A portrait of the artists as young businessmen
A study on VoxEU suggests evidence of 'strong competition' between Italian painters from 1550-1770. "Contracts were structured to address moral hazard problems, and prices closely reflected demand and supply conditions in an integrated market."
'Corruption as a barrier to entry'
More from VoxEU: "Conventional wisdom says that corruption hurts the economy because it taxes investment and weakens public services. This column presents evidence from interviews with CEOs in Brazil. It argues that corruption acts as a barrier to entry, with potential entrants put off by the uncertainty over what bribes to pay and when to pay them."
Finding the real "Q" in QE2
Nick Rowe on Worthwhile Canadian Initiative says he felt the presence of Tobin's q throughout the Fed's QE2 announcement on Wednesday. "Tobin's q is the ratio of the market value of a firm's assets, as measured by its stock and bond prices, divided by the replacement cost of those same assets. .... According to James Tobin, one of the main channels of the monetary policy transmission mechanism was through q. Loosening monetary policy would raise stock and bond prices and so raise q and so increase the demand for new investment goods."
The bigger numbers behind a small gain in jobs
In case you missed it, Stephen Gordon goes behind the numbers from the Labour Force Survey, which, he says " are dwarfed by the size of the gross flows in and out of employment."
Full U.S. employment - in 20 years
The Economic Policy Institute dug into Friday's U.S. job report and found a sobering statistic: "If the rate of job growth were to continue at October's rate, the economy would achieve prerecession unemployment rates (5% in December 2007) in roughly 20 years.