John Quiggin

I’ve been moving slowly on the book for the last few weeks, but I have taken one positive step to encourage further discussion. In response to suggestions from readers, I’ve started a wiki site imaginatively named Zombiecon where my plan is to post draft chapters. The Efficient Markets Hypothesis is already up. In part, the idea is to provide a reference to avoid some of the problems that arise from blogging a section at a time. But, if someone wants to create one or more talk pages on the site itself, that would be great. I’m not really sure joint editing in the mode of Wikipedia, but if you have suggested minor changes, go ahead and make them – I may revert or partially adopt them.

Another “Internets makes you stupid story” from the Brisbane Courier-Mail (irony detector overload alert !!).

The original source is something called the Levitt Institute and the Courier-Mail story is a pretty fair summary of the Levitt Institute report, which is here (PDF). I’ll leave the deconstruction as an exercise for readers, with a bonus mark for the question “Which basic concept of classical hypothesis testing is ignored in this study of ‘ability to detect erroneous information’”

Here’s a post with a couple of links arguing the opposite.

UpdateSucked in! It turns out the whole thing is in fact a hoax by Andrew Denton’s new show.. Sad to say, with the irony detector already blown, it’s hard to tell the difference between genuine and fake stupid.

I was at a conference on uncertainty and climate change in Berkeley last week, and gave the wrap-up panel discussion with Geoffrey Heal. We’d discussed a wide range of uncertainties and ambiguities, from future emissions scenarios to model uncertainty to perception and communication issues, and we were asked to comment on how, with so much uncertainty, economists can make useful recommendations.
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I’m starting now on what will I think be the hardest and most controversial chapter of my book – the argument that the search for a macroeconomic theory founded on (roughly) neoclassical micro, which has been the main direction of macro research for 40 years or so, was a wrong turning, forcing us to retrace our steps and look for another route. As always, comments and criticisms accepted with gratitude.

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Paul Krugman’s piece on “Why did economists get it so wrong” has attracted a vitriolic response from John Cochrane, reproduced here. Krugman’s piece was strongly worded, but the reply ups the ante, and I expect further escalation. Economics conferences in the next few years are going to be interesting events.

Given that, as Krugman himself notes, disagreements between economists were notably mild until the crisis erupted, what is going on here?

I’m visiting Berkely at present and just had a chat with Brad DeLong. These are some of the thoughts I had about the great macroeconomics wars as a result.

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A little bit I plan to include in the chapter on the Great Moderation, linking on to a critique of post-70s macroeconomics. As always, comments and criticism gratefully (and, mostly, I hope, gracefully) accepted

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Following the successful wingnut attack on Van Jones, the Washington Independent reports that Glenn Beck’s next target is Cass Sunstein, with the pretext being his discussion of organ donation in Nudge, his book with Thaler on how small framing effects can have big effects on outcomes (. I see this as a positive development in all sorts of ways.

Update Sunstein’s appointment was approved by the Senate on a near party line vote 57-40. Six Republicans (Bennett, Collins, Hatch, Lugar, Snowe,Voinovich) voted Yes. The No votes included Bernie Sanders who opposed Sunstein for much the same reasons I would and some Blue Dogs notably including Ben Nelson, who followed the Beck line (all of the Dems voted for cloture). Obama’s only real chance of achieving anything is to dump both the filibuster rule and the Blue Dogs. End update

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Thanks to the continued tyranny of distance as regards the transport of books, my copy of George Scialabba’s book, What are Intellectuals Good For arrived about the time the CT seminar on the topic went live. I had a variety of thoughts on reading the book, but in a lot of ways they reinforced the point made by the transportation delay: the public intellectual business, even now, is quite nationally specific. This is not to say that Scialabba is in any way parochial: on the contrary, his cosmopolitan outlook is a striking contrast with the insularism that characterises many metropolitan intellectuals, not to mention their eponymically provincial counterparts.

Still, reading his discussion of the New York intellectual scene is rather reminiscent of looking at a map of the NYC subway system. It’s fascinating, I’ve visited some of the stops and heard a lot about others, and there are some big achievements to admire, but as regards getting around Brisbane, it doesn’t have a lot of immediate use to me.

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In any book on policy thinking, the easy bit (not all that easy!) is to write about what’s wrong with existing ideas, in my case the zombie ideas I’m writing about. The chapter plan for my book includes, in each chapter, a section on “What next”. As regards the Great Moderation, which was essentially an interpretative claim about the data, it’s not really clear what to include. I’m leaving the details of macroeconomic thinking and policy for another chapter and writing about how society should handle risk. Comments and criticism appreciated as always.

I’m in the process of setting up a site at wikidot.com where the whole draft will be presented in wiki format. But I’ve been travelling and haven’t managed to get it going yet.
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Quite a while ago, I raised a question about the practical implications of the “rapture” doctrine, held by large numbers of evangelicals.

Do they install automatic watering systems for their gardens and arrange for unsaved neighbours to feed the cat? Or do they just pay into their IRAs as if they expect the world to last forever?

Now it appears, some enterprising atheists have set up a service addressing one of the problems I raised. In the event of rapture, they guarantee that , assured of being left behind, they will look after the pets of those who are taken up. (video here)

As I mentioned, I’m at a conference on Logic, Game Theory and Social Choice. Attending a session on experiments in voting theory (some very interesting ones for which I will try to find links) I started thinking about a case for Instant Runoff/Single Transferable/Preferential systems (like many Australians I’m a big fan of this system which works well for us, with none of the disasters we’ve seen produced in the US and UK by plurality voting). For those interested, an outline of an idea is over the fold. It’s not my field, so I’m quite prepared to be told my argument is wrong, well-known or both.

Note 29/8 I initially put up this post with another, related, claim, convinced myself that this claim was wrong, and deleted it, leaving the post as a placeholder until I could do something better. The first few comments refer to this.

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I’ve been in Japan for the last few days, at a conference on Logic, Game Theory and Social Choice where, among other things, we’ve had some interesting discussions on electoral mechanisms. Meanwhile, Japan appears to be on the verge of tipping out the almost-permanent LDP government.

But, as a (non-Japanese speaking) visitor, I can hardly tell there was an election on. I’ve seen no rallies or badges, only a handful of posters and one loudspeaker truck, with a decidedly non-strident woman’s voice issuing what may have been a political message. The English language media I have access to (Asahi Shimbun and so on) has been giving the election about the level of coverage I’d expect for a boring state election at home. I’ll give some very ill-informed thoughts over the fold, but can readers say anything from their own knowledge, or point to useful sources?

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Another section of the Great Moderation chapter from my book. I’m getting a lot of value from the comments, both favorable and critical, so please keep them coming.

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Another longish extract from my book project. Corrections and suggestions of all kinds are welcome. I’m also thinking it might be good to have a website where it’s possible to look at, and comment on, all the draft chapters, but I suspect people prefer the atmosphere of a comments thread. Any thoughts on this?

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