Monthly Archives: March 2016

The Two Parties

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Arnold Kling

Tyler Cowen writes, both the Democrats and the Republicans have their ready made, mostly true, and repeatedly self-confirming stories about the defects of the other. They need only read the news to feel better about themselves, and the academic contingent … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | 36 Comments

The Issue that Worries Me

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Arnold Kling

Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale write, Although current deficits are reasonably low, the medium and long-term fiscal outlooks have deteriorated in the past year, due largely to legislative actions (and their implications for future policy) and changes in … Continue reading →

Posted in government debt crisis | 29 Comments

Really Bad Sentences

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Arnold Kling

Ilya Somin’s Democracy and Political Ignorance suffers from the fallacy of composition: It uses individual-level evidence about political behavior to draw inferences about the preferences and actions of the public as a whole. But collective public opinion is more stable, … Continue reading →

Posted in books and book reviews, Politics | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

RCT’s as Slow Learning

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Arnold Kling

Ricardo Hausmann writes, Consider the following thought experiment: We include some mechanism in the tablet to inform the teacher in real time about how well his or her pupils are absorbing the material being taught. We free all teachers to … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics of Education, Economics of Health Care, Mark Thoma is Indispensable | 7 Comments

Praise for the Council of Economic Advisers

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Arnold Kling

1. Timothy Taylor writes, When you read a CEA report, there is always a certain admixture of politics, and at some points over the roughly 40 years I’ve been reading these resorts, the partisanship has been severe enough to make … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Timothy Taylor is my Favorite Blogger | 1 Comment