to think in moral terms: When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or…
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Mark D. White This Non Sequitur comic appeared in this morning's newspaper (and online): Ha ha, we get it, economists are stubborn theorists who are holed up in their ivory towers with no sense of the real world, situational context, or empirical circumstances. I almost tweeted this comic, as I do with two or…
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Mark D. White The latest blow to the Affordable Care Act came yesterday from a U.S. appeals cout in Atlanta–let me merely repeat what The Wall Street Journal quoted from the opinion today, which makes the case exceptionally well: [The individual mandate] is "breathtaking in its expansive scope," the court wrote. "The government's position amounts…
Mark D. White 