Emmanuel Saez – Bates Clarke

This years Bates Clarke medal was awarded to Emmanuel Saez. Details of the award are below. Below that is  his IDEAS page. The work that Saez is doing across areas like tax, social interactions, information provision and so on provides many good ideas that have relevance to policy. The award committee cite his contributions to areas of public economics like optimal tax theory, measurement of income distributions, field experiments in financial behaviour among other areas.

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/clark_medal.htm

http://ideas.repec.org/e/psa117.html

Fine Gael Health Plan

Having been critical of Fine Gael’s “stimulus” plan a few weeks ago, I thought I’d be fair and note that FG’s new health plan — with Dutch-style universal private health insurance as its centrepiece — strikes me as a useful contribution.

With increasing funds for the health service simply not possible over the next few years, we need to figure out how to run our health system in a far more efficient way, and this proposal suggests one way of going about this.  Then again, I’m not at all an expert in health economics.  I’d be interested to hear from those who are about what they think of this plan.

The second draft of history

Economic historians and others interested in the Great Depression still turn to the economic publications of the League of Nations as a basic source for understanding the economic catastrophe of the 1930s. While I don’t want to give anyone in Washington DC stage fright, the publications of today’s international organisations, such as the IMF’s World Economic Outlook which was published in full last week, will also serve as a first port of call for the historians of decades hence. So: how are they shaping up?

Extremely well, is my reaction after having finally given the April WEO the attention it deserves. This is essential reading for people seeking a global overview of the crisis,  and advice as to how to get out of it.

The Valuation of Distressed Assets

Jon Faust of Johns Hopkins University writes on the distinction between current market values and long-term ‘fundamental’ values: you can read it here.

Calculated Risk on Liquidity and Solvency

The invaluable Calculated Risk has a couple of very useful posts on the analytics of bank solvency and liquidity here and here.  The discussion is framed around current US policy but is still very useful reading for those looking for a starting point for understanding the issues facing the Irish banks.