Reloaded Links

• The Best Books on American Conservatism (confieso haber leido solo dos de la lista, aunque tengo dos mas en mi to-read-list)
• When Will the First Earth-like Planet Be Discovered?
• Entrevista al conductor de mi programa de radio favorito
• En defensa de la economia (seriedad muchachos)
• Revival 1: batero y fachero (solo he escuchado el tema que da nombre a la vuelta)
• Revival 2: violero y con toca de la nona (solo he escuchado el tema que da nombre a la toca)
• Extremely useful proof techniques (solo para nerds) 

El monstruo crece de nuevo

Del editorial de hace un par de semanas de The Economist, Leviathan Inc,

LISTEN carefully, and you may detect a giant sucking sound across the rich world. [...] Politicians are reviving the notion that intervening in individual industries and companies can drive growth and create jobs.

[...] Yet the overwhelming reason for China’s miracle is that the state released its stifling grip and opened the country to private enterprise and to the world. The likes of Li Shufu, who runs Geely, the car firm that has just bought Volvo, are entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats. India’s wildly successful software and business-process-outsourcing industries blossomed not because of help from the government, but precisely because its Licence Raj did not understand these nascent fields well enough to choke them off. In Brazil, where it is often said that an activist industrial policy helps to explain why the economy has been thriving, a surging state-owned development bank, BNDES, is probably crowding out other sources of finance. The likes of Petrobras (oil), Vale (mining) and Embraer (planes) were indeed created by the government. But they have all flourished because they were privatised, to a degree, and forced to compete with foreign firms in the 1990s. Part-privatisation and competition created in a short time what decades of industrial policy had failed to do.

[...] No bureaucrat could have predicted the success of Nestlé’s Nespresso coffee-capsule system—just as none foresaw that utility vehicles, vacuum cleaners and tufted carpets (to cite examples noted by Charles Schultze, an American opponent of state planning) would have been some of America’s fastest-growing industries in the 1970s. Officials ignore the potential for innovation in consumer products or services and get seduced by the hype of voguish high-tech sectors.

Burlando la ineptitud de los burocratas

Me saco el sombrero nuevamente. Esta vez para saludar a ciertas Universidades de NY. Se de primera fuente que NYU al menos lleva a cabo el ejercicio que se describe abajo.L

Los economistas ya nos hemos cansado de hablar sobre los problemas de los controles de precios sobre los alquileres (hubo incluso quien afirmo que es la 2da mejor forma de destruir una ciudad, luego de un bombardeo) y sobre los impuestos excesivos. Como burlar los retrogrados controles de precio y eludir impuestos a la vez? La brillante respuesta es de ciertas universidades de NY y explicada muy didacticamente aca por Greg Mankiw. Lo que mas me gusto fue el ultimo parrafo donde describe el brillante resultado final,

In the end, the goal of the rent control laws is thwarted (the low rents are enjoyed by well-paid tenured faculty rather than the needy), the income tax laws are thwarted (a sizable part of compensation is untaxed), and all this is done by a nonprofit institution (the university) whose ostensible purpose is to serve the public interest.