What's Wrong with Macro? A Symposium from the Oxford Review of Economic Policy
Macroconomists were notorious for their disagreements before 2007. Such wrangling only increased with the carnage of the Great Financial Crisis and its aftermath. The Oxford Review of Economic Policy has now devoted a special double issue (Spring-Summer 2018) to a symposium on the topic of "Rebuilding macroeconomic theory." Lots of big names (to economists!) are featured, and at least for now, all the papers are freely available and ungated.
- 11/06/2018
- 2
What's the Value of a QALY?
QALY is an abbreviation for "quality-adjusted life-year." It refers to gains in health, which combine a time dimension and an adjustment for quality of life. Peter J. Neumann and Joshua T. Cohen offer a quick overview in "QALYs in 2018—Advantages and Concerns," a "Viewpoint" article written for the Journal of the American Medical Association (May 24, 2018). Thus, even if you strongly dislike the idea of a QALY, you might want to be aware that your doctors and health care administrators are paying attention to them.
- 09/06/2018
- 0
The Salubrious US Labor Market
The US unemployment rate has been less than 4% for the last couple of months, which might seem sufficient reason for breaking out the champagne. But the sense of celebration has been generally restrained.
- 08/06/2018
- 8
The Rising Importance of Soft Skills
What skills are most important for an employee to succeed at Google? Back in 2013, the company undertook Project Oxygen to answer that question. Cathy N. Davidson described the result in the Washington Post last month ("The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students," December 20, 2017). She writes:
- 06/06/2018
- 3
The Shifting Connections from Education to Job Skills
The Council on Foreign Relations has published The Work Ahead Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century, which is an Independent Task Force Report chaired by John Engler and Penny Pritzker, Some of the discussion goes over familiar ground: innovation is needed, technology is changing work, economic growth is important, we should redesign unemployment assistance and sick leave for the modern work force, we should do more to assist displaced workers, and so on. But I want to focus on one chapter of the report, "Education, Training, and the Labor Market," and its discussion of that how the interaction between education and job training has been shifting.
- 06/06/2018
- 2
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