Tyler Cowen gave a lecture yesterday at Emory on "The Economics of the Jobless Recovery". I was expecting a crowded auditorium of MR fans but got a small room of econ grad students and their professors. If you read Cowen regularly you probably have an understanding of how he approaches the unemployment question. What interested me most was how he connected the American propensity for over-investment in health care, government and education to our current labor market woes. Returns on future investment are clouded by the opacity of the economic conditions of the past decade. Where is dramatic innovation occurring in our economy beyond efficiency improvements to older technologies and reductions in the use of labor?
My favorite quote:
"Why haven't lectures on DVDs put me out of business?" "Why not just watch Paul Krugman on an iPad?"
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