economics – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: economics

infrastructure construction as jobs stimulus

Free Exchange posted this chart emphasizing the challenge long-term unemployment poses in this recession. It seems to indicate that construction-based stimulus could be especially effective in reducing such unemployment, furthering the case for a stimulus program emphasizing the construction and repair of infrastructure. But there’s just not that much room to cut unemployment by putting […]

quarantine economies

I’d like to echo Rob’s delight at being able to attend the final critique of the Landscapes of Quarantine Studio in NYC hosted by BLDGBLOG and Edible Geography.  We’ll make sure and keep folks posted on the details of the studio’s exhibit at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, which is due to open in […]

a superproject void

[Aerial image of the Hoover Dam Bypass under construction; I’d love to give credit for the image to the photographer, but it came to me through a long email chain, lacking any attribution, and I haven’t been able to locate the source] Economics journalist Louis Uchitelle complains about a “superproject void” in the Times; Infrastructurist […]

avent and cowen on tysons corner

There’s a discussion about the economics and politics of urbanizing suburbia taking place between economics bloggers Ryan Avent and Tyler Cowen right now (if you’re not familiar with the two, Avent is roughly liberal and Cowen is roughly libertarian, though both are more or less independent thinkers).  It begins with this Washington Post article which […]

ryan avent on robert moses

Ryan Avent has a very interesting post at streetsblog on the problems with the rehabilitation of Robert Moses, who is appealing urbanists for roughly the same reason that Thomas Friedman is pining for autocracy.  The link Avent provides to a study which concludes that “one new highway passing through a central city reduces its population […]

congestion pricing manhattan

A great post by Felix Salmon discusses externalities, congestion pricing, and a spreadsheet by Charles Komanoff.  The comparison of the way the resulting costs from congestion pricing fall, depending on which scheme is used, is particularly important, as the original NYC plan would have disproportionately hit middle-class commuters from Brooklyn and Queens.  Congestion pricing is […]

the coming infrastructure bubble?

[Interior of an abandoned and incomplete home in a subdivision outside Phoenix, from an excellent slideshow of photographs taken by Edgar Martins, commissioned by the New York Times to document the real estate bust.] I’d highly recommend reading or re-reading Eric Janszen’s “The Next Bubble”, which was published in Harper’s almost a year and a […]