13 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 16 Aug \ parent \ on: Are Monopolies Always Bad? econ
I was sort of shocked in PhD macro (and sometimes micro) that this lazy treatment was still so common. They never account for any costs of governance. I'm sure there are models out there that do, but we didn't discuss them.
Yeah, it seems to be a major blind spot in the profession. Oh, someone discovered a new kind of market failure / inefficiency and proposes a policy based on a benevolent social planner - without any analysis of the incentives of those who would implement the policy.
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I had a similar feeling when we covered the more sophisticated treatment of externalities. The amount of stuff the planner has to know to actually correct that inefficiency is ridiculous and it doesn't seem to phase anyone that it's ridiculous.
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This isn't totally related to what we're discussing, but my favorite example of dumb-policy-brain in the Econ profession is a job market talk I went to, where the candidate demonstrated empirically that living in a mixed race neighborhood is causally associated with more tolerant views.
His proposed policy was for the government to airdrop migrants into less diverse neighborhoods.
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Oof. Someone’s advisors dropped the ball.
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Make white neighborhoods less white
No one is dropping immigrants into MLK Blvd (pick any city)
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