Why Healthcare is So Expensive Part MMDCLVI

Competition in (increasing) service quality doesn’t reduce costs: Dane County’s two hospitals that deliver babies are each spending close to $40 million to spruce up maternity units and related facilities for a simple reason: Young women are key health care consumers, often deciding where their families will seek medical services for decades. “If you don’t [...]

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The Deal: I Can Live With It

Maynard at Creative Destruction has the optimist’s take on the reported tax cut deal: [T]he deal supposedly struck between Obama and the Republicans is not too bad and better than was to be expected. We give the rich about $60 billion a year, and in return get about as much economic stimulus, focused on low- [...]

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Time Series Econometrics Makes Yer Head Hurt

I was mulling this morning’s sucky employment report (which sucks, don’t get me wrong) and was curious as to the effects of the seasonal adjustment process.  You might expect a seasonal increase in non-farm payrolls for November from late holiday-season hiring, so it would make sense for the seasonal adjustment to knock the NSA figure [...]

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The Great Hangover

Over at Angry Bear, Ken Houghton recommends Steve Randy Waldman saying that economists of the liberal-technocrat school shouldn’t too-hastily dismiss Austrian-style “hangover theory,” and in the event you happen upon this but not Ken’s post, so do I.  Waldman: Austrian-ish “hangover theory” claims, plausibly, that if for some reason the economy has been geared to [...]

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