Notable: May 2017

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• Estimates of Fundamental Equilibrium Exchange Rates, May 2017 By William R. Cline (PIIE), Policy Brief 17-19, May 2017
• Economist Tyler Cowen says Americans have lost their drive, By Christopher Booker and Connie Kargbo, PBS NewsHour, May 27, 2017
• An investigation of the root causes of the Greek crisis By Paul-Adrien Hyppolite, VoxEU, 28 May 2017
• Economic ideas you should forget By Bruno Frey and David Iselin, VoxEU, May 27, 2017
• The Phillips Curve: A Primer By Stephen Cecchetti and Kermit Scoenholtz, Money and Banking (blog), May 29, 2017
• Air rage: why does flying make us so angry? Science says it's about class By Maia Szalavitz, The Guardian, May 25, 2017
• Behavioural economics: What we know and how it could be mainstreamed By Beryl Chang and Fabrizio Ghisellini, VoxEU, 21 May 2017 
• Behavioural economics has identified phenomena that standard models could not explain. But its critics warn that it is becoming little more than a ‘pile of quirks’. This column argues that the future development of behavioural economics should focus on a streamlining process that will clarify core issues, fill conceptual gaps, and create tractable models. Behavioural models will only become a coherent alternative to homo economicus if this process occurs.
• The Supreme Court’s big ruling on ‘patent trolls’ will rock businesses everywhere By Brian Fung, The Washington Post, May 23, 2017
• Economists See Little Magic in Tax Cuts to Promote Growth By PATRICIA COHEN and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ, The New York Times, MAY 23, 2017
• Adding a piece to the productivity puzzle: Management practices By Nicholas Bloom, Erik Brynjolfsson, Lucia Foster, Ron Jarmin, Megha Patnaik, Itay Saporta Eksten, and John Van Reenen, VoxEU, 17 May 2017 
• Management practices are just as important for productivity as a number of other factors associated with successful businesses, such as technology adoption.
• A Smarter Way to Clean Your Home By Jolie Kerr, The New York Times, May 19, 2017
• Medicaid Works, in 5 Charts By Hannah Katch, Off the Charts (blog), Cebter for Budget and Policy Priorities, May 12, 2017
• THE PAINFUL TRUTH ABOUT TEETH By Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, The Washington Post, May 13, 2017
• Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order By JANE PERLEZ and YUFAN HUANG, The New York Times, MAY 13, 2017
• How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality By Matthew Desmond, The New York Times Magazine, May 9, 2017 [An enormous entitlement in the tax code props
  up home prices — and overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy and the upper middle class.]
• Outclassed: how your neighbor’s income might affect your happiness By Alissa Quart, The Guardian, May 11, 2017
• Ivory Tower Wonks Help Traders Make a Quick Buck By Noah Smith, BloombergView, May 11, 2017 [Profit opportunities exist until researchers publish findings on market inefficiencies. Then they disappear.]
• Making everyone count: A clock to track world poverty in real time By Homi Kharas and Wolfgang Fengler, Future Development (blog), Brookings, Wednesday, May 10, 2017
• Where will your degree take you? Career paths after college By Anna Rotrosen, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Ryan Nunn, and Greg Nantz, Up Front (blog), Brookings, Thursday, May 11, 2017
• Study of the Week: Rebutting Academically Adrift with Its Own Mechanism By Fredrik deBoer, the ANOVA (blog), May 11, 2017
• Countries with Higher Tariffs Have Larger Trade Deficits By Caroline Freund (PIIE) and Melina Kolb (PIIE), PIIE Charts, May 8, 2017
• Special Report: Ten Years On By Patrick Lane, The Economist, May 6, 2017
• A decade after the crisis, how are the world’s banks doing? [Though the effects of the financial crisis in 2007-08 are still reverberating, banks are learning to live with their new environment. But are they really safer now?]
• How the 2007-08 crisis unfolded [A brief history.]
• American banks have recovered well; many European ones much less so [Most European banks were slow off the mark after the crisis]
• American banks think they are over-regulated [Time to loosen the reins, say America’s banks. Not so fast, say regulators]
• Basel 3, an international capital-adequacy standard, is unloved but much needed [International bank regulation is grinding towards completion—or possibly to a halt]
• Financial technology is proving less of a battleground than feared [The relationship between banks and technology companies is becoming increasingly collaborative]
• Banks are finding it harder to attract young recruits [Millennials are getting pickier]
• Another crisis one day cannot be ruled out [But recent changes have have it less likely]
• The fading American Dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940 By Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, Jimmy Narang, VoxEU, May 5, 2017
• Straw men in the debate on basic income versus targeting By Martin Ravallion, VoxEU, May 5, 2017 [A universal basic income as a poverty-reduction policy is often contrasted unfavourably with targeted transfers. This column argues that five of the common arguments employed against basic income are really straw men that overstate the relative effectiveness of targeted transfers. While a universal basic income is not yet feasible in many countries, more universality and less fine targeting would create better social policies.]
• WILLIAM BAUMOL: TRULY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP By Kevin Bryan, A Fine Theorem (blog), May 5, 2017
• William Baumol, economist who found logic in rising health-care prices, dies at 95 By Emily Langer, The Washington Post, May 5, 2017
• William Baumol, whose famous economic theory explains the modern world, has died by Timothy B. Lee, Vox, May 4, 2017
• China Wants Fish, So Africa Goes Hungry By The Editorial Board, The New York Times, May 3, 2017
• Companies Compete but Won’t Let Their Workers Do the Same, By Orly Lobel, The New York Times, May 4, 2017