Lakeside 
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For Fun Day Oct 2: Unemployment insurance
Posted 9/29/09
As we continue to circle around the topics of health care and health insurance, here are the readings for Friday’s Fun Day:
First, this excerpt from an 8/7/09 NY Times article by Ron Lieber, “Good Luck Getting Private Insurance for Unemployment“:The latest figures from the Department of Labor show that 247,000 more jobs disappeared last month. [...]
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First exam Oct 14/15
Posted 9/23/09
The first exam will be on Oct 14/15. Here is the cheat sheet (which as an added bonus also includes an old exam). The exam will cover the following chapters, with problems from the textbook similar to those specified below:
Ch 1: Introduction. (Problem 1.1 is a good problem to do :)
Ch 2: Decision trees. (Look [...][more]
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For Friday Fun Day on Sept 25: Social Security and Medicare
Posted 9/22/09
Before we delve into the health care debate it will be helpful to get some background on Social Security and Medicare. So please spend at least one hour on the following assignments; the readings are not long, but they are dense, so concentrate and get out of them everything you can. Bring your questions to [...]
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For Friday Sept 18 2009
Posted 9/16/09
Your Fun Day assignment (due by 8am Friday) is as follows:
Take the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Write down your “label” and your percentage scores for personal issues and economic issues. (You’ll need these for the next part.) Note that there are no right or wrong answers here as far as Fun Day is concerned.
Take [...][more]
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Book options
Posted 9/12/09
Here are some books that might be worth a look. Please note that this is not intended to be a comprehensive list!
The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter Leeson.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable or Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the [...][more]
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Readings for Sept 10/11
Posted 9/09/09
Here are the updated readings for Thursday/Friday:
- Read “Health care that works” by Nicholas Kristof (NYT 9/2/09).
- Read “I, Pencil” (PDF) by Leonard Read. (Skip the intro stuff—unless you want to read it—and just read the article and the afterward by Milton Friedman.)
- Read “How did economists get it so wrong?” by Paul Krugman (NYT 9/2/09). PS. If you think Paul Krugman might be offering up a story with a left-wing bias, an optional additional reading is “The macroeconomist as scientist and engineer” by Greg Mankiw, Harvard professor and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers for George W. Bush. Another optional reading (from someone who does seriously disagree with Krugman) is “How did Krugman get it so wrong?” by Scott Sumner, a macroeconomist at Bentley University. (And, also optional, an earlier back-and-forth between Sumner and Krugman here and here.)
Come with your questions and be prepared to compare and contrast the articles! Here are a few things to think about:
- Do Kristof and Read agree or disagree? Why or why not? What specific item(s) can you point to and what do you think about those specific item(s)?
- What do you think Paul Krugman would say about the Kristof and Read articles?
- What does Paul Krugman have to say about the direction macroeconomics should go in?
PS. Optional assignment is to watch, listen to, and/or read the transcript of Obama’s health care speech tonight (5pm PT) and the response from Representative Charles Boustany (R-Louisiana). We’ll talk more about health care in future Fun Days!
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