Links 15-03-11

1. Ferdinand's blog has been a consistent voice of reason in the Irish academic debate. I sincerely hope, despite his move abroad, he continues his solid opposition to the Employment Control Framework. His latest post on this is here

2. I was worried when Marginal Revolution took down their blog temporarily that they might be breaking the old maxim that if it aint broke dont fix it. Thankfully, the new blog looks very much like the old and looks mostly like it has had a lick of paint. This is the best blog on the internet in my opinion, certainly the most informative for people like me with somewhat obsessive interests in real-world applications of economics.

3. There was a lot of interest in the Economix blog coverage of the happiest person in America, as defined by a match to the statistical profile of the Gallup well-being data. They follow up with the unhappiest person in America.

4. One of the most interesting aspects of the IFS conference I was involved in last week was to see in person the work of Bruce Meyer on consumption and income as measures of welfare. I will post separately on this but his IDEAS page is a very good resource for people interested in quantifying the effects of policy and business cycle fluctuations on people's welfare.

5. Peter Ubel from the Fuqua School in Duke provides a link to a recent podcast of an interview he conducted discussing his ideas on the health system in the United States.

6. Matthew Kahn's blog is really worth reading. His thoughts lately on the best way to invest the recent large donations to USC and UCLA are particularly interesting. He is basically arguing that investing in top faculty is a better strategy than investing in fancy buildings. This is an argument that is worth having in Ireland also as we are still investing in a university capital programme at a time when we are losing some of our best professors.