Interesting Links

1. Arnold Kling has thoughts about the race between a broken health care system and improving technology.

2. Kevin Drum has ten things gnawing at him when he hears people speaking optimistically about the current economy. (HT: MR)

3. Eric Falkenstein reminds people what regulators were really focused on during the housing bubble. Subprime sounds so bad these days, but when most people talked about affordable housing they weren't talking about loosening zoning restrictions and selling more government land.

4. Scott Sumner looks at a successful voucher program's supposed failure.
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http://www.hoisingtonmgt.com/pdf/HIM2010Q1NP.pdf

don't know if you follow Lacy's comments but worth a read.

— MyWickedMessenger
This is a very interesting paper, thanks.

One factor that throws me off is how some arguments are obviously more rhetorical than analytical. The example that stands out is when they talk about how there is an impact from government spending on the employment ratio while ignoring the obvious cyclical effects.

Also, while the debate on multipliers isn't seen as settled as the authors would like it to be (Although from what I can tell fiscal stimulus could be viewed as a definite second best policy when compared to monetary stimulus). I am sympathetic to the "little effect and probably bad in the long run" camp, but the comments made it seem like there was no real debate and the models by the CBO imply otherwise. I do like the idea about how stimulus plans should also be analyzed using the negative tax multiplier for the costs of programs, particularly for those that won't end up going away.

— Jeff Lonsdale
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