Udayan Roy: February 2017

Akshardham Temple by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal revolution (blog), February 28, 2017
Inequality and economics: Tony Atkinson’s enduring lessons By Andrea Brandolini, VoxEU, 27 February 2017
The Immigration Debate We Need By GEORGE BORJAS, The New York Times, FEB. 27, 2017
KENNETH ARROW PART II: THE THEORY OF GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM By Kevin Bryan, A Fine Theorem (blog), February 27, 2017
Dealing with Sovereign Debt—The IMF Perspective By Sean Hagan, Maurice Obstfeld, and Poul M. Thomsen, IMFdirect (blog), February 23, 2017
The IMF’s Work on Inequality: Bridging Research and Reality By Prakash Loungani and Jonathan D. Ostry, IMFdirect (blog), February 22, 2017
Kenneth Arrow, Nobel-Winning Economist Whose Influence Spanned Decades, Dies at 95 By MICHAEL M. WEINSTEIN, The New York Times, FEB. 21, 2017
MISSING MARKETS By Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling (blog), February 22, 2017
THE GREATEST LIVING ECONOMIST HAS PASSED AWAY: NOTES ON KENNETH ARROW PART I By Kevin Bryan, A Fine Theorem (blog), February 22, 2017
HOWARD SCHAFFER REMEMBERS JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH By Howard B. Schaffer, South Asia Hand, February 16, 2017
Greeks Turn to the Black Market as Another Bailout Showdown Looms By LIZ ALDERMAN, The New York Times, FEB. 18, 2017
The Economy Is Free in Hong Kong. Running a Food Truck Isn’t (See Annex C). By MICHAEL FORSYTHE, The New York Times, FEB. 18, 2017

Hong Kong has an exalted place as an exemplar of a free-market economy in the minds of libertarians. This entertaining report shows that behind the scenes there is a great deal of "socialist" micro-planning going on.

A Push for Diesel Leaves London Gasping Amid Record Pollution By KIMIKO de FREYTAS-TAMURA, The New York Times, FEB. 17, 2017
Market Failure Looks Like the Culprit in Rising Costs By Noah Smith, BloombergView, February 16, 2017
Monopolies Are Worse Than We Thought By Noah Smith, BloombergView, February 15, 2017
Make Big Banks Put 20% Down—Just Like Home Buyers Do By NEEL KASHKARI, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 14, 2017
Low real interest rates: depression economics, not secular trends By Gene Kindberg-Hanlon, Bank Underground (blog), February 16, 2017
Can Immigration Hurt the Economy? An Old Prejudice Returns By Eduardo Porter, The New York Times, FEB. 14, 2017
Barriers to the spread of prosperity By Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg, VoxEU,
10 February 2017
Feeling ‘Pressure All the Time’ on Europe’s Treadmill of Temporary Work By LIZ ALDERMAN, The New York Times, FEB. 9, 2017

Very good illustration of the consequences of Europe's job protection regulations. "Under European labor laws, permanent workers are usually more difficult to lay off and require more costly benefit packages, making temporary contracts appealing for all manner of industries, from low-wage warehouse workers to professional white-collar jobs." These laws protect workers from mistreatment by their employers. But they also make employers reluctant to hire workers on a permanent basis. This ends up creating a class divide within the working class between a pampered class of permanent workers and a harried class of temporary workers. This inequity is quantitatively significant: "more than half of all new jobs created in the European Union since 2010 have been through temporary contracts".

A Tax Overhaul Would Be Great in Theory. Here’s Why It’s So Hard in Practice. By NEIL IRWIN, The New York Times, FEB. 10, 2017
Why Falling Home Prices Could Be a Good Thing By Conor Dougherty, The New York Times, FEB. 10, 2017
The Major Blind Spots in Macroeconomics By JOHN LANCHESTER, The New York Times Magazine, FEB. 7, 2017
Why the falling cost of light matters By By Tim Harford, BBC World Service, 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy, 6 February 2017
The European origins of economic development By William Easterly and Ross Levine, VoxEu, February 3, 2017
Innovation and inventors during the rise of American ingenuity By Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas, VoxEu, February 2, 2017
The persistence of technological creativity and the Great Enrichment: Reflections on the 'Rise of Europe' By Joel Mokyr, VoxEu, February 2, 2017
Environmental economic history By James Fenske and Namrata Kala, VoxEu, February 1, 2017

Udayan Roy