Baselines

We all know that in the debt limit agreement, there was a provision calling for the creation of a “supercommittee” that must come up with something like $1.2 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving to present to congress for an up or down vote. One thing we don’t all know, but that I was made aware of through a recent podcast from the Brookings Institution, is that the agreement leaves the issue of what baseline to use completely up to the committee. By baseline, I mean the original, pre-cut amount of spending to which the committee will compare the new, post-cut amount of spending to determine how much was “cut.” While this may seem to not be a very big deal, it’s important to note that there are a wide variety of “baselines” out there. Some include the extension of the Bush tax cuts, some include the elimination of Iraq war spending, some include all kinds of crazy stuff. it just depends what kind of assumptions you want to make about what politicians will do over the next 10 years.

The important question is how much these baselines vary. The answer to this question is somewhere around $4.5 trillion dollars. So, if the committee is supposed to cut $1.2 trillion, and going from one baseline to another can save $4.5 trillion, it sounds to me like the committee’s job is already done.

And, yes, this first post in months does mean that I’m back to blogging…hopefully.

The $23 Million Book

I thought this was pretty funny. Enjoy.

The Possibilian

This is a great story in the New Yorker about a Neuroscientist who studies our perception of time. Enjoy.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/25/110425fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=1

East of Eden

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Best book I’ve ever read. Seriously. I wish it went on forever.

View all my reviews

Angles

 

I’ve loved The Strokes since they, along with the other “The” bands (White Stripes, Vines, Hives, etc.), made music enjoyable to listen to again in the early 2000′s. After lots of side projects (Albert Hammond Jr.’s “Como Te Llama?”, Little Joy’s self titled album, Julian Casablancas’ “Phrazes for the Young”) and way too much time off, they released their newest album today: Angles.

Listen to it here.

Just how dangerous is nuclear power?

I thought this graphic representation of the dangers of different energy sources was pretty informative. I’ve always been a fan of nuclear power. I hope (completely in vain) that the current events in Japan don’t reignite irrational fears of nuclear plants.

Ride – Tuesday, March 15, 2011

So, one of the purposes of this blog is for me to track my cycling. Here’s my first ride:

Chestnut Hill to Concord
Find more Cycling Routes / Bike Rides in Boston, MA

March Madness – Econ PhD Style

So a friend of mine set up a group on Yahoo for March Madness this year, and instead of just putting up prizes for the most accurate bracket, he also decided to put up prizes for the worst bracket. Since I didn’t really follow college basketball at all this year, I decided to make a bracket using the only information about schools an economics PhD is permitted to know. I made a bracket where in every matchup, I predict that the school with the best IDEAS ranking (a system that ranks research institutions by the output of the econ faculty) would win (unless neither of them were listed in which case I went with the safe choice: the lowest ranked school). I think the results were a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ll win since, apart from a few outliers like Michigan, UCLA, Wisconsin, etc., there seems to be a decent correlation between econ department quality and athletic department quality. Who knew?



BU vs. Princeton in the championship game.

Addendum: According to IDEAS, BU actually does make it to the championship game. While I am clearly biased toward BU, my bias did not affect the brackets.

Unions and Voting

Here’s an interesting and timely analysis by Nate Silver about the effect of the union vote. Enjoy.

The AER

To counter the trendiness of my first post, I now go 100% nerd by posting this article in the economist about the 20 best articles ever from the American Economic Review. I particularly like the following quote:

“The discipline is more exciting, ingenious and intrepid as a result. But it is also unruly and untidy. Some economists are still patiently adding to a cairn of knowledge. Many are throwing rocks.”

I want to be a rock thrower.