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Latest blog posts from Marginal Revolution

Facts about occupational licensing
We find that in 2006, 29 percent of the workforce was required to hold an occupational license from a government agency, which is a higher percentage than that found in studies that rely on state-level occupational licensing data.That is from a new paper by Morris Kleiner and Alan Krueger.  I am... Read more...
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What are economics blogs good for?
But the Harvard economist [Dani Rodrik] finds the blog �" short for Web log �" useful because it serves as a reference catalog for his ideas. “I now constantly Google my own blog for ideas that I knew I had at some point,” he says. “Previously, the ideas would have come and gone. The... Read more...
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Assorted links
1. The puzzle of the missing heroin 2. Falling real estate prices in China 3. Nouriel Roubini's apartment 4. Google Trends: FDIC 5. Christopher Buckley gets fatwahed Read more...
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Power vs. knowledge
Arnold Kling weighs in:We got into this crisis because power was overly concentrated relative to knowledge. What has been going on for the past several months is more consolidation of power. This is bound to make things worse. Just as Nixon's bureaucrats did not have the knowledge to go along... Read more...
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The prospects for credit market revitalization
Today you get more Felix Salmon, who nails it:America's banks -- and the world's, for that matter -- have had de facto unlimited access to very cheap Fed liquidity for many months now. That hasn't induced them to lend. Will this latest recapitalization do the trick? I'm far from convinced. And... Read more...
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These days there are so many sentences to ponder
If you're running an insolvent bank, and you get a slug of equity from Treasury, your shareholders will thank you if you use that equity to take some very large risks. If they pay off and you make lots of money, then their shares are really worth something; if they fail and you lose even more... Read more...
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Indian phone call of the day
For the past three years, [Bhumika] Chaturvedi has been a top collection agent at her call center, phoning hundreds of Americans a day and politely asking them to pay up. As the U.S. financial crisis plunges Americans into debt, her business is one of the fastest-growing sectors in Indian... Read more...
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The Singularity is Near
Telepathy has always been a sign of kookiness but synthetic telepathy heh that's just around the corner.The U.S. Army is developing a technology known as synthetic telepathy that would allow someone to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. The concept is based on reading... Read more...
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The new Obama economic plans
The main new proposals would: �" for the next two years, give businesses a $3,000 income-tax credit for each new full-time employee they hire above the number in their current workforce; �" allow savers with tax-favored Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k)’s to withdraw 15 percent of... Read more...
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Iceland fact of the day
Commerzbank AG, Germany's second-biggest bank, said yesterday there is ``no active market'' in the krona. The last quoted price was 340 per euro, compared with 122 a month ago. Here is the link.  I'm starting to wonder if I should visit for a weekend; it's one of my favorite countries.  Will... Read more...
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Ireland forces Europe, Europe forces the United States
Is this a race to the top or a race to the bottom?“The Europeans not only provided a blueprint, but forced our hand,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard and an adviser to John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee. “We’re trying to prevent wholesale carnage... Read more...
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"The Icelandic Stock Exchange fell by 76% in early trading as it re-opened after closing for two days last week."
Elsewhere markets are generally up. Read more...
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