Tag Archives: review

Think yourself lucky

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Robert Frank’s new book [amazon_link id=”0691167400″ target=”_blank” ]Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy[/amazon_link] is a nice, brief overview of why luck plays such a big role in an individual’s economic success (or otherwise).

[amazon_image id=”0691167400″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy[/amazon_image]

This very readable book canters through some of the key evidence on how economic success depends on chance, amplified by phenomena such as winner take all markets, and by policy. Mainly, though, it is another pitch for Frank’s favourite policy prescription of a progressive consumption tax, something he’s been advocating since [amazon_link id=”0691156689″ target=”_blank” ]The Darwin Economy[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”0691146934″ target=”_blank” ]Luxury Fever[/amazon_link] and possibly before. As in those books, he relies here on the argument that much consumption consists of positional spending and the ‘arms races’ need to be limited by policy intervention.

I’m not persuaded about the consumption tax idea, because when you ask policymakers to select luxury goods will probably choose something that might be a luxury now but will become a useful mass market product. Remember Norman Lamont in 1991 taxing mobile phones as yuppie status symbols – which indeed they were at the time. (“I turn now to what I regard as one of the greatest scourges of modern life. I refer to the mobile telephone. I propose to bring the benefit of car phones into income tax and to simplify the tax treatment of mobile phones by introducing a standard charge on the private use of such phones provided by an employer. Tax will be paid of £200 for each phone for 1991-92. I hope that, as a result of this measure, restaurants will be quieter and the roads will be safer.” Budget speech 19 March 1991.) One could be on safer ground with, say, gold leaf covered sports cars, but even so my preference is for progressive income and especially property taxes.

Still, the reminder about the important role of luck is welcome, although it is surely neither wholly necessary nor sufficient for economic success. The most important conclusion to my mind is the negative one that people who are poor are most likely unlucky, whether that be in terms of their parents’ income and status or the quality of their school and neighbourhood, and poverty or unemployment can’t be blamed on laziness. As Julia Unwin pointed out so eloquently in [amazon_link id=”1907994165″ target=”_blank” ]Why Fight Poverty?[/amazon_link], we often make unjustified moral judgements about poor people out of fear; we need to recognise the bad hand life has dealt them.

Coase, cars, cities

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Alerted to it by Peter Sinclair, this week I read Ezra Mishan’s 1967 (and frequently reprinted up to 1993) book [amazon_link id=”0140210903″ target=”_blank” ]The Costs of Economic Growth[/amazon_link]. It’s a short, polemical book, and the overwhelming impression you get is that the author was a grumpy chap not at all happy about modern life. Especially in cities. Too much noise, too much dirt, too many people, too much traffic, above all too much traffic. I’m not entirely sure I’d want to have been seated next to him at dinner.

[amazon_image id=”0140210903″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Costs of Economic Growth (Pelican)[/amazon_image]

Still, there’s a lot to like in the book. It has some excellent sections on the Coase theorem; on its non-applicability in many situations of environmental externalities because the transactions costs of negotiation are so large; and of the way the legal framework, in defining the status quo, shapes the outcome. If the law does not protect the interest of inhabitants in clean air, polluters will have no incentive or need to negotiate. Mishan in fact calls for general amenity rights to be enacted in law, rather radical but think how much difference it would have made to pollution and emissions since the 1960s. He also wants private vehicles banned from city and town centres, which also seems a radical but basiclly good idea; as he points out, transport analysts too often think their job is to get the traffic moving, when it ought to be to get people moving.

He also points out the importance of the initial distribution of income: “The wealthier the party, the more likely it is that his, or its, favoured outcome will be the optimal outcome.” The reason is that relative wealth will affect the parties’ judgements about what they are willing to accept/pay in a negotiation. Generally, the book is clear – as economists often are not – that an evaluation of social welfare is not possible without taking initial distribution into account. The level and distribution of income are not separable. I might need to go on to read Mishan’s [amazon_link id=”0394303962″ target=”_blank” ]Welfare Economics[/amazon_link].

A little bit of his dyspepsia is reserved for the way evaluations of policy only take account of what can be measured even if it is clear that effects that cannot be measured are nevertheless very important. He would like to “arrest the mass flight from reality into statistics,” he writes. He decries ‘growthmania’, “the fact that the fascination with index economics detracts attention from the broader aims of economic policy.” There’s certainly something in this, and indeed I increasingly think economists have to do much better at measuring the size of externalities rather than shrugging the collective shoulders. But, unlike Mishan, I’m for sustainable growth, not no growth.

Mishan died aged 96 in 2014. I’m glad to have filled a gap in my knowledge.

Managing assets well is better than managing them badly

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There is a lot I liked in Stewart Lansley’s new book, [amazon_link id=”1447331435″ target=”_blank” ]A Sharing Economy[/amazon_link] – not least that it’s one of another new series of concise, policy-relevant series, this time Policy Press Shorts. There are now several of these, a welcome publishing innovation that I like so much I’ve joined in with the Perspectives series. (Just out – our [amazon_link id=”1907994505″ target=”_blank” ]Bad Habits, Hard Choices[/amazon_link] by David Fell and [amazon_link id=”190799453X” target=”_blank” ]A Better Politics[/amazon_link] by Danny Dorling.)

[amazon_image id=”1447331435″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]A sharing economy: How social wealth funds can reduce inequality and help balance the books[/amazon_image]

[amazon_link id=”1447331435″ target=”_blank” ]A Sharing Economy[/amazon_link] is not about ‘the sharing economy’, rather confusingly, but instead is an argument for an idea I like a lot, namely ‘social wealth funds’. As the book points out, many other countries have versions of these, ranging from Norway’s fund into which past governments invested its oil revenues, to a number of Asian sovereign wealth funds, to examples in other European countries such as Austria and Finland. The OECD has established guidelines for the better management of state assets, and a recent book by Dag Detter and Stefan Folster, [amazon_link id=”1137519843″ target=”_blank” ]The Public Wealth of Nations[/amazon_link], have pointed out the huge opportunity for increasing returns by managing public assets consciously as a portfolio with appropriate governance.

[amazon_image id=”1137519843″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Public Wealth of Nations: How Management of Public Assets Can Boost or Bust Economic Growth[/amazon_image]

The idea should be a no-brainer for governments. The time horizon of politics in the UK (and some other countries) has become ever more short term, however, so any trade off between present and future has become nearly impossible. There is ideology, or perhaps cargo-cultism, in it too: is there an economist who does not think it bananas that the government is failing to borrow at such low interest rates to invest in key infrastructure? Yet the combination of a focus on total (current and capital) spending combined, plus the belief the public sector should own as little as possible as an article of faith, make it unlikely the present government will explore the idea of managing public assets efficiently with a view to longer term returns. Yet how mad is it that we have no consensus that it is better to manage public assets well than to manage them badly?

[amazon_link id=”1447331435″ target=”_blank” ]The book[/amazon_link] suggests a number of possible sources of funds for a social wealth fund, and a number of possible structures, of varying radicalism. Some versions are not radical at all; countries like Austria and Singapore are after all not hot beds of anti-capitalism. It also suggests the steps needed to move toward implementation.

An additional chapter advocates a citizen income or basic income, which fits into an overall framing of the argument for a social wealth fund as a means to address inequality. The arguments from common sense appeal more to me, as I’d rather tackle inequality more directly (eg by legislating if necessary against the corporate governance that has created boardroom excess, by suitable property taxation etc). The idea of a basic income has re-emerged with every wave of anxiety about automation destroying jobs, but there are good counter-arguments – Emran Mian of the SMF covers them here.

But the case the book makes for the nation managing its assets properly and with a view to financial and social sustainability is very welcome.

The Great Escape

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I’m very late to reading Angus Deaton’s excellent [amazon_link id=”0691165629″ target=”_blank” ]The Great Escape: health, wealth and the origins of inequality[/amazon_link]. There is lots to like about this book. It’s a clear and comprehensive summary of the state of knowledge about the history and present of two key dimensions of human well-being on earth. Even for economists who’re pretty familiar with the data and research, there are insights from the way Deaton sets out the evidence here. There were plenty of trends in the statistics I hadn’t known about before reading the book – one example is the recent increase in dangerous and deadly behaviour by young people (especially men) aged 15-34 in recent years compared with 70 years ago. (I suppose life presented enough external dangers then.)

[amazon_image id=”0691165629″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality[/amazon_image]

I particularly liked the care he lavishes on the statistics – the sources of data, the conceptual problems, the uncertainties – all done in a way the general reader can understand (although it does make for some quite dense sections). As Deaton notes, the way statistics are defined and collected determine how policy problems are defined and addressed: they “are part of the apparatus that allows what political scientist James Scott memorably called ‘[amazon_link id=”0300078153″ target=”_blank” ]seeing like a state[/amazon_link]’.

The book is also strong on the social and political context for the spread of ideas that improve health and wealth. As Deaton writes, “Diffusion of ideas and their practical implementation take time because they often require people to change the way they live.” In particular collective actions – affecting public health or education – are inherently political.

And then the new facts: did you know Louis Pasteur invented Marmite (and then licensed it to a British brewer?) Fabulous addition to the shiny nuggets of knowledge.

UPDATE: On the Marmite issue – Deaton’s Pasteur claim was challenged on Twitter:

MikeBenchCapon
@diane1859 Louis Pasteur invented Marmite? Wikipedia says it was some other guy: https://t.co/uD9JZyCT9d https://t.co/hs7x6S8oXx
06/04/2016 10:15

MikeBenchCapon
@diane1859 I’ve looked into this a bit more and I think I’m on Team Von Liebig. https://t.co/kw5BwP1DJa https://t.co/6Orq0mAOQf
06/04/2016 10:48

Men’s studies

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I’ve zipped through Myra Strober’s [amazon_link id=”B01CRU4QV4″ target=”_blank” ]Sharing the Work[/amazon_link], propelled both by enjoying this memoir of a life as an academic economist and by righteous anger. (In fact, I’m posting this review 3 weeks too early on the tide of this sentiment.*)

Professor Strober embarked on her career in the late 1960s, and was therefore one of the pioneering feminists to whom my generation owes so much. The book starts with her initial experience at Berkeley, being told by the department chairman that she will never get tenure – ostensibly because she lives in Palo Alto, in reality because she has children. The shock of realising the truth on her drive home across the Bay Bridge launches her into a commitment to feminism in general and to tackling the sexism of economics and the academic world in particular.

[amazon_image id=”B01CRU4QV4″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Sharing the Work: What My Family and Career Taught Me about Breaking Through (and Holding the Door Open for Others)[/amazon_image]

This is not an angry, polemical book at all. It’s a warm and readable memoir about family and friends as well as career and the politics of gender. Professor Strober grew up in Brooklyn in a loving family, and was the first to go to college and graduate school. She tells of the tensions of moving away from that background, and also the tensions in her marriage to an ambitious medical student and researcher – a marriage which eventually ended in divorce. Athough not at all bitter in the telling, the book is a reminder of how hard it was for a woman to combine career and children. (It still is – just think about the relatively small proportion of prominent women who have children.)

Thanks in part to the battles fought by earlier cohorts of women, the sexism we face in the workplace today is as nothing compared to those early days of the struggle for recognition. But the anger reading this book kicked in when I reflected on the continuing male dominance of economics in particular – our proportion of women being closer to computer science and mathematics than to any other social or natural science. Just as I finished reading [amazon_link id=”B01CRU4QV4″ target=”_blank” ]Sharing the Work[/amazon_link] I happened upon this reflection on getting tenure written by Ellen Meara. Nor is this a US issue – it’s as true in the UK and EU. Economics has a women problem – as Justin Wolfers and Noah Smith among others have noted – and that means economics has a problem. A subject done by men about men can’t claim to be either social or a science.

There is, I think, some recognition of the problem in the economics establishment, and some well-meaning efforts to address it. However, these efforts do not yet extend to a wide acknowledgement of some fundamental points – above all that there is something wrong with the (mainly male) insiders’ definition of what makes for ‘good’ economics.

At the end of last year I sent a survey to about 30 teachers of economics in high schools, asking what they thought were the main barriers to girls choosing to study economics at university; for although the total number of people doing economics degrees has been rising in the UK, the proportion who are female has been declining. The single most popular reply was that it was the ‘character of the subject’. I recounted this to a highly sympathetic and non-sexist male colleague. “Well,” he replied, “It’s not clear to me that there’s anything to be done about this.” That’s the problem. If the trend continues, we’re going to have to rename economics ‘men’s studies’.

I admire Professor Strober for spending her career actively doing something about it. This is a book to inspire all female economists and give all male economists pause for thought. [amazon_link id=”0262034387″ target=”_blank” ]Pre-order it [/amazon_link] now!

* It’s 22 April for the Kindle edition – the hardback will be out in mid-May.