Water, Google, Christianity, and Energy

A new chip can cleanse water to be suitable for drinking. The eight inches of these (postage stamp sized) chips can produce four gallons of water per hour, while using as much electricity as a light bulb. If these things become mass produced and affordable, that'll rock the developing world! What a news report to hear in the same week as World Water Day.

Google pessimists ask what the point was, while tech-savvy Googlers are unaffected. Can Google incite larger change?

These maps of Christianity make me think about how religious views intersect with political views.

How will traveling wave reactors affect the energy scene? On a side note, TED is pretty neat.

Tires, Nobel Prize, macro debates, and solar cells.

Garth Brazelton defends the tire tax as a Pigouvian tax. I'd be interested to see if there was any data to show that Chinese tires are significantly less safe than American tires. Since they both presumably have to meet some sort of standard, should we just make tougher standards? If Chinese tires are less safe than American tires, would the tax not apply to safe Chinese tires, or would the tax be repealed when Chinese tire makers improved their tires?

Tyler Cowen starts thinking about the Nobel Prize for Economics. I'm eager to see everyone's thoughts.

Krugman talks about freshwater economists while David Warsh says there isn't as much vitriol as we might think. Warsh links us to an interesting paper that thinks about 1978 macro (link to Thoma).

Solar energy is apparently getting off to a slow start. Overinvestment due to a subsidy combined with a recession led to dropping prices, whic wasn't good for the industry. Does that mean we'll see solar energy picking up again as the world recovers? I've been seeing more articles about solar-powered things anyways, so maybe China is picking up a large degree of the slack from Spain.

Solar power, education, inflation, and majors

China is really pushing the production of solar panels. Siemens has also invested a lot of money into solar power recently. I've heard people say that oil prices will only go up in the long term, but I wonder if energy prices will actually go down.

Some people talk about why the price of upper education has risen.

As the economy bottoms out, we look more towards inflation. With slow growth, I don't expect inflation to get out of control, though even if that were the case it seems to be a necessary condition for growth in this recovery period.

College students fret about their majors. I thought this has always been a problem for them, especially for liberal arts people.

The rich, Bernanke, unemployment, and cell phones

Over the past two years, the rich have not gotten richer, ending a 30-year rise.

Bernanke is apparently optimistic on near-term growth. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, I think. There's a lot of reason to be optimistic, it seems.

Unemployment rose in 26 states.

Another development article: the solar-powered cell phone. I always thought heat was detrimental to the lifespan of electronics--though, I guess a solar-powered cell phone makes more sense than a wind powered or hydroelectric cell phone. Still, there are small solar cells you can buy to charge small electronics. Why not just replace the car charger (or whatever) with a solar charger?

Oil and gas prices, health care, university productivity, and Houston power rates

James Hamilton takes a look at oil and natural gas prices. Something has got to give.

PBS has a Frontline report comparing the health programs in five capitalist democracies around the world. Paul Krugman explains why health care can't be solved by the free market. Seems to me that health insurance suffers the tragedy of the commons.

Catherine Rampell at Economix reports on a measure of productivity of universities.

Houstonians: TXU is lowering their rates. They may still not be the lowest for you, but keep an eye out! How's that for price fluctuation?

History, open data, auto industry, financial planning, bachelor's degrees, and gas prices

A new blog on economic history.

Hey, world bankers like open data too! Those are great guys.

Speaking of which, Hal Varian used Google Trends to make better forecasts.

James Hamilton is still on the case, reporting about the declining auto industry.

ESPlanner, a long term financial planning website, though the site isn't always working.

Some community colleges offer bachelor's degrees. I like that degrees are becoming less expensive, but they shouldn't be easier to get. This is the classic Spence problem.

Mark Perry gives us a look at real gas prices. It looks like a falling trend since 1919, with some big spikes thrown in. And, note that the spikes take us to about back to the 1919 level anyways.

Excess demand for money, manufacturing news, grid parity, and Austrian BC theory

Nick Rowe on the importance of excess demand for money. This directly relates to what the Fed has been doing for quite some time to help the current crisis. Nick has had a lot of really good posts lately, it seems to me.

Mark Perry had optimistic news on the manufacturing front. It seems like these numbers will return to normal pretty soon, which makes me think that more focus will turn towards worsening labor numbers. Though, we're only six months or so away from the peak. Six months seems like a relatively short amount of time considering how long this had dragged out already.

John Quiggin reports that some solar power companies may be approaching grid parity, or the point where solar power is as cheap as conventional power.

Another good post from John Quiggin, he talks a little about the history of the Austrian Business Cycle, and why it isn't really taken seriously anymore by more empirical-minded economists.

Fuel efficiency, forecasts, gendered lob losses, April economic summary, and GDP growth rates

Fuel efficiency raises demand, not lower it. Efficiency lowers cost, which raises demand in the long run. I keep thinking that the short run effect should be modeled as a rise in supply, but the narrative doesn't quite fit.

Simeon Djankov says not to pay attention to the forecasts. They lag behind the news, and are thusly not worth much.

Job losses for different genders. Men have lost many more jobs than women, net. Women seem to have more recessioon-proof jobs.

April economic summary in graphs. It seems to me that most of them tell a similar story.

GDP growth rates for beginners. This is really a well-written and easy to understand post, I think.

Chile, debates, housing, oil and recessions, and cognitive skills

Rodrik talks about the Chilean Minister of Finance. He saved during the boom, although it was unpopular, and is now spending the massive savings. Why don't more countries do this?

Alex Tabarrok talks about the debates at Intelligence Squared. I like the concept of the website, though. Get experts to debate issues and provide podcasts. People vote on winners.

Jon Lansner talks about housing, via CR. Prices should bottom out late next year.

James Hamilton points out the connection between oil price spikes and recessions. That's really interesting research.

Some research shows that people with higher cognitive skills perform better economically. Moreover, to the extent that this is a genetic trait, evolution may play a factor in separating people with of cognitive skill levels.

Life expectancy, displaced auto workers, solar energy, and the Clark Medal

Having friends increases your life expectancy. I guess it's not much of a surprise, considering stress decreases your life expectancy. Parents don't have an effect. Sorry, mom.

Auto and manufacturing workers can get an accelerated bachelor's degree. This sort of thing should be much more common. Haven't we had a shortage of teachers, too? There are lots of places for these workers to go.

Texas State Senators have approved a $500 million solar energy bill. I'm glad to hear we're not just focusing on wind.

The John Bates Clark Medal gets awarded this Friday. Exciting!

Local stuff, business models, infrastructure

Unsurprisingly, the economy is the top concern for Houstonians. The Harris County Sheriff wants federal stimulus money for a helicopter, a surveillance van, eight machine guns for their boats, and some other stuff. Is that really necessary? Not only do machine guns not provide jobs, but who exactly are they going to shoot? Is that really in their jurisdiction? Will that keep Harris County safe? Galveston is considering bringing in gambling. I wonder what studies there are to show the negative effects of casinos for a neighborhood or area. I suppose Nevada does casinos pretty well. Houston's job losses increased, though unemployment held constant. Dr. Barton Smith gives some commentary, though to clarify one point--he projects Houston will lose 56,000 more jobs over the next two years. That doesn't sound too bad. Houston home sales and prices continue to drop. Some people in Houston want some infrastructe expenditure to upgrade the power grid. I hope this gets off the ground.

I think this is a good example to use when I describe firms in the same industry with different business models. I often lack knowledge of real life examples of this. Pepsi is buying up their bottlers, while Coke chooses not to.

There was a lot of talk, recently, about Obama's high-speed rail plans. I've gotta say, I like the infrastructure spending, but I didn't really expect this in Obama's first 100 days. I expected a more along the lines of smart grids and high-speed internet access. I'm not sure how essential high-speed trains are, but I admit having realistic rail options would be nice. And, hey, maybe they'll have wireless internet access on them, too. If I could jump on a train and go from Houston to Chicago or New York in 4-6 hours, that'd be nice. I don't think that's very realistic, though. I wonder how much tickets would be.

Consumer spending, demand, and markups

Carter Dougherty at Economix mentions that we've been seeing a decline in consumer spending during this recession--an historical oddity. I read once that consumer spending doesn't change much because most of what we buy, we have to buy. We don't buy a washing machine or a sandwich because we merely want these goods, we buy them because we need clean clothes or are hungry. So much for that idea! As credit increases what we are able to buy, we buy proportionally fewer necessities. When credit dries up, we have fewer means with which to buy stuff. Credit causes consumption to be more volative.

Andrew Cassel reports that the cause of the 2008 oil spike may have been demand expectations in developing countries. Developing countries were growing much faster than expected, which caused future demand expectations to become very high.

Mark Perry reports on the markup on iPod devices. iSuppli is a firm that takes apart devices and estimates how much the components would cost, to try to estimate the cost of making such a device.

Tax on soda, fat, PUMA, broadband, solar power, and recession news.

A study shows that a tax on "sugary soft drinks" will result in health benefits regardless of how the tax revenue is used. $1.2 billion could be raised in tax revenue in New York alone, but I wonder how it'd impact the economy as a whole--I imagine the soft drink industry and the medical care industry would each take a hit.

A reduction of "brown fat" could make you more resistant to gaining weight and developing diabetes. Apparently, brown fat is what works to keep you warm when it's cold out.

The PUMA, a two-seater Segway, makes short commutes to work more feasible. During the modernization of Europe, people lived in smaller-sized communities as technology increased. I wonder if that'll happen again. Towers keep getting bigger and bigger, and land becomes more and more precious. In a similar vein, the FCC's $7.2 billion plan to expand broadband can serve to pick up the speed of commerce, and expand markets.

Here's a solar-powered city planned for Florida.

Jobless claims fell more than expected, and many retailers report disappointing sales numbers. Things aren't looking good yet.

Health care, alternative energy, housing in Houston, and police

Companies are working harder than ever to ensure the health of their employees, it seems like.

Algae as an alternative energy. They apparently have a very low carbon footprint, and can be grown just about anywhere. Seems pretty good to me, and likely good for the city of Houston. Houston seems to have a number of routes to keep their title as the energy capital.

The price of homes per square foot went down 2% last year, in Houston in 2008. No surprise, really.

Another bit of Houston news: policemen get pulled off the streets to work on a backlog of work in internal affairs. Some worry that public safety will be affected. I'm not so sure that public safety will be drastically affected by a temporary shock. I'm assuming, of course, that once they're caught up with their work, the policemen should be able to go back to their normal duties.