Google, unemployment, sports, and loans

More data on Google! This from the World Bank.

Here's a chart showing the duration of unemployment, for the unemployed.

Some Houston sports hotshots (not those) talk about how their sports businesses are going.

Angry Bear has an interesting graph of the number of loans given by banks. I'd like to see the graph go back a few (maybe seven) more years.

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.

Historical GDP Growth v Top Marginal Tax Rates

How about this chart?

Should we raise the top marginal tax rate?

Is there a positive correlation between the top marginal tax rate and GDP growth? Cursory analysis says yes.

Also note that for over 60 non-consecutive years (70 years with an 8 year gap in the middle), the top marginal tax rate was over 50%.

A model, Africa, well-being, and teaching hours

Let's take a brief break from unemployment news! That stuff is depressing.

How about that supermodel who vowed to stay naked until USAID gets to starving children? I'm not sure what kind of incentive she's going for.

More on development--Africa isn't looking so bad, historically speaking. It's made large gains, though there's a lot more that needs to be made. While this is true and all, I think the reason this sort of thing doesn't get spread very much is for the fear that people will miss the point. Though aid might be working, Africa still needs a lot of help.

Via Thoma, Stiglitz tells us we need a better measure of well-being. Unfortunately, he doesn't provide much insight into the discussion. How about median debt as a percentage of income? Or average savings rate? Any ideas, Joe, are you just going to complain?

A chart of hours taught by teachers around the world. Our teachers are apparently putting in a lot of work!

Healthcare, good income news, good recession news, and blips.

Chris Dillow looks at the relationship between health care spending as a percentage of GDP and life expectancy. It's not the whole story, of course, but it does start an interesting discussion.

Real average hourly earnings is up a lot. Presumably, firms are holding on to qualified workers. We'll see how this measure holds out against the unemployment rate.

The chances of positive GDP growth are up! According to a Philly Fed survey. It's been a long recession.

Capacity utilization has a small up-blip, and industrial production is up. This, honestly, doesn't tell us much. If it continues up, that's a good sign, but this increase is probably too small to indicate anything.