Knowing and Making

I don't often do link lists but they seem to be quite the thing for bloggers. Here's one: Tim Harford's article in Forbes about what credit does to our brains . A clear and simple model showing one way to think about toxic bank assets from Mark Thoma The US is following the UK again: the administration has a plan to improve small business access to credit, just like Alistair Darling; a guest post on Econbrowser  has some interesting microeconomic analysis of the rationale. Nick Rowe is always good value: here is a discussion of how liquidity can be factored into the value of a financial (or other) asset. A very nice summary (PDF) from Tyler Cowen of different definitions of rationality used in economics (somewhat technical, so you'll need a bit of economics vocabulary, but not much mathematics) That will do for now. Given the results of this week's zeitgeist, perhaps I should include something about AIG. But I find it difficult to care.

Menzie Chinn and James Hamilton at Econbrowser keep on impressing with some really useful, insightful charts and empirical analysis of the current and projected economic situation. For example: graphs here of the components of GDP (consumption, non-residential and residential investment) and their performance during the current and previous recessions. Or this chart of log-graphed GDP growth over the last 141 years. Hamilton occasionally reveals some political opinions which distract me from the economics, but I guess we all do that from time to time. Blogs are always just a bit  self-indulgent.