Maybe it's not a good time to buy a house in Geneva

This graph plots the evolution of the price of single family houses.

I found the data here.
Krugman on housing bubbles is here. Does Geneva look like a Zoned Zone?

BTW: PK thinks that the one linked above was one of his best pieces.

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New Dollar Bill

Thanks to Nada C. At least, we still have Jon Stewart.

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Smoke police, thought police

I don't smoke, but I think that anti-smokers are becoming Goebbelsques (I think I just invented a new adjective!), check this out.
BTW, do you remember the 80s song about her eyes?
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Transparency, Italian style

Italian banks have a consortium with a website (patti chiari) aimed at "at simplifying relations between banks and customers by means of tools that make it easier to compare different products and make educated choices."

Among other things, this website publishes a list of "low risk, low return" financial instruments. Basically, a list of financial instruments for conservative people who do not care about return but want to make sure that their money is in a safe place. Well, until September 15 (i.e. 1 day before Lehman's bankruptcy) this list included Lehman Brothers' bonds. WOW, talk about low risk!!!

BTW, Francesca R. is telling me that Transparency International ranks Italy Nr 55th in control of corruption (just after South Africa and just before Seychelles, at least we are still ahead of da wife, Lebanon is 102). Given that we are in self-promotion mood here is an old piece I had written for TI (page 317 of the Data & Research Part)
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Our friend Ted

James Hamilton explains.
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The beginning of the crisis...

after almost 14 months, maybe is time to go back and watch a classic Cramer video (it gets good 1:30 minutes into the video). John Authers says: It was possibly the most entertaining five minutes of financial television ever broadcast. Authers interesting analysis of the video is here.

PS
I had linked that video in a piece I had written on the crisis, but somebody deleted the link from the final version of the paper.
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End of the world delayed again

Even very smart people have (helium) leaks! I am still wondering what is going to happen to house prices in Geneva.
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Jon Stewart and the crisis

Very funny here. Thanks to Alessandro N.
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Econ skit videos

When I was in grad school (and it is not several decades ago), end of the year skits were very basic. Using an overhead projector or a CD player was considered a great technological innovation. Now, if you don't produce a video you are a complete loser. Here are a few famous ones: Harvard recruiting skit; Stanford 2008, and here is Berkeley. Here is Harvard's Government (ie political sciences) Department.

However, econ and polisci grad students still need to learn a lot from MBAs. The best video-skit ever is the old Columbia MBA video in which Glenn Hubbard "serenades" Ben Bernanke. Click here to see I'll be watching you!
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Top economists...

..from A(cemoglu) to Z(ingales) and with different political views don't like the plan.
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Cool investment idea...

from Dani Rodrik. Also, new Bono-Sachs development blog.
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Weird instruments: The rapture index

Today I start teaching econometrics. So what about starting a thread about weird instruments (like instruments for instrumental variable estimations, if you don’t know econometrics, never mind)? The coolest I have ever seen is the Rapture Index.

The rapture index measures the probability of rapture. The rapture is an event that will take place sometime in the near future. Jesus will come in the air, catch up the Church from the earth, and then return to Heaven with the Church. (details are here).

Apparently this (interacted with evangelical population) is a good instrument for housing prices: Crowe (2008) finds that in MSAs with a larger portion of the population belonging to Evangelical churches house prices tend to rise disproportionately when the "Rapture Index" rises. This index maps current events into a subjective probability of an imminent coming of a time of "extreme and terrible" events and as such is independent from denial rates at the MSA level. We can then use the interaction term of the share of Evangelicals in the MSA population and change in the Rapture index as an instrument for house price appreciation. The paper is here

But why should somebody who believes that the end of the world is approaching buy a house? I would rather follow this guy's advice.

BTW, I need to check if the LHC is affecting housing prices in Geneva.
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Miniskirts in Uganda

Apparently they are dangerous. Saudi Arabia agrees on several other dangerous trends (see the second story here).
Found on Chris Blattman's blog.
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Why would a stubborn conservative run a deficit?

About 20 years ago, Svensson and Persson said that a conservative could find optimal to run a big deficit to tie the hand of future, more progressive, governments. Probably they had in mind Reagan, may it happen again? Here is Matt Yglesias under the influence: ...a plan that spends $700 billion on a bailout ... and giving the taxpayer virtually no upside ... would give an Obama administration no resources with which to implement a progressive domestic agenda in 2009
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Alter-globalizers and UNCTAD memories

Here is Dani Rodrik on the topic.

I don't think I will join this version of the AG-movement very soon: Broad and Cavanagh don't pay much attention to such figures because they seem to have a somewhat romantic view of the lives of rural poor, who apparently have a relatively decent quality of life until market forces in the form of international trade and MNCs encroach upon them.
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Zingales does not like "the plan"

Check this out: It is enough to say that for 6 of the last 13 years, the Secretary of Treasury was a Goldman Sachs alumnus.

Krugman does not like it either: here and here and here. More criticism is here and here.
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Oooopsss....

Check this out.
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Beautiful graph

Another beautiful graph from Chris Blattman. Here is an older one.
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Religion and education gender gap

The link may be different from what you think (here). An older, ungated, and longer version is here (note the self-promotion tag).
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Sovereign default and exporters

Since we are in self-promotion mood, this is a just published paper on how sovereign defaults affect export-oriented industries. Here is an older, shorter, and ungated version of the paper.
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Andrew talks about Sabina

Here, but what is Sabina's father doing with SB? I guess that they are a diversified family.
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The People's Republic of the USA?

Willem Buiter thinks he still sleeping, but when he realizes that what he's reading on the FT is really happening he writes a lot of interesting stuff.

This is an old paper of mine (joint with Eduardo Levy Yeyati and Alejandro Micco) on state-owned banks. An (older) ungated version is here.
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Rodrik is back to blogging

Nice paper about RER, the handbook (sorry, mindbook) of growth dignostics, and Reinhart and Reinhart on bonanzas. On the topic of bonanzas, see alos the latest news from my former employer.
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Reading "War and Peace" in Geneva

Economists like to quote Tolstoy, but they usually stick with the beginning of Anna Karenina: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This is excellent when one talks about the low explanatory power of growth regressions. But economic theorists should also read War and Peace. There seems to be an analogy between some economic models (and modellers) and Pfuel’s theory of war. Check it out:

Pfuel.. had a science--the theory of oblique movements.. and all he came across in the history of more recent warfare seemed to him absurd.. so many blunders were committed … that these wars could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and therefore could not serve as material for science.

In 1806 Pfuel had been … responsible, for the plan ... that ended in Jena ... but he did not see the least proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were, in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster... Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the theory's object--its practical application. His love of theory made him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his theory.

I read the book in Italian, but it took me 5 minutes to find the quote in English. Project Gutenberg is amazing! The whole thing is here (Book nine, Chapter X).
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Joke

This is the best economist joke (it captures very well our obsession with the best way to allocate scarce resources), but is also the rudest. I heard it a long time ago form Fredy S. but I always think twice before telling this joke (and I do this for few jokes). Funny thing, I just told this joke to a bunch of people a couple of days ago, and now Chris Blattman has a post about it.
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