Carnival of Economic Podcasts

More Or Less;
The numbers behind the news with presenter Tim Harford. This week: the figures behind fertility, statistical significance and what is a recession?

Phelps Says Unemployment Has `Exploded Like a Virus'

Levitt Says Davos Exhibits `Extravagence' of Power, Excess

Case Says Housing to Hit Bottom This Year as Building Stalls
Karl Case, an economics professor at Wellesley College and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, talks with Bloomberg's Pimm Fox and Ken Prewitt about U.S. housing.

LSE's Davies Sees More Turmoil in U.S. Insurance Market

Taleb Says Banking Is Organized to `Milk' Investors

Stephen Roach Says Mood at Davos Is `Very Pessimistic'

Yale's Levin Says Economic Stimulus May Not Be Enough

Hausmann Predicts More Fiscal Regulation in 2009

Geiger Says Lawsuit Could Expose Madoff's Swiss Assets

Big Powers/Small Conflicts - The U.S. in the Sri Lanka Peace Process

Reflections on the World Economy - Paul Volcker

Origins of and Responses to the Ongoing Financial Market Crisis

Crisis and Capitalism: Does History Suggest Where We`re Headed?
Michael Bordo, Prof. of Economics, Rutgers University; Jerry Muller, Professor of History, Catholic University of America; Robert J. Shiller, Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, Yale University; Richard Sylla, Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets, New York University .

China quote of the day

It would be a historic irony if the Chinese Communist party was thrown into crisis, not by the collapse of communism in 1989 – but by the convulsions of capitalism in 2009.

-China’s economy hits the wall

Photo of the Day

After 30 Years, Economic Perils on China’s Path

Exam question of the Day

Peter Boettke writes;

Joseph Schumpeter claimed that capitalism would give way to socialism largely for ideological reasons. This does not seem to have happened, at least directly. But might it be happening indirectly? Consider, for instance, a significant change that has occurred in the economic organization of debtor-creditor contracts. Not too long ago, lenders held their loans in their portfolios. They would lose if the borrower defaulted, which gave the lender a strong incentive to monitor the borrower, particularly for large loans. Now, lenders split their loans into numerous small pieces and disperse them throughout the economy. (For instance, many people who hold mutual funds and retirement accounts will find that they are holding small pieces of large loans made by commercial banks.) The burden of non-performing loans is thus dispersed throughout the economy rather than residing with the original lender. Does this development weaken the incentive offenders to monitor borrowers and thereby weaken overall economic performance? That is, can market transactions generate institutional arrangements that impair the market economy? However you address this topic, do so clearly and cogently.

Related;
A Remarkable Question
Information Transformation
Capitalist Fools

The Hayek Fallacy

Quote the Day

Wil Wilkinson writes;

Larissa MacFarquhar appears to have limited critical capacity when it comes to political or economic ideas, but her profile of Naomi Klein is nevertheless insightful. Klein comes off as an incoherent bundle of reflexes. She has passions, prejudices, animosities, an appealing streak of punk nihilism, a cynical and savvy strategic sense, and no ideas. Klein and her husband, Avi Lewis, come off as so saturated in familial left-wing politics that their ideology, such as it is, seems less a set of propositions that might be true or false than an ethnic identity or tribal commitment that can neither be chosen nor forsaken. Bred-in-the-bone cultural assumptions rarely cohere when articulated; their logic is emotional. Which explains how Klein can bounce so blithely and unintelligibly from a milquetoast Canadian faith in government to a petulant, anarchic distrust of large institutions.

The Free Market and Morality

Tyler Cowen on Big Think