Blog: The Monkey Cage

Mark Thoma, live at SSRN … economics lost communication with policymakers and practitioners leaving room for all sorts of “charlatans and cranks” to fill the void. In doing so, academics ceded important ground to think tanks aligned with one party or the other, to self-appointed economic experts, to business economists maximizing profit rather than public […]

My call last week for bizarre political ads from across the globe received a fair number of peculiar and sometimes downright frightening examples. Especially popular were singing politicians, like these German Social-Democrats and Iceland’s Best Party, which actually won the mayoral election for which the ad was made although, according to commenter Sona, they failed […]

The story of notorious speed-limit-violater and gambler-with-other-people’s-money Jon Corzine should remind us all of the problem with asymmetrical bets. Corzine’s behavior has been linked to the idea of “too big to fail” (see link above)—-and I agree these can make things worse—-but I think the fundamental problem would arise even in a world without bailouts. […]

The American Prospect has begun syndicating content from The Monkey Cage on their newly redesigned website.  You’ll see us listed on their homepage at right; clicking that there takes you to a dedicated page for Monkey Cage content.  They even gave us a new logo that looks more like an actual monkey.  Obviously, if you […]

With Nate Silver asking today whether Obama is toast in 2012, I thought it would be a good time to revisit an AP story last week about Obama’s supposed donor problem. The AP reported that: Tens of thousands of people who together gave millions of dollars to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign have gone missing […]

I got the following email today from Jordan Gehrke, Campaign Director, AmericansforHermanCain.com Patriot— They’re at it again. Herman Cain is winning the Republican race for President. So the left-wing media has swung into action. Clarence Thomas called it a “high tech lynching” 20 years ago. That’s exactly what they’re doing to Herman Cain today. This […]

Like other political scientists who’ve studied the topic, I think the malign effects of redistricting have been overstated. Nonetheless, this video (by Andrew Bean and David Holmes) is informative, and I agree that nonpartisan redistricting would be better than the current system in the U.S.

As part of our continuing series of election reports, we are pleased to welcome Matteo Fumagalli of Central European University with the following post-election report on Sunday’s Kyrgyz presidential elections. ********** Kyrgyzstan’s presidential elections, held on Sunday 30 October, resulted in an overwhelming victory for the front-runner, Almazbek Atambayev, the small Central Asian republic’s prime […]

See here. The topic is relevant to political science, given that this is a discussion of public spending priorities.