Economist Channel

Our new research group launched on September 8th at an event with Professor Peter John. Our new Msc in Behavioural Economics has also started in UCD. We host a weekly meeting to bring our students and researchers together with other researchers, policymakers, and industry from outside the university and we welcome expressions of interest to attend.1....

I read with interest the Unified Framework for Fixing our Broken Tax code. The bottom line is a cut in the corporate tax rate to about 20%, roughly the world average. It also proposes an end to the estate and gift tax.These are small steps in the right direction. It's not a once-in-a-generation clean-out-all-the-junk tax reform.As an economist I am...

Last July, as the last Republican Obamacare bill was imploding, Greg Mankiw wrote "Why Health Care Policy is So Hard" in the New York Times. For once, I think Greg got it wrong. Health care policy isn't hard at all, at least as a matter of economics. (Politics, and ideological politics, is another question, but not Greg's question nor mine.)There are...

Even at my point in life, the moment of publishing an academic paper is a one to celebrate, and a moment to reflect.The New-Keynesian Liquidity Trap is published in the Journal of Monetary Economics -- online, print will be in December. Elsevier (the publisher) allows free access and free pdf downloads at the above link until November 9, and encourages...

Another duet of headlines with an interesting lesson, both from the Wall Street Journal:Solar power death wishSuniva Inc., a bankrupt solar-panel maker, and German-owned SolarWorld Americas have petitioned the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to impose tariffs on foreign-made crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells. Solar cells in the...

The tax reform discussion includes the idea that by moving to a territorial system, US companies will bring lots of money stranded offshore back to the US, unleashing a wave of investment here. While I think a territorial system makes sense, as does reducing or eliminating the corporate tax, as a pure matter of economics, I don't think this repatriation...

Sometimes the blog posts write themselves from contrasting newspaper headlines.New York TimesNew Gene-Therapy Treatments Will Carry Whopping Price TagsBy GINA KOLATA September 11, 2017Emily Whitehead, the first pediatric patient to receive the gene-therapy treatment Kymriah, which put her leukemia into remission. The treatment has a $475,000 price...

The online Asset Pricing Ph.D. class is back! It died in a Coursera "upgrade," but it is now migrated over to Canvas.Click here to go to the online class. My Asset Pricing webpage has links to the class, book, and many other useful materials.It should be open and free to anyone,...

Source: climatefeedback.org"Climate Feedback" has produced a "scientific review" of my WSJ oped with David Henderson on (Oped ungated full text here, see also associated blog post.)In the blog post, I wrote,"If it is not clear enough, nothing in this piece takes a stand on climate...

A Wall Street Journal oped on tax reform. This complements an earlier oped and see the tax link at right for many others.The bottom line: I argue for a national VAT instead of (and that is crucial) individual and corporate income taxes, estate taxes, and anything else.Why? I want...