HFT, education, pedigree, and health care

An interview about high frequency trading. Recently, I've been more and more interested in similar topics.

Does education hurt your real income or help it? Data can be tricky.

Tyler Cowen thinks about pedigree bias in economics. Economics professors in top schools are very likely to have come from top schools themselves.

SCSU Scholars talks about innovation in health care. I've mentioned this before--technological advances in health care are unlike others. The equipment hasn't gotten smaller or cheaper. There seems to be different incentives at play than economists typically assume. More, given two procedures that give similar results, a doctor will often choose the more expensive procedure, since he can charge more for it. Consumers, meanwhile, don't know their options.

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If Chinese tires are less safe than American tires, would the tax not apply to safe Chinese tires, or would the tax be repealed when Chinese tire makers improved their tires?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.

Water, TARP, incentives, and Austin.

Here's an interesting article on the issue of water in Latin America.

Here's a look at TARP funds--they were actually used to make loans! Some were afraid this may not be the case for very much of the funds.

A TED talk (those things are great) by Dan Pink, former speechwriter for Al Gore. He talks about incentives, and how they can hurt. Also follow the links for similar talks by Dan Ariely.

Austin, TX looks like it's going to rebound this year, too. News for Texas looks relatively rosy.