I have a full hour podcast with Austan Goolsbee, Barack Obama's economic advisor (and one of my very favoritest professors ever) up at my audio site, which has now been named Radio Free Megan. It's also been chopped up into seven minute segments for those of you with short attention spans. Gene Sperling, Clinton's economic advisor, is next on tap, and I'm stalking the Republicans.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Radio Free Megan downloads every mp3 audio file on the page - not just the links. It takes quite some time and is a lot of wasted time and bandwidth. Please change the coding to have just links and let me choose which audio files to download and/or listen to. I don't need all the 2 minute segments if I am dowloading the entire file.
I have this question for you:
Set A consists of all integers such that each element is equal to its square. How many elements are in set A-- 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4?
Radio Free Megan needs its own RSS feed.
In this audio, Megan says Senator Obama is her favorite candidate.
Is she just being positive with Austan Goolsbee or is Obama really her pick?
Megan, if you have not commented on this, please do so!
If she has, can someone point me at her statement?
I would have thought none of the Democratic candidates this round would appease Megan's libertarianism.
Freddie: The answer is 2. The integers are 0 and 1.
I'm surprised Paul_Dirac didn't offer an answer, having done all that innovative work in math and physics...
Thanks Person!
Well, Megan has said in the past that she picks candidates on the basis on economic advisers. And Obama has made some promising statements that seem to indicate some understanding of the most economically efficient way to achieve goals that I might disagree with.
I'll have to listen to see if Goolsbee can decrease some of my doubts from all the blatant protectionism we heard last night in the debate. Does he too view NAFTA as a mistake, or was his candidate just trying to appeal to the base?
I have no idea what the hell just happened there...
Thanks for putting these on one page. Now to be greedy - how about an Itunes subscription link?
I don't know how it's done, but if Russ Roberts can do it, I'm sure the Atlantic can figure it out.
Apparently, it needs to be more regular than "whenever I can find a guest" to be put on itunes, but if it takes, off, I'll try.
I'm not sure if it's me, or if there's a problem with the file, but when I right-click on the link to download it, it doesn't work. I've tried both IE and Firefox. Any suggestions?
I'll be your guest. I mean, I may not have the prestige of Mr. bottled-water health-clubs paved-roads Goolsbee, but I did make perfect scores on the analytical and quantitative portions of the GRE, and have torn apart several seemingly strong arguments in your blog comments section.
Plus, I'm handsome.
The link for the "full interview" with Goolsbee is giving a "not found" error.
Goolsbee did not sound too convincing on the issue of health care innovation.
But at least he recognized it as a concern and tried to formulate a coherent response. Many in the Clinton and Edwards camp would have refused to acknowledge the problem.
From my experience at working at hospital, I was shocked by both how high labor cost were (from the maintenance workers on up), and by how inflexible wages were (due to unions mostly). In my opinion, the only way to lower cost without impairing innovation would be to create more flexible labor markets.
It's hard to imagine Obama criticizing the AMA and nurses unions.
Amazingly, Megan McArdle still insists on two propositions:
1) Markets are always efficient.
2) There was a bubble in the stock market in the late 90's and in the housing market in recent years.
I've studied a lot of economics, but I'm always eager to learn more. If someone could teach me how propositions one and two are not contradictory, I'd be most grateful.
RWE,
Markets ARE always efficient - it's when the government gets their hands on everything (through price-fixing and printing excess money) that we see significant irregularities in the market. An occasional recessions is normal in a free market. Stocks can become overvalued and will eventually be corrected by the free market, but when the government is fiddling with the playing field the market is slower to adjust - that's what you are seeing in the bubble collapses; bad decisions were made due to government-created, artificially low interest rates.
It's a little unsettling that Goolsbee was reluctant to admit that universal health care would damage innovation. His argument sounded perilously close to free lunch economics.
I certainly prefer him to Krugman, though. I haven't read any of his academic work, but I hear he's a very talented economist.
rwe: it's not so much that markets are always efficient its that you'll never work out whether they are efficient or not ex ante, so you act like they are efficient because you can't do better. At least I suspect that's Megan position.
Oh, and I also cannot download the interview.
Goolsbee didn't strike me as the sharpest tool in the box.
rwe,
Here is what Eugene Fama said on bubbles and market efficiency:
"Well, economists are arrogant people. And because they can’t explain something, it becomes irrational. The way I look at it, there were two crashes in the last century. One turned out to be too small. The ’29 crash was too small; the market went down subsequently. The ’87 crash turned out to be too big; the market went up afterwards. So you have two cases: One was an underreaction; the other was an overreaction. That’s exactly what you’d expect if the market’s efficient." link
Basically so long as bubbles even out over time, then markets are still efficient. Or so Fama's says.
The proper link for the full interview is,
http://www.theatlantic.com/audio/200801/goolsbee-full.mp3
The embeded player links to it but the download link leaves out the "-full" part.
Megan,
Why so timid?? I thought you gave quite a few passes to your former professor. I would have expected you to follow up on some his comments with some simple requests to elaborate on some his points.
Regulations? what kind? how? etc.
Heath Care...some thing.
Perhaps I'm biased...no, I KNOW I'm biased....but regardless of my leanings I'm always willing to hear sound explanations for assertions I don't initially agree with. And when economists say things that go against basic economics or classical or neo-classical or even Austrian economics, it's that I immediately think they're wrong but rather that I immediately want to know what they are basing such assertions on.
I expect more from economists. Anyone can editorialize. I think Megan dropped the ball a bit and was to lenient.
Next time, don't be afraid to ask an economist (of all people!!) to elaborate on an economic assertion and substantiate it.
Thanks for doing the interview, which has inspired us at Economists for Obama to plan our own interview of Goolsbee. See our blog here:
http://econ4obama.blogspot.com
The complete mp3 doesn't work. The shorter files do work, but sections 6 and 7 are identical (it sounds like the correct version of 6 is missing.)
Megan,
I just listened to your Goolsbee podcast - It's easy to see why he was one of your favorite profs.
I represent a datapoint that you may find helpful: I came across your site by way of bloggingheads.tv, specifically, your conversation with Spencer Ackerman. You managed to plug the Goolsbee podcast three times (your marketing prof would be proud), and I bit. It's a great conversation, and I have since become hooked by other content on your site.
The lesson: shameless self-promotion pays off.
Well done.