February, 2007

Red Herrings Can Be Interesting

In the context of a discussion about the distribution of income and consumption, Mark Thoma brought up a new issue of questionable relevance – namely, the reported share of national income going to employee compensation under a hypothetical change in accounting conventions. I criticized his reference to a newspaper article because all other participants in [...]

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Sometimes You Do Need to Be a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Is Blowing

by Richard Burkhauser

February 22nd, 2007

It strikes me that there is often an inverse relationship between the heights of an essayist’s rhetorical flourishes and the depth of the scientific evidence they marshal to support it. I give Mark Thoma high marks for raising the rhetorical stakes in this debate to the point where those who remain more skeptical of the [...]

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It’s Time to Ask the Next Question

by Mark A. Thoma

February 20th, 2007

I had hoped to move on to new issues, but that will have to wait as I want to respond to some of what Alan Reynolds says in his reply essay.
In his reply, Reynolds provides a very good example of what Gary Burtless points to when he says:
The problem is, he is [...]

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Inequality Trends: The Facts and Why They Matter

by Gary Burtless

February 20th, 2007

Alan Reynolds wants to disprove the widely accepted view that American income inequality widened after 1988. In his attempt to make this case he offers some evidence that is relevant, much more that is irrelevant, and still more that cannot be evaluated without careful and open-minded analysis of the data. Unlike many of the analysts he criticizes, including economists in the Congressional Budget Office and Professors Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, he has never actually done any of the hard analysis that would allow us to assess the importance of claimed shortcomings in the data. I leave it for other readers to decide whether Reynolds has the temperament to treat good researchers’ analysis and results with an open mind, especially when their findings conflict with his fond hope that income inequality stopped rising almost two decades ago.

Read: Inequality Trends: The Facts and Why They Matter