by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus
Strategic Political Economy
The radical plan to change how Harvard teaches economics
[Vox, via The Big Picture 5-25-19]Harvard finally has someone who is challenging Bush Dubya's economic guru Greg Mankiw in the teaching of introductory economics. Personally, I think Mankiw should be turned over to some impoverished country like Chad or Ecuador and tried for intellectual crimes against humanity. In the summer 2013 issue of Journal of Economic Perspectives, Mankiw published a paper entitled "Defending the One Percent." (pdf)
[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 5-21-19]
Raj Chetty, a prominent faculty member whom Harvard recently poached back from Stanford, this spring unveiled “Economics 1152: Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems.” Taught with the help of lecturer Greg Bruich, the class garnered 375 students, including 363 undergrads, in its first term. That’s still behind the 461 in Ec 10 — but not by much.
The courses could hardly be more different. Chetty has made his name as an empirical economist, working with a small army of colleagues and research assistants to try to get real-world findings with relevance to major political questions. And he’s focused on the roots and consequences of economic and racial inequality. He used huge amounts of IRS tax data to map inequality of opportunity in the US down to the neighborhood, and to show that black boys in particular enjoy less upward mobility than white boys.
Ec 1152 is an introduction to that kind of economics. There’s little discussion of supply and demand curves, of producer or consumer surplus, or other elementary concepts introduced in classes like Ec 10.Will China play rare earths card in clash with US?
[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 5-21-19]
“An American chemicals company and an Australian miner want to build a new supply chain for rare earths that bypasses China. The plan by Blue Line Corp. and Lynas Corp. is aimed at shoring up supplies of important commodities caught up in the U.S.-China trade conflict, … highlighting how companies are growing more worried about the Washington-Beijing showdown” [Wall Street Journal]. “Production of rare earths is dominated by China, and some of the world’s biggest buyers are U.S. technology companies that use rare earths in a wide range of electronics, including military equipment. The White House has been reluctant to impose tariffs on China’s rare-earths shipments, but China has slapped higher tariffs on American shipments of the unprocessed minerals. Lynas has become the largest producer of rare earths outside China and runs a unique supply chain shipping rare earths from Australia to Malaysia for processing.”