Author: jplucas

Noted: “We are skeptical of the secular stagnation view,” concluded a paper presented at the Booth conference. Like many Fed officials, the authors— James Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego; Ethan Harris of Bank of America ; Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs and Kenneth West of the University of Wisconsin—concluded the economy has been held back by temporary headwinds and not a permanent reduction in its potential growth rate.

Quoted: Scott Gehlbach, Political Scientist, University of Wisconsin–Madison: The more I think about Nemtsov’s murder, the more worried I am about what comes next. Historical experience, in Russia and elsewhere, demonstrates that political terror doesn’t require direction from the top. It simply needs a strong signal that terror is okay. And one could hardly ask for a stronger signal than the assassination of a prominent opposition activist a block from the Kremlin.

Quoted: “That is Twitter on speed,” says Katy Culver, an assistant professor at the UW Madison School of Journalism and an expert in social media. “It goes by so quickly that you can’t even process any of the messages. You actually have to stop it to be able to read and absorb any of them.”

Quoted: Unlike factories, ports can’t be moved to low-wage countries. The jobs are “impervious to outsourcing,” said John Ahlquist, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied port unions worldwide.

Quoted: “They never used their real names on the title page while Emily and Anne were alive,” says Emily Auerbach, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Searching for Jane Austen. “But the pen names helped them open the door and at least get a reading.”

Noted: David Egan-Robertson, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory, said many federal jobs, as well as private-sector positions in the D.C. region under federal contract, require high levels of expertise. And “to attract and retain this high level of expertise requires higher levels of compensation.”

Assistant Professor Michael Wagner studies political communication at UW-Madison, and says there’s going to be no compromise here.

Noted: “There may be benefits to waiting to raise the nominal rate until we actually see some evidence of labor market pressure and increases in inflation,” concluded the authors, the economics professors Kenneth West of the University of Wisconsin and James Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego and the economists Ethan Harris of Bank of America and Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs.

As econoblog readers, we follow Econbrowser pretty regularly, mainly for Jim Hamilton’s insights, but recently, we’ve begun paying closer attention to the comments of his co-blogger, Menzie Chinn, who is an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: That makes scientists engaging the public — especially young people — more important than ever, University of Wisconsin-Madison Life Sciences Communication professor Dominique Brossard says.

Quoted: “It’s virtually impossible to make any claims” about the economic impact of right-to-work laws, says John Ahlquist, an associate professor of political science at UW-Madison who has studied labor market institutions.

Quoted: “We are still on pace to break the all-time record — no question about it,” says Jonathan Martin, a professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Despite the brutal cold in the eastern U.S., the whole hemisphere is warmer this winter than it has ever been in history.”

Quoted: “The biggest driver of the number of vetoes is divided government,” said Kenneth R. Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies executive power.

Quoted: Remind guests, too, that dogs will reflect their own level of activity, said Patricia McConnell, certified animal behaviorist and zoology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Ramp up the excitement, and the dogs will get excited,” she said. “Settle down, and they’ll settle down.”

Quoted: Robert Drechsel, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, echoed that sentiment. “I don’t buy the idea that because they occupy different roles … that somehow a different standard should apply. I think they’re all subject to the same standard in that you report accurately and that you characterize the reporting accurately,” he said.

Quoted: Ron Schultz, a long-time researcher of canine vaccines, finds immunity of many diseases can last a dog’s lifetime, much like humans. He says vaccines are vitally important, but questions the need to vaccinate so often.

Quoted: “It’s not a perfect allocation of risk,” said Martha Gaines, a lawyer and director of the Center for Patient Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “It’s a bad way to take care of people who are chronically sick.”

Quoted: Amanda Rogers, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has done research on ISIS, says that the group has two different types of propaganda.

Quoted: “Ptomaine poisoning was a fairly popular term for food poisoning at the turn of the century,” says professor Susan Lederer, who runs the Medical History and Bioethics program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “[Doctors] believed that ptomaines came in many varieties and resulted from the growth of bacteria in food.”