December 2009 Archives

Pittsburgh wants to tax tuition paid to universities located in the city.

If I were teaching a public policy class, this would surely be on the final exam.  Discuss the distribution of the burden of this tax and discuss any additional implications.

UPDATE:  The extortion worked.

One of the 20th century's most influential economists has passed away.

An excerpt from the obituary from the MIT News Office:

Samuelson's contributions to the field were so numerous and fundamental that they lend themselves to description in more general terms. "If you did a time and motion study of what any modern economist does at work, you would find that an enormous proportion of standard mental devices trace back to Paul Samuelson's long lifetime of research," said MIT Institute Professor Emeritus Robert Solow. "What I can add about my beloved friend of 60 years is that he had a marvelous intuition about how a market economy had to be. 'It must work like this,' he would say. 'Now all we have to do is prove it.' There was no one like him."

More from:

Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics

New York Times

Here is a recent interview of Samuelson by Conor Clarke of The Atlantic  (part 2)  (hat tip Angry Bear)

Marginal Revolution has three posts (so far).  One of which recounts Samuelson's famous quote:  "I don't care who writes a nation's laws... if I can write its economics textbooks."

It's true that Samuelson's introductory textbook set the standard.  Keynesian in his philosophy, his mathematical approach became the basis for neoclassical economics.  

And yes, I have a copy of...



I actually found it easier to understand than some more modern graduate texts.