Chapter 12: The End of the Business Cycle? (pages 153-166)
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Rewriting the Macroeconomists’ Playbook in the Wake of the Crisis, by Olivier Blanchard
Our joke about macroeconomists in foxholes turns out to have an earlier version: “I guess everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole,” jokes Robert Lucas, a University of Chicago economist who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for theories that criticized Keynes.
Chapter 13: The End of Poverty? (pages 167-178)
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p177: On the value of education in rich countries, an alternative perspective comes from Nobel winner Paul Krugman’s op-ed “Degrees and Dollars” (NY Times, March 6 2011). More on this from this fascinating blog post (“Falling Demand for Brains?“, March 5 2011), which links to a “hypothetical retrospective” that Krugman wrote in 1996 from the perspective of 2096; that piece is “White Collars Turn Blue” (NY Times, Sept 29 1996).
Chapter 14: The End of Planet Earth? (pages 179-192)
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p180: On coming out of poverty, see “The Chinese Eco-Disaster” (Slate, Jan 10 2011), a review of When A Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind — Or Destroy It. (I haven’t read this book but it’s on my list 🙂
p182: “Economic Optimism? Yes, I’ll Take That Bet” (NY Times, Dec 27 2010).
p184: A skeptical view of “peak oil” is “Drilling for an Oil Crisis” (NY Times, Feb 24 2011).
p190: The “poking a beast” metaphor is a paraphrase of a famous line by climatologist Wally Broeker. (The earliest version of this quotation I could find comes from “Antarctica” [Time, April 14 1997]: “Climate is an angry beast,” says Lamont’s Wallace Broeker, “and we are poking it with sticks.”)
p191: On carbon pricing, see “The Carbon Tax Miracle Cure” (Wall Street Journal, Jan 31 2011, by Alan Blinder).
Chapter 15: The End of Youth? (pages 193-206)
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p199: A thought-provoking read about health care costs is “When Ailments Pile Up, Asking Patients to Rethink Free Dialysis” (NY Times, March 31 2011).
p200: When It Comes to the Deficit, Resolve Is Weak (NY Times, March 13 2011). See also “Peter G. Peterson’s Last Anti-Debt Crusade” (NY Times, April 8 2011).
p204: For a more recent take on the Solow quote, see “Freaks, Geeks, and GDP” (Slate, March 8 2011), a review of Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation.
Chapter 16: The end (pages 207-218)
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