Recommended Economics Reading List

Shek said:
Buck,

1. With the limited reserve clause, you have the ability to get some mileage out of folks and then potentially gain some leverage through the ability to trade folks prior to when they can walk through free agency. The question to ask with regards to this is if the A's spent the same amount of money (remember, they are a small market and so they can't compete in terms of salary) without using their stat-heads, could they field teams that do as well consistently?

2. Doing well over 162 games vs. a five or seven game series is different. Think about a more extreme example - would you get upsets by #15 seeds in the NCAA tournament over a 3-game series? 5-game series? 20-game series? The more games, then the less chance of the weaker team winning. Of course, shorter series and the thrill of the upset/unknown is part of what attracts folks to sports.

What about if you have the money and stats? 60 Minutes did a piece on Bill James and the BoSox last night.

CBS News Video - Top Stories and Video News Clips at CBSNews.com
The Red Sox' Stat Man And The Numbers Game, Bill James Tells 60 Minutes Mets' David Wright Would Be A Top Pick On His Dream Team - CBS News

As an interesting aside, Beane has been going after high school players again: Newmark's Door:

I think the publishing of Moneyball was a strategic move to reduce the pressure on the price of high school prospects (you can see my comment to the post).
Click to expand...

I isee your point about the Moneyball.

I guess I didn't express my point well which was supported by the 60 MInutes piece...namely, evaluation of talent these days is meaningless if you don't have the money to keep them.

The have had money but, unitl recently, not like the Yankees (spit, spit). To try to overcome that the old Sox ownership and GM raided and sold out the farm system.

New ownership comes in and changes 2 things.

1. They understand to make money you have to spend money.

2. To survive you buy free agents; to thrive you build a strong farm system.


The smartest thing John Henry and company did was hire Theo Epstein...and then they bankrolled him. They also fixed up Fenway...this helped draw the fans. (Sidenote: When Henry bought the team, the Red Sox were the only team in MLB which owned their own ballpark...which meant they had to pay taxes and pay for upkeep)

Epstein made some great personnel decisions (see trading Garciaparra; Ortiz, Beckett and that Schilling Guy) and a few bad ones. (Edgar Rentaria comes to mind). But having that shiny trophy bought him the time to really build the team. And winning the 2004 World Series is allowing the Red Sox to print money on Yawkey Way!

This allowed Epstein and CO to draft smart and not give a way the farm on Johann Santanna and others. The young guns (Youk, Lester, Bucholz, Ellesbury, Papelbon) all will have long careers...and probably will stay with Boston.


Moneyball made the A's competititve but it did not make them Champions. The Sox had to find a way compete with New York...and they did. And with that came the money to build.

And as for closers not being worth it?

I give you OCT 2003 and Aaron "bleeping" Boone v Tim Wakefield versus 2004 and Ketih "That's All" Foulke...and that Papelbon kid sure can dance!
 
I've finally gotten around to reading "Wealth of Nations" and my impression from the first couple of chapters is that everything else ever written just reiterates this classic or else is wrong. Adam Smith had to be one of the most brilliant minds ever.
 
I've recently read Krugman's book on the economic meltdown, The GREAT UNRAVELING and am currently reading Stiglett's book FREEFALL which is also germane to that event.

Basically they are saying much the same thing....the economic meltdown is a conbination of poorly designed (or nearly totally absent) regulations, suspiciously bad RISK assessments, outright fraud, and Animal Spirits making the herd sometimes overly optomistic and, once the feces hits the fan, stampeding for the exits.

Stiglett's tome is, I think, somewhat better as it offers suggestions for how we might correct the problems we face.
 
“Minimum Wages, by David Neumark and William L. Wascher, The MIT Press, 2008.

And, some on Hong Kong—

“Public Sector Reform in Hong Kong: Into the 21st Century,” by Anthony B.L. Cheung and Jane C.Y. Lee (eds), The Chinese University Press (2001).

“Uneasy Partners: The Conflict Between Public Interest and Private Profit in Hong Kong,” by Leo F. Goodstadt, Hong Kong University Press (2005).

“Profits, Politics and Panics: Hong Kong’s Banks and the Making of a Miracle Economy, 1935-1985, by Leo F. Goodstadt, Hong Kong University Press (2007).
 
Closing our borders to trade is really, really dumb.
We’ve known this for a very long time.​

Georgios Karras, in Applied Economietrics and International Development, 2003:
“The results [of a study of 56 countries, 1951-98, and 105 countries, 1960-97] show that the effect of trade openness on economic growth is positive, permanent, statistically significant, and economically sizable.”
https://www.usc.es/economet/reviews/aeid311.pdf

Eduardo A. Cavallo and Jeffrey A. Frankel, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, December 2005:
“We find that openness indeed makes countries less vulnerable, both to severe sudden stops [in capital inflows] and currency crashes, and that the relationship is even stronger when correcting for the endogeneity of trade.”
https://conference.nber.org/confer/2...06/frankel.pdf

Selina Jackson, writing in the World Bank blog, November 25, 2015:
“No country has developed successfully in modern times without harnessing economic openness – to international trade, investment, and the movement of people.”
https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/trade...not-sufficient

Douglas A. Irwin, writing in The World Bank Research Observer, February 2025:
“At the microeconomic level, the gains in industry productivity from reducing tariffs on imported intermediate goods are even more sharply identified. They show up time and again in country after country.”
https://academic.oup.com/wbro/advanc...xt&login=false
 
DOR said:
Closing our borders to trade is really, really dumb.
We’ve known this for a very long time.​

Georgios Karras, in Applied Economietrics and International Development, 2003:
“The results [of a study of 56 countries, 1951-98, and 105 countries, 1960-97] show that the effect of trade openness on economic growth is positive, permanent, statistically significant, and economically sizable.”
https://www.usc.es/economet/reviews/aeid311.pdf

Eduardo A. Cavallo and Jeffrey A. Frankel, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, December 2005:
“We find that openness indeed makes countries less vulnerable, both to severe sudden stops [in capital inflows] and currency crashes, and that the relationship is even stronger when correcting for the endogeneity of trade.”
https://conference.nber.org/confer/2...06/frankel.pdf

Selina Jackson, writing in the World Bank blog, November 25, 2015:
“No country has developed successfully in modern times without harnessing economic openness – to international trade, investment, and the movement of people.”
https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/trade...not-sufficient

Douglas A. Irwin, writing in The World Bank Research Observer, February 2025:
“At the microeconomic level, the gains in industry productivity from reducing tariffs on imported intermediate goods are even more sharply identified. They show up time and again in country after country.”
https://academic.oup.com/wbro/advanc...xt&login=false
Click to expand...

It's not necessary to be an economist, to see that a tariff; or trade war, is the equivalent of a "Mexican Showdown", no winners just lossers.:confused::rolleyes:
But, to play "Devils Advocate", are there any instances that proponents of a tariff war can point to, where there were winners?:frown:
 
Tariff "war" ?
No. No winners.

There are historic examples where restricting imports, in order to protect domestic infant industries, has been temporarily useful, but those are nothing at all like what is happening today. These tariffs are neither targeted so as to protect something nor useful in raising revenue.

Putting an import tax on useful things that your economy does not produce is, to put it technically, dumb.
 
DOR said:
Tariff "war" ?
No. No winners.

There are historic examples where restricting imports, in order to protect domestic infant industries, has been temporarily useful, but those are nothing at all like what is happening today. These tariffs are neither targeted so as to protect something nor useful in raising revenue.

Putting an import tax on useful things that your economy does not produce is, to put it technically, dumb.
Click to expand...

In a parallel universe? Trump could probably get away with a 10% tariff on all imports. Announce it, give everyone 6 months notice so they have time to adjust and only threaten more tariffs if anyone retaliates. Business gets certainty, other nations get time to grumble, confirm they won't be exempted and lay the ground work at home. The global economy gets time to adapt and the US gets a revenue stream to help reduce it's deficit (plus a once off hike in inflationary pressures of course).

But, as I said - in a parallel universe. :confused:
 
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