brides of frankenstein: happy halloween!

bride of frankenstein necklace

a special halloween etsy wedding! i have been *dying* (mwahaha) for a horror-bride feature. for your pleasure, the best of etsy's brides gone wrong:








each image is linked to its respective store. hooray for halloween!

LONDON - urban nature, mile end & shoreditch, 10/31/07

Interview with Larry

Summers in The International Economy.

The Evolution of Tax Rates

Via Leonhardt.

Happy Halloween

I'm off to DC for work, so we celebrated Halloween in style on Monday night.

Dempsey & LuLu (our preppy pooches) wish you all a very Happy Halloween.

The Deadweight Loss of Halloween

Kevin Hassett reports:

The National Confectioners Association estimates that 2005 Halloween sales were $2.1 billion, easily making Halloween the biggest candy season. This year, sales will certainly be higher. What percentage of those sales end up providing candy that individuals don't really like? If my own careful scientific study of Halloween bags is any guide, perhaps about 75 percent.

It's not the dead that concern me about Halloween. And it is not the impact of all that sugar on the weight of our kids. No, it's the dead-weight loss, or pointless lost utility of the entire enterprise. That likely has a dollar value that exceeds $1.5 billion annually. American citizens squander more than a billion and a half dollars a year on an economically inefficient holiday.

At least it's not as bad as Christmas.

Trick or Treat

Economics professor Troy Quast emails me, "While I don't expect his costume to elicit any extra treats from my neighbors, I imagine the FOMC members might be startled to see my son at their front doors Halloween night."

#208: mason calls out to me.

over and over again, i keep coming across these mismatched tinted jars with mismatched flowers. and i love it.


from daisy chain.

awelldressedbullet: shotgun wedding

shotgun wedding reception bar and party lights

oh, but wait. these are too much! mwahaha, shotgun wedding lights. hilarious. and they're technically upcycled -- repurposed fired hulls -- in silver, gold, or r-r-red. a brilliant gift for those gittin' hitched in a hurry.

LONDON - brick lane, 10/30/07

LONDON - the dandy sultan, 10/29/07

MY NOVEMBER COCKTAIL

... Oslo ( Nov. 1st - 4th)
Why not spending the week-end in Norway after all?

... Paris (Nov. 9th - 13th)
I've been invited to take pictures of the crowd at the music Festival Les Inrocks. An exhibition will take place a few weeks after.

... Munich, Germany (Nov. 29th - 1st)
I'll go there for a TV interview. By the way there will be a party at baby!

A Better Path to Tax Reform

In the midst of all the chatter about the Rangel plan, a friend asks me how I would prefer to fix the looming AMT problem. My answer: A good place to start is the Report of the President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform.

studiometalsmith: custom rings

custom-made wedding bands

here are lovely simple sterling silver wedding bands, available in three different finishes (hammered, high-polish or satin) and in two different widths (both rings the same thickness or one thick/one thin as above). modern and without ostentation. the best part? the price is for *both* rings. crafted in san diego, also available in 18k gold. check out the other cool jewels as well at studiometalsmith.etsy.com

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you may have noticed, faithful reader, that i have shied away from the vast subject of bridal jewelry. mainly because i find it stupidly repetitive -- freshwater pearl, freshwater pearl, swarovski crystal, natch. white rice jewelry. but that's not helping you, now is it? so i pledge over the next few weeks to seek out something new and different in the bridal set department -- let me know if you have your own etsy favorites you'd like to nominate (send a note if you like) with my thanks!

$ummers

Larry opines on the falling dollar.

Something for me to think about

Nicholas Carr offers me advice:

Because blogging is such a personal pursuit, with strong and immediate ego-rewards, it can be irrationally seductive, particularly to highly competitive overachievers. The hazard - and this applies as well to disciplines beyond economics - is that extraordinarily talented individuals may end up, like lab mice drinking sugar water, spending more time blogging than they should, even though their comparative advantage is smaller in blogging than it is elsewhere. Distorted by noneconomic but nonetheless powerful rewards, the idea market would become less efficient than it should be, and we'd all suffer as a result. The real danger, in other words, may not be that the "lemons" - the "tolerable bloggers" - will take over as the mainstays of the blogosphere but that they won't.

Please stop blogging, Greg Mankiw. You have better things to do.

LONDON - doombox, hoxton square bar and kitchen, 10/28/07

LONDON - on the street, shoreditch, 10/28/07

Redistribution in the Rangel Bill

The Tax Policy Center has run the numbers to show how different income groups would be affected by the Rangel tax reform proposal compared to the tax law currently on the books. Here is roughly what the numbers (in Table T07-0300) show:

• The bottom three-fourths of households, those making less than $75,000 a year, are not much affected. They each would receive a tax cut of about $100 per year.
• The next 24 percent, those making between $75,000 and $500,000, would receive much more substantial tax cuts. Those in the $200,000 to $500,000 range, who are in the 96 to 99 percentile of the income distribution, would get a tax cut of about $3,600 per year.
• The top 1 percent, those making over $500,000, would pay substantially more in taxes. Those making more than $1 million would see their tax bill rise by an average of more than $100,000.

Thus, as a first approximation, the plan increases the progressivity of the tax code by redistributing income from the very rich (e.g., CEOs, hedge fund managers, superstar athletes and actors) to the upper middle class (e.g., doctors, lawyers, congressmen).

Where have all the oil shocks gone?

Oil prices are near record highs, which raises a fascinating question. In recent years, the U.S. and world economies have typically shrugged off oil price increases. By contrast, oil price increases are a major part of the conventional story of the economic turmoil of the 1970s. Why the difference?

We economists do not have a complete answer, but we have some clues. One important clue is below (via Carpe Diem):

The economy is far more energy-efficient today than it was in the past, in part because economic activity is based more on services and less on manufacturing. As a result, energy prices matter less today.

In their research on the topic, Blanchard and Gali also give credit to more flexible labor markets, better monetary policy, and a bit of luck.

Another hypothesis: The macroeconomic effect of high energy prices may depend on whether the high prices are the result of reduced supply or increased demand. Perhaps in the 1970s high oil prices were largely the result of supply restrictions, whereas in recent years high oil prices are driven more by increased demand from a booming world economy.

One final conjecture: Maybe the recent increase in oil prices has been less sudden, making it easier for other prices and thus the economy to adjust. In particular, it may not have affected the skewness in the distribution of relative-price changes in the same way as previous oil shocks did.

We have no shortage of theories. The definitive study on the macroeconomic effect of oil prices is still waiting to be written.

Update: Lutz Kilian of the University of Michigan has a new paper on the topic.

cipolla: hand-sewn treats

the three-way: wristlet, handbag, clutch

you naughty thing. if we could find *that* sort of three-way on etsy they'd call it craigslist.

so much in this toronto-based shop could be made in sets for unusual gifts (for self or others) -- clutches, scarves, totes -- worth coaxing marina the cipollamistress to sew a few of a kind. cipolla also makes gift sets *and* you can have them gift wrapped and ready to go:


gift set duo: caramel floral clutch and eyeglass case

if that fails, give a gift certificate for something handmade with love. more at cipolla.etsy.com