Movie: Men in Black III

Men in Black III is great summer fun. Josh Brolin, in particular, shines as the young Agent K. And A. O. Scott, despite a bit of grumpiness, agrees.

Recommended.

Life in Capitol City

I don't usually link to things that have already been linked to at Marginal Revolution, but this is just too on point not to link to.

Having said that, I'll have to try a speakeasy on a future visit.

The cultrual reference in the title is to this.

Keeping up tradition at the LBJ School

This is priceless.

Presumably those responsible have been sacked.

The economics of hope

The Economist's "Free Exchange" column summarizes some recent research by Esther Duflo and others on the potential importance of the mental state of the very poor to their willingness to undertake investments.

I would argue that economics does a relatively poor job of integrating how agents think about actions from top - the role of beliefs expectations in macro fluctuations - to middle - the role of beliefs in political behavior or in consumption choices - to bottom - as in the studies of the very poor described in the economist piece. Getting better at this, even if the price is having to work with scholars outside of economics, would make economics a stronger discipline and increases its ability to effectively explain real-world behavior.

To be sure, some work along these lines is going on under the rubric of behavioral economics, but much more remains to be done. The good news is that behavioral economics has been getting less faddish and more serious over time, at least such is my perception from a modest distance. You can no longer just mumble something about "hyperbolic discounting" and get published in a top journal (or should that be one particular top journal?). That's a good thing.

Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll

So it turns out that one can, or at least some Dutch researchers can, get a publication in the journal Pediatrics by showing that the correlation among teens in behavior in the sexual, pharmaceutical and musical domains that does not please their elders is positive. Who would have guessed?

Kudos to the Daily Mail for noting that correlation is not causation.

Hat tip: since it is in the Daily Mail, you already know.

Senior job market gossip ...

... from David Warsh at Economic Principals, with a special emphasis on economic history.

Reality TV humor