Tyler Cowen and The Great Stagnation

I’ve long been a fan of Tyler Cowen’s blog, Marginal Revolution. It’s interesting, off-beat, and is a great source of lesser publicized news stories and research findings, with plenty of thoughtful commentary thrown in. I had been meaning to read Tyler’s recent book, ‘The Great Stagnation’, for a while now. Then the other day, while sitting in an airport, I caught this Business Week article about Tyler, titled ‘Tyler Cowen, America’s Hottest Economist.’ It’s a fascinating article about what makes him one of the more quirky and unique economists, and made me much more eager to read some of his published work. ‘The Great Stagnation’ is about why our economic growth trend has all but come to a standstill, and why

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Tax Advice From Greg Mankiw

Or not. Yesterday Professor Mankiw posted this on his blog: Tax Fact of The Day “The U.S. effective corporate tax rate on new investment was 34.6 percent in 2010, which was the highest rate in the OECD and the fifth-highest rate among 83 countries. The average OECD rate was 18.6 percent, and the average rate for 83 countries was 17.7 percent.” Okay. He chose not to add any commentary, but he’s obviously implying that he believes the rate is too high based solely upon the fact that other countries have lower rates. I suppose that’s a reasonable starting point for a discussion. But his data is extremely misleading. Because the correct way to measure the tax burden on U.S. corporations

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