‘Rethinking Free Trade’ by Lindsay Oldenski

Today, guest blogger Lindsay Oldenski will give her opinion about Alan Blinder’s recent comments regarding free trade and American job losses. Ms. Oldenski is an economics PhD student at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) and specializes in topics related to international trade. Rethinking Free Trade? By Lindsay Oldenski According to a recent Wall Street…

Single payer commentaries

Tyler Cowen has interesting piece in The New York Times (“Abolishing the Middlemen…“) in which he states that a single-payer system’s cost savings from the reduced administrative and overhead cost may be illusory. The article’s arguments are sound and are similar to the one’s I made in the post titled “Medicare’s (true) Administrative Costs.” The…

Physicians vs. Statisticians

An interesting post by Arnold Kling (“Doctors, Pharmaceuticals, and Statisticians“) reports on a randomized clinical trial which demonstrated that on average, angioplasties have no incremental health benefits once the patient is placed on multiple medications such as beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, statins and blood thinners. Dr. Kling writes: “Doctors think that they add value by giving…

Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes fight Malaria?

According to the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), “[m]alaria is the most important parasitic disease in the world. It kills 3,000 children every day and more than one million each year. The majority of these deaths occur among children under five years of age and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa.” In the most recent…

Reauthorizing SCHIP

Politicians are faced with a serious dilemma in the near future: reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and spend billions of dollars on a single-payer government health program or fail to renew the program and leave many children uninsured and many constituents angry. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports (“Several Lawmakers…“) that the SCHIP…

Advice on Applying to Graduate School

Interested in applying to graduate school in economics? If so, the following two links may be helpful in both 1) deciding whether or not graduate school is for you, and 2) understanding how the application process works. Becoming an Economist: Advice from Current Economics PhD Students to Prospective Ones. Advice for Applying to Grad School…