Economic Policy

I have complained in the past about reporters’ willingness to accept corporate numbers uncritically. My favorite example is the widely reported claim that the compensation of Delphi’s unionized workers averaged $65 an hour. This implied a benefits package worth more than $70,000 a year. Anyone believe that? We have another example from the Times today. […]

The May data for new home sales came in somewhat higher than expected. It is important to keep in mind that the home sales data record contracts, not completed sales. In the boom period a year ago, broken contracts were rare. Now that prices are weakening in many of the formerly hot markets, broken contracts […]

For reasons that I will not pretend to understand, newspaper editorial boards are huge proponents of trade agreements as a remedy to world poverty. They endlessly promote these agreements on their editorial and oped pages. Papers like the New York Times and Washington Post are as likely to print an oped critical of recent trade […]

Since there have been some interesting comments on two separate posts from last week, I thought I would pull them together. To get up to speed, NPR ran a piece last week which decried (slight exaggeration) the low pay of doctors. I also commented on the failure of reporting on a minimum wage hike to […]

NPR did a piece this morning on doctors’ pay that leaves you wondering why they get taxpayers dollars. The basic point was that doctors, especially primary care physicians, are struggling. The news hook was a new survey that showed that doctors’ net (after malpractice) pay is not keeping pace with inflation. The survey showed that […]

Suppose that the senators who support a quick withdrawal from Iraq got in the habit of saying that the United States should get out of Iraq because losing 100 U.S. soldiers a day is an unacceptable price for the occupation. Would the media simple report this claim without comment? Or, would they point out that […]

The Washington Post reported on former Treasury Secretary, and soon to be former Harvard President, Larry Summers’ suggestion that the foreign central banks of developing countries begin to unload some of their huge dollar holdings. As someone who has been writing on this issue for almost five years (see here, here, and here), I am […]

You won’t see this headline in the newspapers. You should ask why. Newspapers have repeatedly reported on the hundreds of billions of dollars that the rich countries give to the agricultural industry. (See the Financial Times for the latest example.) While the wording of the headlines, and often the articles themselves, would lead readers to […]

The NYT had a piece this morning reporting on how Europe is heavily dependent on coal, despite its “green image.” While the article had much useful information, it never mentioned the fact that Europe emits approximately 50 percent as much greenhouse gas per capita as the United States. In the numerate world, this is an […]

The Post has a piece this morning about the non-enforcement of laws against hiring undocumented workers. The article includes several statements, including one from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, to the effect that native born citizens will not do the jobs that are filled by undocumented workers. Believers in markets would say that if wages […]